Friend Emotional Support and Dynamics of Adolescent Socioemotional Problems

Emotional support from friends is a crucial source of social support for adolescents, significantly influencing their psychological development. However, previous research has primarily focused on how this support correlates with general levels of socioemotional problems among adolescents, neglecting the significance of daily fluctuations in these problems. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between friend emotional support and both the average and dynamic indicators of daily emotional and peer problems in adolescents. These dynamic indicators include within-domain dynamics-such as inertia, which reflects the temporal dependence of experiences, and volatility, which indicates within-person variance-and cross-domain dynamics, such as transactional effects, which measure the strength of concurrent or lagged associations between daily emotional and peer problems. Participants were 315 seventh-grade Chinese adolescents (Mage = 13.05 years, SD = 0.77 years; 48.3% girls). Adolescents reported on their friends' emotional support at baseline and then completed measures of daily emotion and peer problems over a 10-day period. Using dynamic structural equation models, the results revealed that higher levels of friend emotional support were associated with fewer daily socioemotional problems. This was evident both in terms of average levels and dynamic aspects, characterized by lower mean levels of daily emotional and peer problems, reduced inertia and volatility of these problems, and a weaker spillover effect from daily emotional issues to peer problems. These findings highlight the significant role of friend-emotional support in mitigating adolescents' daily socioemotional challenges.

The social contexts of behaviors and relationships: The relation of classroom and cyber victimization to number of classroom and cyber friends

Behaviors and relationships exist within a variety of social contexts. More specifically for the current research, victimization and friendships occur in classrooms and, increasingly, in online virtual contexts. The current research examined how the number of classroom friends and number of cyber friends related to the extent of classroom victimization and extent of cyber victimization. Research has demonstrated the importance of face-to-face friendships in relation to being a victim; much less is known about the role of cyber friends in relation to being a cyber victim or how these relationships may play a role in cross-context victimization. Participants were 350 children from Grades 3 through 5 (188 girls and 162 boys). Children indicated classroom friends on a classroom roster, reported the number of their cyber friends, and indicated the extent of their cyber victimization. Peers nominated classmates for classroom victimization behaviors. A path analysis revealed that number of classroom friends was negatively associated with both extent of classroom victimization and extent of cyber victimization. Number of cyber friends was positively associated with extent of cyber victimization and was negatively related to extent of classroom victimization. Discussion of results includes the construction, use, and adaptation of social skills within and between social contexts.

Socio-Cognitive Processes and Peer-Network Influences in Defending and Bystanding

Peers are critical to defending and bystanding during episodes of bullying. This study investigates the extent to which friends can shape defending and bystanding as well as social cognitions associated with these two behaviors (i.e., perceptions of self-efficacy and moral distress). The study sample consisted of n = 1354 early and middle adolescents (7th‒10th grade; 81.4% Italian; 51.3% boys) in northern Italy. Employing a longitudinal social network analytic approach, using stochastic actor-oriented modeling, this study found that adolescents become more similar or stay similar to their friends in both behaviors and perceptions, with no clear indication that students select friends based on similar levels of behaviors or perceptions. The findings illustrate how defending and bystanding behaviors and related social cognitions are developed within friend (peer) networks.