Recent studies on mobile communication (e.g. Schrock, 2015; Mascheroni & Vincent, 2016) and social media (e.g. Baym, 2010; boyd, 2010; Madianou & Miller, 2912; Papacharissi & Easton, 2013) have seen a resurgence of interest in the notion of affordances (Gibson, 1979), as a way to balance and reconcile a constructivist approach to the social consequences of technologies – more specifically, the social shaping of technology (Biker & Law, 1992) – with the acknowledgement of a simultaneous process of technological shaping of sociality. However, a more systematic overview of affordance use in the context of CMC has not been tackled. Therefore, this paper adopts document analysis to review the literature and empirical studies surrounding the concept of affordances from 1979 to 2017, in an attempt to map an overall picture of affordance use in the context of interpersonal interaction in the social mediated-digital environment. Additionally, this paper is also based on data derived from 37 in-depth interviews (20 female and 17 male Taiwanese young professionals) on their friendship practices on social media to reflect what challenges researchers may face when analysing online practices via affordances.