AMANDA HYNAN FINAL THESIS PDF

of psychological well-being and may support perceptions of self-esteem and life
satisfaction.
There are interesting implications for the fact that online social media sites such as
Facebook can support social capital. Within the next section it will be illustrated that
people with physical disabilities often find it difficult to establish and maintain social
ties (Imms, 2008, Kirk, 2008), especially when their life situations change and they
geographically move to new situations.
2.4.5. Online social ties of young people
As the previous section (2.4.3.) has shown, one of the main interests of young people
is to use the internet for social communication (Livingstone & Helsper, 2007). The
growing popularity and integration into young people’s lives of online communication
is opening up new dynamics for social participation and inclusion within adolescent
peer groups. Livingstone (2008) discusses how adolescents are not necessarily using
online social media to displace face-to-face communication but find it adds an
additional dimension to existing local ties. Vallor (2011) has written a discussion
paper on the value of friendship and new social media using an Aristotelian theory of
the good life, which holds that
“human flourishing is chiefly realized through ‘complete’ friendships of virtue”
(abstract).
She looks at Aristotle’s four values of reciprocity, empathy, self-knowledge and a
shared life and examines each in relation to new social media. She concludes there are
many ethical questions about what we value and define as true friendship in a virtual
world but that online social media is certainly influencing friendship maintenance and
allowing people to connect and collaborate in new ways that are yet to be fully
understood or realised. Young people share a wealth of candid and intimate
information online about interests, extracurricular social activities and family
dynamics within virtual communities, which support, reinforce and enrich their
offline social relationships (McMillan & Morrison, 2006; Williams & Merten, 2008;
Mesch & Talmud, 2010). Livingstone et al. (2011) found young people reported they
often found it easier to be themselves online than in face-to-face situations.
44