Andreas Heinen

Social Media and Its Role in Friendship-driven Interactions among Young People: A Mixed Methods Study

This article examines trends and developments in social interactions of young people and the role of social media in Luxembourg using a mixed method approach, drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data. Our findings corroborate that social interactions via social media play a growing role in leisure time of young people and have changed the traditional patterns of friendship-driven social interactions among peers. We argue that although offline interactions remain very important for young people, they have been complemented and partially replaced by interactions via social media. Modes of young people’s social media interactions can be characterized as mixed modalities.