[Infowarrior] - Paper: "Social Connectivity in America"

[Richard Forno]

(c/o aior)

Subtitle: Changes in Adult Friendship Network Size from 2002 to 2007
New paper by Hua (Helen) Wang and Barry Wellman.

Forthcoming in American Behavioral Scientist (2009 or 2010).

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/publications/social-connectivity/social-connectivity.pdf

or just go to my website http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman

> Publications > Cyber Society > Other Cyber Society Research Papers

Abstract:

There is some panic in the United States about a possible
decline in social connectivity. We use two American national surveys
(from the Center for the Digital Future, World Internet Project) to
analyze how changes in the number of friends are related to changes in
Internet use. We find that friendships continue to be abundant among  
adult
Americans between the ages of 25 to 74 and to have grown from 2002 to
2007. This trend is similar among Internet non-users, light users,
moderate users, and heavy users – and across communication contexts:
offline, virtual only, and migrating from online to offline. Heavy users
are particularly active, having the most friends both on- and off-line.
Intracohort change consistently outweighs cohort replacement in overall
growth in friendship.