Young adults moving to college need to create new networks at college. However,
they often leave friends from high school with whom they may have established rich
networks; completely abandoning these high school networks would mean a loss of
social capital. Granovetter (1973, 1982) has suggested that weak ties provide more
benefit when the weak tie is not associated with stronger ties, as may be the case for
maintained high school relationships. To test the role of maintained high school
relationships as weak, bridging ties, we adapted questions about general bridging
relationships, such as those in Williams (2006), to be specific to maintained relationships
with high school acquaintances as opposed to close friends. We call this concept
‘‘maintained social capital.’’ In keeping with the thrust of our prior hypotheses
about the role of Facebook and bridging social capital, we propose the following: