Social networking sites and our lives
Facebook users are more trusting, have more close friends, are more politically engaged, and get more support from their friends
The highest proportion of Facebook friends is high school classmates, and Facebook helps revive "dormant" ties with lost connections
Washington (June 16, 2011) -- New national survey findings show that use of social networking sites is growing and that those who use these sites, especially Facebook users, have higher measures of social well-being.
In a national phone survey of 2,255 American adults last fall, the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project found that:
Facebook users are more trusting than others. Controlling for other factors, the research found that a Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day is 43% more likely than other internet users and more than three times as likely as non-internet users to feel that most people can be trusted.
Facebook users have more close relationships. Controlling for other factors, the research found that someone who uses Facebook several times per day averages 9% more close, core ties in their overall social network compared with other internet users.
Facebook users are much more politically engaged. The survey was conducted over the November 2010 election season. Compared with other internet users, and users of other social networking platforms, a Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day was an additional two and half times more likely to attend a political rally or meeting, 57% more likely to persuade someone on their vote, and 43% more likely to have said they would vote.
Facebook users get more social support. The survey explored how much total social support, emotional support, companionship, and instrumental aid (such as having someone help you when you are sick in bed) adults receive. Controlling for other factors, a Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day receives more emotional support and companionship. For Facebook users, the additional boost is equivalent to about half the total support that the average American receives as a result of being married or cohabitating with a partner.
Facebook helps users retain high school ties and it revives dormant relationships. In our sample, the average Facebook user has 229 Facebook friends. They reported that their friends list contains: 
22% people from high school
12% extended family
10% coworkers
9% college friends
8% immediate family 
7% people from voluntary groups
2% neighbors
Over 31% of Facebook friends cannot be classified into these categories. However, only 3% of Facebook friends are people users have never met in person, and only 7% are people who have met only one time. The remainder is friends-of-friends and social ties that are not currently active relationships, but "dormant" ties that were meaningful once and have been at least somewhat maintained through use of Facebook.
"There has been a great deal of speculation about the impact of social networking site use on people's social lives, and much of it has centered on the possibility that these sites are hurting users' relationships and pushing them away from participating in the world," noted Prof. Keith Hampton, the lead author of the new Pew Internet report. "We've found the exact opposite -- that people who use sites like Facebook actually have more close relationships and are more likely to be involved in civic and political activities."
This survey also showed that more people are using social networking sites -- the figure is now 47% of the entire adult population, compared with 26% that was measured in our similar 2008 survey. Among other things, this means the average age of adult social networking site users has shifted from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010. Over half of all adult social networking site users are now over the age of 35.
In Pew Internet's first-ever reading on specific Facebook activities, the survey found that on an average day:
15% of Facebook users update their own status.
22% comment on another's post or status.
20% comment on another user's photos.
26% "Like" another user's content.
10% send another user a private message
"Facebook has become the dominant social networking platform in terms of both number of users and frequency of use, and it is striking to note that the makeup of the population is changing," noted Lauren Sessions Goulet, co-author of the report. We also found interesting variation in the characteristics of users across different social networking sites. People pick the platforms which best meet their social and professional needs."
For instance, the report found:
Nearly twice as many men (63%) as women (37%) use LinkedIn. 
The average adult MySpace user is younger (32), and the average adult LinkedIn user older (40), than the average Facebook user (38), Twitter user (33), and users of other social networking sites (35). 
MySpace and Twitter users are the most racially diverse mainstream social network platforms. 
MySpace users tend to have fewer years of formal education than users of other social network services, whereas most LinkedIn users have at least one university degree.
There were several other surprises in the survey the authors found notable:
Social networking sites are increasingly used to keep up with close social ties. Looking at those people that social networking site users report as their core discussion confidants, 40% of users have friended all of their closest confidants. This is a substantial increase from the 29% of users who reported in our 2008 survey that they had friended all of their core confidants. 
MySpace users are more likely to be open to opposing points of view. We measured "perspective taking," or the ability of people to consider multiple points of view. There is no evidence that social networking site users, including those who use Facebook, are any more likely than others to cocoon themselves in social networks of like-minded and similar people, as some have feared. Moreover, regression analysis found that those who use MySpace have significantly higher levels of perspective taking. 
"Social networking sites have become increasingly important to people as they find ways to integrate check-ins and updates into the rhythms of their lives," noted Lee Rainie, a co-author of the report. "People use them now to stay in touch with their best friends and distant acquaintances alike. But the story hasn't ended. It's clear that the world of networked individuals will continue to change as the platforms and populations of users continue to evolve."
In this survey, 2,255 American adults were surveyed between October 20-November 28, 2010, including 1,787 internet users. There were 975 users of social networking site such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Twitter. The margin of error on the entire survey is plus or minus 3 percentage points, on the internet users is plus or minus 3 percentage points, and for the social networking site users is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Social networking sites (SNS) provide people with the opportunity to friend members of their overall network of family members, coworkers, and other acquaintances. Much has been made of the use of the word "friend" in this context. Those who are listed as friends on SNS may indeed be friends in the traditional sense, but they can also be old acquaintances (e.g., from high school) or very casual connections between people who have never have met in person. Some worry that as a result of using these services, people may become more isolated and substitute less meaningful relations for real social support. Others believe this might enrich and expand relationships. Here below are our findings on all of this. 
Looking at people's overall social networks, not just their online ties, the average American has 634 ties in their overall network, and technology users have bigger networks.
Most Americans overall networks contain a range of social ties that consist of friends, family, coworkers, and other acquaintances. This includes a handful of very close social ties and a much large number of weaker ties. It is nearly impossible for most people to reliably list all of the people they know. This makes it very difficult to measure people's total network size. However, social scientists have developed methods for estimating the size of people's networks.
The approach that we use is called the "scale-up method" [3]. This approach has been embraced by social network analysts and its history and rationale are described in Appendix D. The method is based on the knowledge that the people a person comes to know in a lifetime are made up of various subpopulations (e.g., categories of people, such as family, doctors, mailmen, people named "Rose," etc). If we know the size of a subpopulation from publicly available statistics, such as how many mailmen there are or how many people there are named "Rose," and we know how many people a person knows from this subpopulation, we can make an accurate estimate of a person's total network size.2 This approach assumes that the composition of people's social networks mirrors the presence of a specific subpopulation in society (e.g., if one out of 100 people in the population have a characteristic, 1/100 people in a person's network should share this same characteristic).
This assumption is generally true, but can be further adjusted to increase accuracy, which depends on four other factors. The first is network knowledge (e.g., you may know someone, but not know they are a mailman). The second is recall accuracy (e.g, people tend to overestimate the number of people they know from small subpopulations and underestimate from larger ones). The third is knowledge of a large number of subpopulations, and the fourth is exposure or social mixing (e.g., older women may have been exposed to more people named "Rose," than, say, younger men). To maximize the accuracy of our estimate we did four things: 1) we asked about subpopulations that have high recall -- people's first names, 2) we chose names that represent between 0.1%-0.2% of the population -- subpopulation sizes that has been found to minimize recall errors [5], 3) we used a relatively large number of subpopulations -- 12 unique names, 4) and we selected a balance of male and female names that were popular at different time periods -- they roughly balance each other out in terms of likelihood of exposure over time and minimize any bias as a result of age and gender.
In addition, mobile phone users average 664 ties, and those who have internet access through a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet computer tend to have about 717 ties.
Once we control for demographic factors, most types of technology use are not related to having either a larger or smaller number of overall social ties (see Appendix C, Table C1, for the regression analysis). For example, LinkedIn and Twitter users have more overall social ties because of the demographics of their users. When we control for demographic factors, we find no difference in the size of people's overall networks based on which SNS they use. LinkedIn users tend to have more friends because, unlike most social media, they are disproportionately male, and they also tend to have more years of formal education. At the same time, while Twitter users are more likely to be women than users of any other SNS, they are also disproportionately more educated. As a result, on average Twitter users tend to have larger social networks.
Mobile phone use and instant messaging users are associated with having a larger overall network.
Unlike the use of specific SNS platforms, the use of a mobile phone and the use of instant messaging services (IM) are associated with having more overall friends, even when we controlled for demographic factors. Mobile phone users have social networks that are on average 15% larger (an additional 73 ties) than those who do not use a mobile phone. Those who use instant message tend to have 17% more social ties than those without the internet and those who do not use IM (an additional 85 ties).