With the quick development of mobile devices and social media platforms, due to convenience and generalizability, people began to pay attention to keep or establish social relationships through the Internet. Constantly updated features of social media enable people to maintain and expand social circles from many sides, such as looking for a long-lost friend, keeping in touch with long-distance friends, or meeting new friends even strangers. At the same time, to add friend on social media when people first meet a new friend gradually becomes a social rule, which reflects that “people’s lives offline and online are now integrated.”(Rainie & Wellman, 2012) Thus,it is common that people’s social network size increases extremely, from several people to hundreds of people. According to a previous research with the most accurate method and two recent researches, Rainie and Wellman (2012) pointed out that the average size of the network should be 600 in most developed or higher population density countries, which is quadruple of Dunbar’s number 150.
In addition to defining as a social structure or considering an exact number, social network size is related to numerous aspects that are worth to explore. Like Rainie and Wellman (2012) discussed, social network size matters since it is useful and crucial for various fields, which include social media technological design, actual community affair, sociology, epidemiology, and so on. More broadly, social network size affects the degree of social cohesion which is important to national and social stability. Besides these macroscopic aspects, social network size matters each individual as well.
In regard to the scale, Rainie and Wellman (2012) stated that larger social network size has more benefits. Essentially, the larger social network size could transmit more information and raise the diversity of social contacts; people need to obtain as more information as they can to follow this digital information age. Admittedly, it is a general phenomenon that people always contact with several close friends and ignore others in their social networks because of a larger social network. Although the larger size cannot ensure the quality of social ties, those weak or latent ties still have positive effects. To keep many weak or latent ties has no influence in daily life, but these ties can be utilized anytime when people need some helps. Last but not least, the larger social network size also has positive effects on physical and psychological health because of social support.
As Rainie and Wellman (2012) illustrated, “larger networks provide more social support”, the larger network size enables people to reach out to more people, information and novelties to gain more social support. In terms of social support, Thoits (2011) divided it into two types, “emotional sustenance” and “active coping assistance”, as well as indicated that these two types of support come from two different groups of the social network, which are “significant others” and “experimentally similar others”. She stated, “types of support from different network sources produce stress-buffering effects.”(Thoits, 2011) Hence, it is good for physical and psychological health if people have a larger social network, which means that more social support can promote senses of belonging, security, and acceptability to reduce psychological distress; and some people prefer to expand their social network actively since they treat social network as a psychological dependence or comfort.
As an example of a study about effects of social support on psychological distress in parents of pediatric cancer patients, researchers Harper et al. (2015) found that the network size has buffering benefits; parents who are anxious and depressed will less likely experience psychological distress if they believe having larger social support networks. Additionally, from a practical perspective, for these parents, despite that they most need a few crucial support resources, the larger network can give them more opportunities to approach more social support, whatever economic, therapy or mentality.
In conclusion, social network size matters plenty of different aspects, especially physical and psychological health. Although it seems like the quality of social relationships will be much higher if people have a smaller social network, the larger social network does not necessarily imply a lower relationship quality and it will not impact the quality of those intimate relationships. Moreover, it is worth to notice that a larger social network has positive influences on physical and psychological health. Nowadays, psychological diseases become serious and cause many negative results due to life and work pressures. To expand social network size is a good way to perceive more senses of belonging and supporting in order to moderate psychological distress.
References
Rainie, L., & Wellman, B. (2012). Networked: The new social operating system. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Harper, F. W., Peterson, A. M., Albrecht, T. L., Taub, J. W., Phipps, S., & Penner, L. A. (2015). Satisfaction with support versus size of network: Differential effects of social support on psychological distress in parents of pediatric cancer patients. Psycho-Oncology,25(5), 551-558. doi:10.1002/pon.3863
Thoits, P. A. (2011). Mechanisms Linking Social Ties and Support to Physical and Mental Health. Journal of Health and Social Behavior,52(2), 145-161. doi:10.1177/0022146510395592