The presentation will present a theoretical and empirical discussion of the links between the generalized costs of travel, the use of space and the (spatial) structure of social networks of the population. After a brief historical overview of the changes in the generalized costs of travel and associated time-space compression of the industrialized countries, the question will be discussed what impact these changes should have on the structure of the social networks with respect to the size, overlap, spatial location. The second part of the talk focuses on the empirical work done so far to provide empirical evidence for the theoretical expectations formulated above. The challenges inherent in the survey work will presented, as well as the key empirical results obtained so far.