Poster #93 - Examining factors that promote social connections between children interacting online

• In Event: Poster Session 06

Abstract

Positive social connections are crucial to healthy child development (Wentzel, 2009). Yet, methods to foster young children’s peer connections have received little attention (Hanish et al., 2021). Further, the increasingly digital world of young children – accelerated by the pandemic – has altered the nature of children’s interactions, many of which now occur over video platforms. This ongoing pre-registered experiment tests methods to promote social connections between children meeting online. We test three primary factors that may influence children’s success making social connections with peers in a virtual context: agency in the activity, age, and shared social identities.

Five- to 10-year-old children (N=288) interact in pairs via Zoom. Participants within a pair are the same age in years and unknown to one another prior to beginning the study. Half of pairs match in gender and half differ. Pairs are randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In the high-agency condition, participants complete an icebreaker task where they ask each other predetermined questions (e.g., “what is your favorite food?”). In the low-agency condition, participants complete an icebreaker task where the experimenter asks participants the same set of predetermined questions; participants observe one another’s answers. In the control condition, participants do not complete an icebreaker task.

All dependent measures assess social connectedness; these variables are either completed by participants themselves or created by coding participant interactions. Following the icebreaker task (if applicable), pairs in all conditions interact freely for two minutes. Coders unaware of condition assignment rate videos of the two-minute interactions on multiple dimensions of social connectedness (e.g., positivity, talkativeness). Finally, participants complete individual dependent measures separately (e.g., how much they like their partner; interest in seeing their partner again; and how many funny pictures to send to their partner).

The design, analysis plan, and hypotheses were pre-registered prior to data collection. Data collection and analyses will be completed prior to the conference (current N=286). Primary analyses will examine main effects and interactions involving condition, gender-match of a pair, and pair age. We expect conditions involving icebreakers to promote stronger social connection than the control condition, but that the high-agency condition will be most effective. Based on research demonstrating young children’s preferences for same-gender peers (see Shutts, 2015 for review), we expect to observe more social connectedness within gender-matched pairs than gender-mismatched pairs. We also anticipate interactions among the three primary variables. For instance, relative to other conditions, the high-agency condition may be particularly effective at promoting social connections among younger (versus older) participants interacting with different-gender (versus same-gender) peers. Exploratory analyses will examine how other participant characteristics – personality, shared or unshared racial identities of children within a pair – influence children’s behavior.

This experiment will provide novel insights into the development of friendships in contexts that are increasingly characteristic of modern childhood – namely, virtual contexts now commonplace for even young children due to the pandemic. These data may also shed light on strategies to promote social connections across group boundaries, including those based on gender and race.

Authors

• Rachel Ann King, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Eren Fukuda, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Kristin Shutts, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Katherine D. Kinzler, University of Chicago