The Effects of Modern Technology on Social Networks with Emphasis on Adolescent

Document Type : Research Article

Author

Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Allameh Tabatabaei

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of information and communication technology on the structure of social networks. Three major questions have been considered. First, how far does the combination of adolescent social links tend to be heterogeneous and how much is this change related to social and technological factors? Second, does this alternation affect the power of adolescent social links? Third, what is the effect of information and communication technology on social capital? Especially, does information and communication technology support linking and bridging of the social capital? The research method of this paper is documentary with refer to performed researches in different countries around the world. In addition, the effect of network aggregation and internet usage on the quality of social relations between contemporary adolescent, and the effect of information and communication technology on their ability to reconstruct social networks and their relationship templates are discussed. In conclusion, with the growth of internet users’ network, the future studies have to investigate the relevance between social capital and the quality of relations and particularly, how the present attitude towards technology and the new literacy of network generation affect the quality of adolescent relations by using comprehensive studies on information and communication technology.

Keywords

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics