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The second is recall accuracy (e.g, people tend to overestimate the number of people they know from small subpopulations and underestimate from larger ones). The first is network knowledge (e.g., you may know someone, but not know they are a mailman). This assumption is generally true, but can be further adjusted to increase accuracy, which depends on four other factors. 4 This approach assumes that the composition of people’s social networks mirrors the presence of a specific subpopulation in society (e.g., if one out of 100 people in the population have a characteristic, 1/100 people in a person’s network should share this same characteristic). If we know the size of a subpopulation from publicly available statistics, such as how many mailmen there are or how many people there are named “Rose,” and we know how many people a person knows from this subpopulation, we can make an accurate estimate of a person’s total network size. The method is based on the knowledge that the people a person comes to know in a lifetime are made up of various subpopulations (e.g., categories of people, such as family, doctors, mailmen, people named “Rose,” etc). This approach has been embraced by social network analysts and its history and rationale are described in Appendix D. The approach that we use is called the “scale-up method”. However, social scientists have developed methods for estimating the size of people’s networks. This makes it very difficult to measure people’s total network size.
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It is nearly impossible for most people to reliably list all of the people they know. This includes a handful of very close social ties and a much large number of weaker ties. Most Americans overall networks contain a range of social ties that consist of friends, family, coworkers, and other acquaintances. Looking at people’s overall social networks, not just their online ties, the average American has 634 ties in their overall network, and technology users have bigger networks. Here below are our findings on all of this.
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Others believe this might enrich and expand relationships. Some worry that as a result of using these services, people may become more isolated and substitute less meaningful relations for real social support. Those who are listed as friends on SNS may indeed be friends in the traditional sense, but they can also be old acquaintances (e.g., from high school) or very casual connections between people who have never have met in person. Much has been made of the use of the word “friend” in this context. Social networking sites (SNS) provide people with the opportunity to friend members of their overall network of family members, coworkers, and other acquaintances. The average American has 634 ties in their overall network, and technology users have bigger networks.