The Effect of New Technologies on Youth Leisure and Social Capital

The main question in this research is whether changes in modern style of leisure (based on ICT) are related with Youth’s social capital? In this paper, we have focused on types of leisure styles, especially types of leisure’s Xu Qing. The research survey was conducted among 384 young people aged 15 to 29 years who were living in the district 5 of Tehran. The findings showed that using ICT tools to complete leisure, extends the social capital of young people in two dimensions, objective (membership and participation in groups, organizations, socialize and communications people) and a subjective dimension (trust people together in virtual spaces and confidence in cyberspace).On the other hand, the data show that if people use ICT tools in social activity while their leisure time, increases their social capital then when they use these tools on anti-social activities such as learning activities and so on.