Online social networks, social capital, and wellbeing

In economics, capital is essentially defined as a collection of resources that an individual uses to produce goods or services (even if those goods or services are not traded in markets). Some types of capital are obvious, such as machinery or tools (physical capital), or financial wealth (financial capital). Others are a little less obvious, like the stock of human capital (our knowledge, training, and experience, etc.) and natural capital (land, air, water, biodiversity, etc.). Then there is social capital - the social relationships that we have with other people. Social capital is the most difficult to measure (even more difficult than natural capital), but typically we measure it in terms of the number of relationships, and the quality of those relationships, and in terms of quality, we often use the degree of social trust as one measure.

All of that is a long-winded way of talking about the value of online social networks (which is a topic I have discussed before - see the links at the end of this post). In theory, social networks could increase social capital, because they allow us to increase the number of social relationships. However, social networks could also decrease social capital if, in spite of a larger number of relationships, the quality of those relationships is lower. If a social network has a particularly bad culture, the quality might even be negative (if belonging to the network makes us worse off, holding the number of relationships constant).

How can we understand whether social networks have a net benefit (the increase in relationships outweighs any decrease in their quality) or a net cost (the decrease in quality outweighs the increase in relationships)? One way is to look at subjective wellbeing (or life satisfaction, or happiness), and that's what a lot of studies have done (see the links at the end of the post for a few examples). However, fewer studies have also looked at social capital.

One notable exception is this 2017 article by Fabio Sabatini (Sapienza University of Rome) and Francesco Sarracino (STATEC, Luxembourg), published in the journal Kyklos (appears to be open access, but just in case there is an ungated earlier version here). They use data on around 50,000 people from the 2010-2012 waves of the Italian Multipurpose Household Survey. Subjective wellbeing was measured on a 0-10 scale (which is quite common), but online social network use was measured by the yes/no response to the question: "Did you make use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in the last 12 months?". Social capital was measured by the number of interactions with friends (quantity), and the dichotomous response to the question: "Do you think that most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?" (quality).

The problem with most studies of online social networks is that they can't show that using the social network causes a change in subjective wellbeing, because perhaps happier (or less happy) people are more likely to use the online social network, in which case the causality runs in the wrong direction. Sabatini and Sarracino try to get around this by using instrumental variables analysis - essentially they predict people's social network access by looking at whether the area they lived in had access to high-speed broadband (DSL or fibre) or not in 2008 (i.e. two years before the survey), then see if the predicted social network access is related to subjective wellbeing. There are issues with these instruments, which I will come back to shortly. Sabatini and Sarracinofind that there is:

...a significant and negative correlation between the use of SNS [social networking sites] and subjective well-being which is independent from the controls for social capital.

In their instrumental variables analysis, they find that:

...the proxies of social capital are positively and significantly associated with life satisfaction, while the use of SNS has negative and significant coefficients.

Finally, they use structural equation modelling (SEM) to look at the inter-relationships between online social network use, social capital, and subjective wellbeing. They find that:

The SEM analysis suggests that the significantly negative correlation between SNS use and subjective well-being obtained in OLS estimates is not only the result of a direct negative effect, but it also results from the combination of two indirect channels:

1. the negative correlation between the use of SNS and social trust that negatively affects well-being.

2. the positive correlation between the use of SNS and face-to-face interactions that positively affects well-being.

Taken all together, their results show that online social networks reduce subjective wellbeing, but that is because online social network use is associated with lower quality of social capital (lower trust), even though online social network use is associated with greater number of social relationships.

This is a nice paper, because of the combination of several methods of analysis. However, the results aren't as strong as the authors claim. The instruments (DSL and fibre broadband access) are not good instruments, because high-speed internet is not necessary in order to access social networks, and because high-speed internet is also associated with increases in the use of many other internet tools (online video, for example). However, despite that, the results are at least consistent with our theoretical predictions from the start of this post. Of most interest may be that the use of online social networks was associated with more face-to-face interactions, rather than just more online interactions.

More papers in this research area should take account of social capital though, if we really want to understand how online social networks affect subjective wellbeing.

Read more:

• The latest NZ research on social media and mental health is nothing special
• What happens when you disconnect from Facebook?
• Does the Internet make people happier?
• The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel
• Quitting Facebook might make you happier