Teens Talking: A Friendship Study

During adolescence, friends are important providers of emotional support. Adolescence is also a time of change as youth encounter new emotional and social challenges. Understanding the specific ways that friends help adolescents manage challenges is important. For example, friends’ behaviors (e.g., providing support) can influence how adolescents respond to stress or negative emotions. Learning how to manage stress and negative emotions is an important skill that can help adolescents have positive relationships and mental health.The purpose of this study is to learn how friends’ behaviors during their interactions with each other relate to their physiological responses (e.g., heartrate), how they manage emotions or stress, and their overall well-being. Researchers will see how friendship interactions contribute to changes in adolescents’ well-being over time.

Data collection for this study will begin in Summer 2023! Follow this link to learn more or to sign up to participate.

An Integrative Approach to Studying Adolescents’ Online and Offline Social Lives

Technology permeates adolescents’ social lives, whether they are texting while interacting with friends or discussing social situations with friends in which social media played a significant role. This project aims to update traditional approaches to studying adolescents’ friendships interactions by integrating their “online” experiences with technology and social media and their “offline” experiences with friends. Supported through Lehigh University’s Mountaintop Summer Experience, undergraduate researchers will (1) examine adolescent friends’ conversations as context to understand their relationships to technology and (2) develop new, realistic methods to examine adolescents’ stress responses and regulation in response to social media.