Evolution of Friendship Networks, Communication Media, and Psychological Dispositions

Social relationships change over time. Within a social gathering, people form and maintain interpersonal relationships in several ways, whereas some relationships decline and others lapse after a certain period of time. The underlying processes of such relationship formation, maintenance, and dissolution can be differentiated in terms of purely structural network effects (see Chapter 3) and actor-relation effects (i.e., “social selection,” see Chapter 8; also see de Klepper et al., 2010; Robins, Elliott, & Pattison, 2001). To test how purely structural and social selection processes promote network formation respectively, this chapter examines the development of friendship networks expressed through face-to-face communication and mobile phone text messages among first-year undergraduates through an academic year.

Making friends at a university is one of the central concerns of first-year undergraduates. Friendship plays an important role in adaptation to novel social environments, especially during a major life transition such as university enrollment. Previous research has investigated the relationship between friendship network development among first-year undergraduates and its impact on adaptation to university (Hays & Oxley, 1986; Newcomb, 1961; van Duijn et al., 2003). However, the impact of different types of communication media on network formation and maintenance has not been fully studied. This chapter introduces patterns of longitudinal changes in interpersonal relationships and characteristics of communication media, especially text messages, in relation to strength of friendship ties. The effects of individual factors such as gender and social identity on the evolution of friendship network structure are also elaborated.