By Sharon Jayson
USA TODAY
Social networks increase human contacts, and that can have good -- and uncertain -- effects.
The interconnected web of our friends, family, neighbors and acquaintances may dominate our lives more than we know.
They've always been there, making up our social support systems. But now, largely thanks to the burgeoning popularity of online social networks like Facebook, researchers are discovering what a powerful influence our connections -- both online and off -- really have over our lives.
"Those of us who study social networks believe they matter -- that things do spread along social networks," says Claude Fischer, a sociology professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
Because social networks online are much more clearly defined than offline connections, they have been a boon to researchers. And studies are finding that despite dire predictions from naysayers who warned that spending too much time online would be damaging to real-life relationships, the opposite appears to be true.
The full article is available in the library's LexisNexis database.
