Managing one's social network: does age make a difference?

Keeping in touch with family and friends should be easier now that we have a repertoire of communication tools available to us (e.g. SMS, IM, email, mobile and landline phones). And yet many of us continue to find it difficult to maintain and manage our personal contacts. Why is this so? This paper describes a study that looked at how three different age groups manage their personal networks and what types of technology-mediated communication tools they use. Our findings were that older teenagers have the largest social networks and experience considerable contact management effort; that people around the age of 30 use the greatest variety of communication technology; and that people in their fifties have the smallest social networks consisting mainly of family and very close friends. Using qualitative data representations, we discuss our findings in terms of ways to more effectively support people to manage multiple modes of communication.