The Importance Of Bonding And Bridging Social Capital

Social Network sites allow individuals to express themselves, and establish or maintain connections with others that would otherwise not be established or would be lost (1). These relationships help to generate Social Capital and play a vital role in psychosocial development for university students who are in emerging adulthood, which is a liminal period between adolescence and adulthood (2). Social Capital is defined as the resources people develop and draw on to increase their confidence and self-esteem, their sense of connectedness, belonging, and ability to bring about change in their lives and communities. It is a sociological concept, which refers to connections within and between social networks (9). It has been linked to a variety of

Most researchers examine the connections between psychological well-being, such as self-esteem, and satisfaction with life, and social capital. These studies emphasize the importance of family and close friends. Family and close friends are considered part of the Bonding Social Capital. Social Capital provided by Online Social Networks can be both Bonding and Bridging. Bonding Social Capital is referred to relationships within a group or between people who are similar, including ties that exist within a family or neighbors or those who have the same language or same ethnic group. Bridging Social Capital, the focus of the present paper, is referred to the loose connections that exist between individuals who may provide useful information or new perspectives for one another, or between different groups such as the relationship between two people from two different ethnic groups. Bridging Social Capital is critical to provide access to new ideas, resources, communities and cultures. Due to researchers focus on the effect of Bonding Social Capital, there is a need for additional research exploring the potential linkage between psychological well-being and Bridging Social Capital to enhance it (3

They found that the relationship between Facebook use and bridging social capital was greater for low self-esteem students compared to high self-esteem students. Those who reported low satisfaction and low self-esteem appeared to gain in bridging social capital if they used Facebook more intensely, suggesting that the affordances of the social networks sites might be especially helpful for them. And they found that using Facebook was strongly associated with the existence of bridging social capital, possibly indicating that emerging adults were using Facebook to maintain large and heterogeneous networks of friends. In Saudi Arabia, tradition has many taboos that control offline communication, especially for women. These taboos had an impact on their online communication as well. There is a lack of research investigating psychological well-being of social networks users in Saudi culture. The objectives of this study are to assess the psychological well-being of Saudi university students who used social networks, Facebook, to clarify the relationships between students' psychological well-being and frequency of using social networks, and to explore whether the relationship between Facebook use and bridging social capital is different for individuals with