Israel

Information Technology

The information technology industry is central to the Israeli economy. This industry began relatively early and can be accounted for a few important technological breakthroughs. One invention that can be strongly linked to social networks is the software ICQ, developed by an Israeli firm in 1996. The notion of the need to enhance social networking connectivity originated from army base technologies needed at that point. ICQ was established under the name Mirabilis by four young Israeli computer users who wanted to introduce a new way of communication over the Internet. Before ICQ, people were connected to the Internet but not interconnected. ICQ was the missing link, a technology that made peer-to-peer communication possible. The spread of the use of ICQ was exponential; through viral marketing, a chain reaction was created, resulting in one of the largest download rates for a start-up company in the history of the Internet. ICQ offered a new social communication system that enabled personal exchanges between users to meet and interact, catch up with old friends, meet new friends, and hear the latest stories from the worldwide community.

This networking technological innovation had some impact on social networks in Israel and all around the world. In a follow-up study on the use of ICQ among adolescents in Israel, Gustavo Mesch found that for adolescents, at the early stages of social network Internet use, Internet use did not appear to replace other social activities. However, adolescents who were more socially isolated were more likely to become frequent Internet users.

Dense Social Networks

In general, social networks in Israel are relatively dense. Alejandro Portes, in his 1998 discussion of social capital, claims that the community is dense in Israel, thus there are close community bonds that facilitate supervision and rearing of children. This occurs because adults know the local children and are willing to assume responsibility for their well-being even if they are not their parents. In comparison, in the American environment, mothers are assigned the role of compensating for the lack of community ties and are exclusively dedicated to their children. Portes claims that the tight community care for children in Israel has an impact on Israel's female labor force participation, which is higher than in the United States since mothers benefit from the cultural environment that provides rich social capital and familial support and aids with children's needs.

Another dimension in which social networks were found to have an important impact was on well-being. In the early 2000s, Howard Litwin found that social networks in Israel for elderly people are dense and vary in comparison with such networks in California. The most prevalent network for the elderly in Israel in respect to [Page 449]well-being was titled as the “diverse” network, characterized by married members who had proximately one child; experienced very frequent contact with children, friends, and neighbors; and attended the synagogue to a moderate degree.

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