“I’ll See You on IM, Text, or Call You”: A Social Network Approach of Adolescents’ Use of Communication Media

Abstract

This study explores some possibilities of social network analysis for studying adolescents’ communication patterns. A full network analysis was conducted on third-grade high school students (15 year olds, 137 students) in Belgium. The results pointed out that face-to-face communication was still the most prominent way for information to flow through the network. Interactions through communication media (e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging, mobile phone, and landline phone), however, supplemented this flow of information in a substantive way. Communication media use patterns were characterized by multiplexity and could be placed on a unidimensional scale indicating a media hierarchy. Close friends (strong ties) used all communication media at their disposal to connect with each other; students who were just friends (weak ties) preferred face-to-face communication and social network sites. In the discussion, some other possibilities of social network analysis for studying adolescents’ communication media are discussed.