University of Sussex
Browse

File(s) not publicly available

Managing one's social network: does age make a difference?

chapter
posted on 2023-06-07, 13:27 authored by Hilary Smith, Yvonne Rogers, Mark Brady
Keeping in touch with family and friends should be easier now that we have a repertoire of communication tools available to us (e.g. SMS, IM, email, mobile and landline phones). And yet many of us continue to find it difficult to maintain and manage our personal contacts. Why is this so? This paper describes a study that looked at how three different age groups manage their personal networks and what types of technology-mediated communication tools they use. Our findings were that older teenagers have the largest social networks and experience considerable contact management effort; that people around the age of 30 use the greatest variety of communication technology; and that people in their fifties have the smallest social networks consisting mainly of family and very close friends. Using qualitative data representations, we discuss our findings in terms of ways to more effectively support people to manage multiple modes of communication.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Publisher

IOS Press

Page range

551-558

Pages

7.0

Event name

INTERACT'03

Event location

Zurich

Book title

Human Computer Interaction - INTERACT '03

ISBN

9781586033637

Department affiliated with

  • Informatics Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

Matthias Rauterberg, Marino Menozzi, Janet Wesson

Legacy Posted Date

2006-11-14

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC