Social Ties, Communication Channels, and Personal Well-Being: A Study of the Networked Lives of College Students in Singapore

In this study, we analyze the personal networks of 379 college students in Singapore to explore the social affordances of traditional and new channels in communicating with different types of social relationships and their associations with personal well-being. Results suggest communication channels play a complex role in how strong and weak ties are related to personal well-being. On one hand, face-to-face communication, landlines, mobile phones, text messaging, and social network sites are associated with the strong ties that boost personal well-being. On the other hand, mobile phones, text messaging, social network sites, and video chat (but not face-to-face or landline communication) are associated with weak ties and personal well-being. This study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, we show that strong and weak ties are both important to the personal well-being of college students in Singapore; second, we show how different communication channels are associated with different kinds of social ties. Mobile and social media play a critical role in these social ties.