Poster #238 - Observing Social Aggression via Text Messaging in Adolescents: A One-With-Many Design

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Technology, Media & Child Development

Integrative Statement

Cell phone use is nearly ubiquitous among U.S. adolescents (Anderson & Jiang, 2018), with text messaging providing a new context for adolescents to interact with their peers (Nesi et al., 2018). Although text messaging can provide a potentially safer platform to experience developmentally normative events (boyd, 2014), it may also provide a new context to engage in problematic behaviors, such as social aggression. The current research examined social aggression exchanged by adolescents and their peers via text messaging by employing observational coding; it also implemented advanced statistical techniques (i.e., a one-with-many design; Marcus et al., 2009; Kenny & Kashy, 2010) to investigate reciprocity in adolescents’ social aggression exchanged via text messaging and how negative affect may predict social aggression.

One hundred and sixty six high school sophomores (Mage=15.01; SDage=0.52; 49% girls) were provided smartphones at the beginning of the school year, with the phones programmed to archive all incoming and outgoing text message content. Content from one day in December was analyzed. Content for each participant for that day was formatted into one transcript, with communication exchanged with each partner separated by dyad. Of these 166 participants, 159 had enough content (five or more text messages from the participant and/or the communication partner) from at least one dyad to be globally coded. A team of trained coders rated both the participant and the partner in each dyad on their expression of negative affect and social aggression using 0–4 scales (0=None; 4=Very High). Social aggression was operationalized as communication that excludes, mocks, gossips, and speaks negatively about out-dyad individuals (ICC=.61). Negative affect was operationalized as communication that is pessimistic, cold, dismissive, critical, and/or anxious (ICC=.62).

For the purposes of this investigation, only dyad members coded as peers (κ=.90) and romantic partners (κ=.88) were examined (94% of all dyads), yielding a total of 501 dyads with an average of 3.21 communication partners per participant (range: 1 – 12). Participants were classified as the “ones” and their partners as the “many”. A baseline OWM analysis (Table 1) showed that, to a large extent, participants’ expression and receipt of social aggression in their text-messages depended upon who they were interacting with (i.e., it was relationship-specific); moreover, there was a strong tendency for dyad members to reciprocate social aggression behaviors. The primary analysis examined if participants’ and their partners’ negative affect predicted participants’ expression and receipt of social aggression (Table 2). The participant by actor negative affect effect suggests that participants who expressed greater negative affect also expressed more social aggression across partners. The partner by actor negative affect effect indicates that participants who expressed more negative affect received more social aggression from their partners. The partner by partner negative affect effect reveals that when participants’ partners expressed more negative affect, participants also received more social aggression from their partners. Together, these results suggest that adolescents and their peer text messaging communication partners reciprocate social aggression, and that negative affect is an important predictor in the expression of social aggression via digital communication.

Authors

• Kaitlyn Burnell, The University of Texas at Dallas
  Presenting Author

• Robert Ackerman, The University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marion K Underwood, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Author