2-139 - Adolescent Friendships in Digital Spaces: Same Old or New Beast?

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Unlimited texting plans and numerous free social media platforms now allow adolescents to stay continually connected with their friends, even when they are not physically present. This high level of technologically-mediated interactions have led to questions, and perhaps concerns, about whether these digital spaces have altered the nature of adolescent friendships. To answer this question, our symposium considers the uniqueness of digital spaces and how these features allow for similar and different peer interactions than face-to-face interactions. The first paper is a qualitative synthesis that connects well-established offline peer research to studies of digitally-mediated peer interactions. The second paper uses thematic analysis of stories about adolescents’ personal experiences to understand how digital contexts influence friendship conflicts. Three hundred stories written on MTV’s Over the Line platform were coded for six sources of conflicts between friends and four characteristics of digital spaces that influence interactions between individuals (i.e. content can reach a large audience, be replicated, be accessed long after it was shared, and be anonymous). The third paper uses daily dairy data to compare the association of text messaging and face-to-face interactions with college students’ well-being. Both same-day and lagged-day associations on well-being were assessed. Taken together, these papers seek to compare whether the processes and benefits of friendships face-to-face are replicated on digital media or whether friendships are now qualitatively different.

Sub Unit

• Technology, Media & Child Development

Chair

• Joanna Yau, University of California, Irvine

Discussant

• Stephanie M Reich, University of California, Irvine

Individual Presentations

• Friendship Processes in Face-to-Face and Digital Interactions: A Conceptual Review - Presenting Author: Joanna Yau, University of California, Irvine

• Adolescent friendship challenges in a digital context: The roles of new technologies in youths’ relational conflicts - Presenting Author: Emily Weinstein, Harvard University; Allison White, Boston College; Robert Louis Selman, Harvard Graduate School of Education

• A Daily Diary Study of the Relation between College Students’ Digital Communication and Well-being - Presenting Author: Eline Frison, KU Leuven; Kaveri Subrahmanyam, California State University, Los Angeles