How Social Media Makes Us More Social: A Guide

How social media makes us more social rests on three mechanisms: reducing the cost of maintaining weak ties, enabling asynchronous contact across distances and time zones, and helping people with niche interests find each other. These correspond to the three types of social capital researchers distinguish. Robin Dunbar’s social brain theory suggests humans can have around 150 meaningful relationships, and social media makes the outer layers of those 150 much easier to keep warm.

• Social media’s strongest evidence base for how social media makes us more social is for maintaining existing relationships and connecting with looser networks, not for creating new deep friendships from scratch.
• The mechanism matters more than the platform: asynchronous text, persistent identity, and searchable interest groups do the work.
• Different tools are suitable for different jobs: WhatsApp and Signal for maintenance, LinkedIn for professional bridging, Discord and Reddit for communities of interest, Mastodon for open networking connection building.
• For universities and colleges, the practical question is which platform reduces friction for a specific community (a cohort, a reading group, a research network) rather than which is the most popular overall.
• Design choices (default notification settings, moderation, accessibility and data protection) determine whether a tool is inclusive or exclusive.
• An honest warning: Social media can displace face-to-face time and amplify comparisons and harassment. The advantages are real but conditional.

The Three Mechanisms That Actually Do the Work

Social capital theory, developed by Pierre Bourdieu and later popularized by Robert Putnam and Nicole Ellison and colleagues in their work on Facebook use, separates bonding capital (close bonds of emotional support) from bridging capital (loose connections that provide information and opportunities). A third category, maintained social capital, describes the maintenance of relationships that would otherwise cease. The clearest contribution of social media—and how social media makes us more social—concerns the second and third.

The drop in transaction costs explains most of this effect. Sending a message to a friend in another city costs seconds rather than the effort of a phone call or letter.

This reduction is not trivial: it changes the number of relationships that a person can maintain. Robin Dunbar’s work on social brain theory suggests that humans can have around 150 meaningful relationships, with tighter layers within. Social media doesn’t raise the ceiling much, but it does make the outer layers of those 150 much easier to keep warm.

Asynchronous communication adds a second lever. A student in a different time zone, a part-time learner with a job, a researcher on fieldwork: all can participate in a conversation without being present at the same time. This matters disproportionately for groups historically excluded from synchronous social life: caregivers, disabled people, and those in rural areas.

Persistent, searchable identity adds a third. A forum thread from three years ago remains findable. A hashtag aggregates strangers around a shared event. Neither is possible in a corridor conversation.

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Comparison: Which Platform Does Which Job?

The table below maps common platforms according to the social function they best serve, illustrating how social media makes us more social. Consider it a starting point for institutional decisions, not a ranking.

Platform	Primary social function	Best for	Main trade-off
WhatsApp / Signal	Maintaining close ties	Cohort groups, project teams, family	Notification overload; group size limits
LinkedIn	Bridging (professional)	Alumni networks, employer links, CPD	Performative posting; weak bonding
Discord	Bonding around interest	Societies, study groups, gaming and hobby communities	Moderation burden; discoverability
Reddit	Bridging at scale	Niche Q&A, peer support, subject communities	Anonymity can reduce accountability
Mastodon / the fediverse	Open-network bonding	Public-interest and academic communities	Smaller reach; instance governance varies
Instagram / TikTok	Identity and visibility	Creative work, outreach, student recruitment	Comparison effects; algorithmic opacity
Facebook Groups	Mixed bonding and bridging	Local communities, course cohorts	Declining younger-user engagement

A useful rule for web and learning-technology teams: match the platform to the relationship type you are trying to support, not to the demographic you are trying to reach. A cohort that needs emotional support will not get it from a LinkedIn page.

What the Evidence Supports — and What It Doesn’t

Claims about how social media “makes us more social” need to be broken down into testable parts. The most important support concerns maintenance and bridging. Research by Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe on Facebook use among undergraduates found associations between intensity of use and both bridging and bonding social capital, with bridging effects generally being larger.

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The Pew Research Center’s long-running surveys of American adults have repeatedly found that social media users are more likely to have larger, more diverse networks — although Pew is careful to note that correlation is not causation.

There is weaker support for the claim that social media creates close friendships. Bonding capital tends to be formed through repeated, high-bandwidth interactions: shared meals, shared work, shared adversity. Text and video can complement this but rarely replace it. The honest position is that social media is a maintenance and discovery technology, not a friendship-building technology.

Negative results also deserve weight. Research on passive consumption – scrolling without interacting – is consistently associated with worse well-being outcomes than active interaction. The distinction between active and passive use is one of the most robust findings in the field, and it has direct design implications: a platform that encourages lurking doesn’t make anyone more social.

Why This Matters for UK Universities and Colleges

Higher and further education institutions have specific reasons to care about these mechanisms. Widening participation students, mature learners, distance learners, and apprentices often have thinner local networks than residential undergraduates. A well-run online community can partially compensate.

Practical applications that work:

• Cohort groups on WhatsApp or Teams for administrative and social coordination, with clear boundaries about staff presence.
• Alumni networks on LinkedIn, which reliably produce bridging capital — mentoring, placements, guest lectures.
• Reading and research groups on Discord or a fediverse instance, where asynchronous discussion suits part-time participants.
• Peer support communities moderated by trained students, which research on online peer support suggests can reduce isolation when safeguarding is adequate.
• Public engagement via Instagram or TikTok, which reaches prospective students but rarely builds lasting community.

Institutional caution is required on three fronts. First, data protection: the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 apply to personal data processed on social platforms, and the Information Commissioner’s Office has published guidelines on social media and data protection that website managers should read before setting up an official group.

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Second, accessibility: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 is the gold standard, and many social platforms fall short: alt text, captions, and keyboard navigation vary widely. Third, moderation: unmoderated spaces quickly become hostile and the burden often falls on junior staff or student volunteers.

The Trade-offs Nobody Should Skip

Social media’s social benefits come with real costs, and a credible guide names them.

Moving. Time spent scrolling is time not spent in person. The evidence on whether social media displaces face-to-face interactions or supplements them is mixed and depends heavily on how the tool is used.

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Comparison and status anxiety. Platforms built on visible metrics — likes, follower counts, view counts — create social comparison at a scale no pre-digital environment matched. This is a design choice, not an inevitability; platforms without public metrics (many fediverse instances, most messaging apps) avoid much of it.

Harassment and pile-on. Women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ users face disproportionate abuse. Any institution recommending a platform must evaluate its blocking, reporting and moderation tools.

Context collapse. A single post reaches coworkers, family, and strangers simultaneously. This flattens the different registers that people use with different audiences and is a frequent source of professional embarrassment.

Commercial incentives. Ad-funded platforms optimise for engagement, which is not the same as wellbeing. This is the strongest argument for institutional preference for tools where the business model aligns with the user’s interest.

How to Decide: A Criteria List

For web managers and learning technologists choosing a platform for a specific community—and considering how social media makes us more social—work through these in order.

1. Define the relationship type. Bonding, bridging, or maintenance? This determines the platform class.
2. Check the audience’s existing habits. A tool nobody in the group already uses will fail regardless of its features.
3. Assess accessibility against WCAG 2.2. Test with a screen reader and keyboard-only navigation.
4. Review data protection and retention. Where does the data live, who can access it, and what is the lawful basis?
5. Establish moderation capacity. Who responds to reports, within what timeframe, with what authority?
6. Set a review date. Communities decay; plan to reassess after one term or one academic year.
7. Provide an exit route. Exportable data and a clear wind-down plan protect users if the platform changes.

Sources & Further Reading

• Social media — Wikipedia: Social media are new media technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression…

Frequently Asked Questions

Does social media make people more or less connected?

Social media makes people more connected in the specific senses of maintaining existing ties and bridging to new ones, and less connected when use is passive or displaces face-to-face interaction. The active-versus-passive distinction is the single most useful variable in understanding how social media makes us more social. Most people experience both effects at different times.

How does social media improve communication?

Social media improves communication by making it asynchronous, persistent and searchable. Asynchronous messaging allows people to participate across time zones and around their work or caring responsibilities. Persistence means that conversations remain available for reference, and searchability allows newcomers to find relevant discussions rather than starting from scratch.

Is social media good for building friendships?

Social networks are effective for maintaining friendships and less effective for creating them. Close friendships are typically formed through repeated, high-bandwidth interactions: shared work, shared meals, shared experiences. Messaging and video calls can maintain these connections at a distance, but a follow or like is not friendship.

Which social media platform is best for community building?

No single platform is best; the right choice depends on the relationship type. Messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Signal suit close-knit groups, Discord and Reddit suit interest-based communities, and LinkedIn suits professional bridging. Institutions should match the tool to the community’s existing habits and moderation capacity.

How can universities use social media to reduce student isolation?

Universities can reduce isolation by supporting moderated peer communities, cohort messaging groups, and interest-based societies online, with clear safeguarding and escalation routes. Widening participation, mature, and distance learners benefit most because their local networks are often thinner. Unmoderated spaces tend to increase harm rather than reduce it.

What are the risks of relying on social media for social connection?

Risks include displacement of face-to-face time, social comparison and status anxiety, harassment, context collapse, and dependence on commercial platforms whose engagement incentives may not align with user wellbeing. Accessibility gaps and data protection obligations add institutional risk. These are manageable with deliberate design and moderation, but they should not be ignored.

Where This Leaves UK Institutions

How social media makes us more social is primarily by making maintenance inexpensive and bridging possible at scale. This is a real win, especially for learners and staff whose networks are geographically or circumstantially thin.

The gain is conditional on active use, adequate moderation, accessible design, and a clear-eyed vision of the trade-offs. For UK higher and further education, the reasonable stance is selective adoption: choosing tools that fit a defined community, documenting the basis for data protection, resourcing the moderation, and reviewing annually. Further reading on the underlying theory is available via the Wikipedia entries on social capital and social media, and on accessibility via the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

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