Assessing the Correlates of Friendship Toxicity in Adolescence

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Social Relationships

Abstract

Close relationships are an important developmental context during adolescence, and friendships are one same-age relationship in which youth spend much of their time. Whereas friendship is generally studied as a positive context (Bagwell & Bukowski, 2018), our recent work suggests that young adults experience a deluge of toxic behaviors at the hands of friends (author et al., in prep). Outside of the severe violent behaviors that are traditionally assessed in romantic relationships, our new measure of Friendship Toxicity captures violence that occurs within friendships. The measure assesses relational, physical, sexual and verbal violence, as well as coercive (e.g., threatening to end the friendship to get what you want) and controlling behaviours (e.g., making you let them read your emails or texts when you do not want them to), and has shown promising preliminary validity evidence with young adults. In this study, we aimed to (1) investigate whether friendship toxicity occurs during adolescence and (2) examine the correlates of friendship toxicity.
To answer these questions, we recruited 730 adolescents from grades 9-12 in high schools across Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba (Mage = 15.87, SD = 1.22). Participants completed a battery of questionnaires assessing (a) demographic information, (b) experience of toxic behaviors in friendships over the past three months, and (c) possibly related constructs including alcohol and marijuana use as well as symptoms of depression.
The majority (85.9%) of adolescents reported experiencing at least one toxic behavior from a friend in the past three months. Experiencing more toxic behaviors from friends was associated with increased alcohol, r = .13, p = .001, and marijuana, r = .16, p < .001, misuse, as well as greater endorsement of depressive symptoms, r = .35, p < .001. In sum, these results suggest a substantial proportion of adolescents experience toxic behaviors in their friendships, and that this experience relates to multiple indices of maladjustment. These results suggest that friendships may confer risks for adolescents and it may be important to teach adolescents how to effectively manage violence in their friendships in addition to their romantic relationships.

Authors

• Nicole Sara Jane Dryburgh, McGill University
  Presenting Author

• Alexa Martin-Storey, Universite de Sherbrooke
  Non-Presenting Author

• Wendy Craig, Queen’s University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Brett Holfeld, Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Melanie A Dirks, McGill University
  Non-Presenting Author