Social capital and social network sites: an empirical analysis of European high school students

This paper shows the results of part of an empirical study which was developed in the sphere of the PACT EU project (Pathways for Carbon Transitions). The performed analysis concerns the social capital of young Europeans in terms of trust, size of personal networks, volunteering activities and usage of social network sites (SNS). The purpose of the work is, on one hand, exploratory, especially in aspects related to the comparison between relational context of social networks and virtual networks. At the same time, the research aims to confirm on this particular population some of the hypothesis coming from the literature on social capital, and to verify the existence of differences between European countries regarding relational characteristics.