How Does Facebook Affect Social Capital?

Online social sharing platforms, which are the result of recent developments in information and communication technologies, play an important role in maintaining social relationships today. The increase in the popularity of online sites lead researchers to study the daily life outputs of these sites. The main purpose of the current paper is to investigate impact of Facebook, which is the one of the most popular social network sites, on social capital. For this purpose, findings of the studies conducted in the field have been evaluated. The results of these studies indicate that there is positive relationship between Facebook use and bridging social capital. On the other hand, there exist conflicting findings in the literature about association between Facebook and bonding social capital. Also, after the studies it has been noticed that not all Facebook activities are equally social and impact of this site on social capital depends on communication practices used in there. Individuals who use certain communication practices in social network sites like Facebook gain more social capital from those platforms. To conclude, throughout the present article crucial information is provided to both users and researchers about the role of Facebook on social capital and how this platform can be used effectively