A Study of the Relationship between Social Media, Kinship and Friendship Relations Network; A Comparative Study between Young Adults and Old Adults in Shiraz City

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between social media with kinship and friendship network in Shiraz. In this article, family boundaries theory and networked individualism theory have been used. We surveyed 600 young and old adults who were chosen by quota multistage random sampling. The findings show that the use of social media enhances communication with actual and virtual friends and also enhances received support from them. Moreover, the use of social media enhances received support from close and far relatives; old adults receive more support from close relatives via their usage of social media while young adults receive more support from far relatives. However, the results show that the use of social media undermines family relationships.