The Long Shadow of Peers: Adolescent Peer Networks and Young Adult Depressive Symptoms

• In Event: 3550 - Emerging Issues in Adolescent and Young Adult Health Risks and Behaviors

Abstract

Peer social networks play an important role in adolescent mental health. Positions among peers can provide status and support for teens that influence psychosocial skills, behavior, and affective states, including depressive symptoms. However, it is unclear if structures of status and support in peer networks have enduring effects on mental health into emerging adulthood, itself a pivotal time of transition and change. This study examines if structures of status and support are associated with depressive symptoms years after high school, net of prior adolescent depression. Using unique data from the PROSPER Peers study (n=991, 43% male) that provide rich adolescent peer network measures and information on depressive symptoms in both adolescence and emerging adulthood, regression models indicate that the persistent effects of network positions differ based on the mental health status of teens and their friends. Structures of status show both advantages and detriments to long-term mental health, with popularity associated with lower subsequent depressive symptoms for depressed youth, and high prestige increasing later depressive symptoms for depressive youth. Higher cohesion among depressed friends, net of individuals’ own depression, leads to increased depressive symptoms in emerging adulthood. Overall, findings indicate risks and benefits of status and support structures that have enduring effects on mental health into emerging adulthood. Practitioners and researchers should consider how relationships with peers can set the stage for mental health in a lasting fashion, and how these processes might differ with adolescents’ and friends’ levels of depressive symptoms.

Author

• Molly Copeland, Duke University