Document Type : Original Article

Author

educational psychology

Abstract

Internet use among teenagers has been considerably increased during recent years in such a way that web communication has become an integral part of teenagers’ life and culture. The purpose of this paper is then to investigate the nature and structural characteristics of virtual social networks, their effects on teenagers’ interpersonal relationships, families’ tension and teenagers’ educational skills. Through consulting different researches, the author reached the following conclusions:
1. Internet has developed teenagers’ world and their relationships with peers and has provided them with new ways of communication with those being out of their near society; 2. Information and Communication Technology has consequences in families with teenagers including diversification of virtual social networks, challenging family hierarchy and teenagers’ independence, and also expectations gap; 3. It is possible to recognize the structural characteristics of virtual social networks by using 8 factors: network size, similarity, resources, media, centrality, density, relationship strength, and interaction. As a result, future studies must simultaneously focus on social characteristics and the media in order to ascertain which social group takes advantage of online relationships more.      
 

   

Keywords

 

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