Abstract

This study investigates how adolescents' smartphone attachment, social anxiety, and offline and smartphone network sizes are related to their friendship in regards to maintaining either a strong or weak bond. Based on an online survey involving 402 adolescent smartphone users in South Korea, this study found that smartphone attachment was positively related to a strong ties friendship maintenance and negatively related to weak ties friendships. Similarly, social anxiety was found to be negatively associated with friendship maintenance for both strong and weak - tie relationships. More importantly, this study revealed that the types and size of social networks moderated the relationships among adolescents with smartphone attachment, social anxiety, and friendship maintenance through smartphones.