Adjustment Correlates of Social Media Engagement Among Early Adolescents

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Social media engagement is common among adolescents, yet not all adolescents use social media in the same ways or experience the same adjustment correlates. This...     

Social Media Social Comparison of Ability (but not Opinion) Predicts Lower Identity Clarity: Identity Processing Style as a Mediator

Social comparison on social media has received increasing attention, but most research has focused on one type of social comparison and its psycho-emotional implications. Little is known about how different types of social comparison influence youth’s identity development. Drawing on the theories of identity processing styles and social comparison, we examined how two different forms of social comparison on social media related to three identity processing styles, which in turn predicted youth’s global self-esteem and identity clarity. We surveyed 219 college freshmen (M_age?=?18.29; 74% female) once in the Fall and once in the Spring. Social comparison of ability on social media was related to concurrent diffuse-avoidant identity processing style, which predicted lower identity clarity months later. In contrast, social comparison of opinion on social media did not influence college freshmen’s global self-esteem and identity clarity through identity processing styles. The findings clarified the implications of online social comparison for youth’s identity development.     

Social Media and Body Dissatisfaction: Investigating the Attenuating Role of Positive Parent–Adolescent Relationships

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Previous research has shown that adolescents´ social media use predicts increased body dissatisfaction. However, little is known about social environmental...     

Concurrent and Prospective Analyses of Peer, Television and Social Media Influences on Body Dissatisfaction, Eating Disorder Symptoms and Life Satisfaction in Adolescent Girls

The degree to which media contributes to body dissatisfaction, life satisfaction and eating disorder symptoms in teenage girls continues to be debated. The current study examines television, social media and peer competition influences on body dissatisfaction, eating disorder symptoms and life satisfaction in a sample of 237 mostly Hispanic girls. 101 of these girls were reassessed in a later 6-month follow-up. Neither television exposure to thin ideal media nor social media predicted negative outcomes either concurrently nor prospectively with the exception of a small concurrent correlation between social media use and life satisfaction. Social media use was found to contribute to later peer competition in prospective analysis, however, suggesting potential indirect but not direct effects on body related outcomes. Peer competition proved to be a moderate strong predictor of negative outcomes both concurrently and prospectively. It is concluded that the negative influences of social comparison are focused on peers rather than television or social media exposure.     

Adolescent Social Media Use: Pitfalls and Promises in Relation to Cybervictimization,Friend Support,and Depressive Symptoms

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - The saturation of social media use in adolescents’ lives has raised questions about both the risks and positive outcomes that may be associated with use....     

工人群体的媒介形象与话语表达——基于《人民日报》和《华西都市报》工人报道的内容分析

工人阶级是当前中国最大的社会群体,改革开放以来中国工人对社会、经济建设作出了巨大的贡献,但学界一直缺乏对媒介工人报道进行系统的研究.工人议题新闻报道的变迁可以为宏观社会研究或社会变迁研究提供一个微观的语言学视角,中共中央机关报《人民日报》和建国后中国第一份市场化报纸《华西都市报》改革开放以来关于工人的报道,报道量偏小,与工人群体现状有很大差距,工人议题报道在新闻源、工人媒介形象、工人媒介话语上表达具有固定的框架和模式,工人议题报道新闻源主要来自官方,工人议题报道中工人群体的话语表达比较缺乏且多正面,虽然各时期工人报道重点与工人群体状况变迁基本吻合,但是工人媒介形象和话语表达的固定框架影响工人舆情渠遘的畅通和媒介接近权.     

“The mosque and the satellite”: Media and adolescence in a Moroccan town

The exposure of young people in a semirural Moroccan town to a variety of Western, Middle Eastern, and locally produced media increased rapidly during the 1980s, a period of rapid social change. Media images included economic affluence, relatively free sexual behavior, and nontraditional social roles for females. Data collected mainly in 1982 reveal relationships between media exposure and adolescents' use of media images in their social behavior, choice of mate, and career aspirations. Male adolescents were exposed to more Western media and were able to develop a more individual taste, but both sexes appeared eager to reconcile traditional Islamic and contemporary media-relayed values.This research was carried out with support from the National Institutes of Health and The William T. Grant Foundation to Harvard University, and with a Fulbright grant to Susan S. Davis.Received Ph.D. in Anthropology from University of Michigan. Research interests include gender role development, and Moroccan society.Received, Ph.D. in Psychology from University of Michigan. Research interests include personality development and Moroccan society.     

The Intimidating Other: Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representation of Feminism in Estonian Print Media

The article studies anti-feminist rhetoric in post-socialist Estonian print media, specifically the Postimees, the most widely read quality daily in the country, in a ten-year period (1996–2005). The textual corpus is analyzed with a method informed by the critical discourse analytical work of Chouliaraki & Fairclough (1999) and Lazar (2005), focusing on lexical framing and social (re-)contextualization of the created frames. The analysis demonstrates that print media, as a social gate-keeper, have contributed to the creation of a localized discursive “feminism”, anti-feminist by nature, as a useful ideological gate-keeping tool: it wards off influences that might potentially threaten the status quo and, at the same time, disciplines Estonian women and men into accepting the tenets of the dominant neo-liberalist ideology as the only common sense in the context of gender and other social issues.     

Adolescent Self-Esteem and Gender: Exploring Relations to Sexual Harassment, Body Image, Media Influence, and Emotional Expression

Self-esteem plays a central role in mental health, yet not enough is known about how youth evaluate themselves as they move across adolescence. This study used a cross-sectional design to examine age and gender patterns in self-esteem and to explore how contemporary social influences relate to adolescent self-esteem. Self-reported influences on self-esteem involving the media, sexual harassment, body image, family and peer relationships, and emotional expression were evaluated with 93 boys and 116 girls in Grades 5, 8, and 12. Girls reported lower self-esteem than boys in early adolescence, and late adolescent boys reported lower self-esteem than younger boys. The predictors as a set accounted for a significant portion of the variance in self-esteem, while the best predictor of self-esteem varied by age and gender. Large gender differences were present for emotional expression, with boys becoming more restrictive across adolescence. Girls reported more negative body image and media influence scores than did boys in late childhood and early adolescence. Body image appeared to mediate the relationships between certain predictors and self-esteem for girls, while gender and grade appeared to moderate the relationship between media influence and self-esteem for girls and boys.     

Reciprocal Relationships between Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms and Screen Media Use during Adolescence

Adolescents are constantly connected with each other and the digital landscape through a myriad of screen media devices. Unprecedented access to the wider world and hence a variety of activities, particularly since the introduction of mobile technology, has given rise to questions regarding the impact of this changing media environment on the mental health of young people. Depressive symptoms are one of the most common disabling health issues in adolescence and although research has examined associations between screen use and symptoms of depression, longitudinal investigations are rare and fewer still consider trajectories of change in symptoms. Given the plethora of devices and normalisation of their use, understanding potential longitudinal associations with mental health is crucial. A sample of 1,749 (47% female) adolescents (10–17 years) participated in six waves of data collection over two years. Symptoms of depression, time spent on screens, and on separate screen activities (social networking, gaming, web browsing, TV/passive) were self-reported. Latent growth curve modelling revealed three trajectories of depressive symptoms (low-stable, high-decreasing, and low-increasing) and there were important differences across these groups on screen use. Some small, positive associations were evident between depressive symptoms and later screen use, and between screen use and later depressive symptoms. However, a Random Intercept Cross Lagged Panel Model revealed no consistent support for a longitudinal association. The study highlights the importance of considering differential trajectories of depressive symptoms and specific forms of screen activity to understand these relationships.     

大众媒介对职工影响的现状与问题

大众媒介对职工群体日常生活和思想具有重要的影响,特别是随着互联网的日益普及,网络新媒体成为职工舆情表达的重要平台.但当前大众媒介对职工的影响存在三大失衡:职工对新闻媒介的满意度与媒介对职工的影响力不相称、工人新闻的数量与庞大的工人队伍不平衡、工人对新闻的需求与新闻媒介的现状还有距离.为此,应加大对职工群体的报道,充分利...     

Youth in the Media

This article describes Youth Communication, an organization in which youth produce newspapers, radio programs, and other media reports.     

Social Withdrawal and Social Surrogacy in Emerging Adulthood

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Shyness has been well established as a hindrance to social adjustment and may be problematic for emerging adults attending university, given the high social...     

Arts and Media

The Little Steel strike of 1937 has taken on iconic significance for historians, in large part because of the anti-labor violence of the Memorial Day Massacre. What has garnered considerably less attention is the community mobilization that accompanied the strike. For a brief moment, steel workers and their allies challenged the anti-democratic tendencies in the Steel Workers Organizing Committee. While SWOC leaders focused almost exclusively on the achievement of a signed contract, women of the steel auxiliaries, workers on the picket line, and middle-class liberals from across Chicago sought to transform the strike into something larger than a showdown over union recognition. For this coalition, the Little Steel strike was a flashpoint in a wider struggle social democratic reform. In the mobilization prior to Memorial Day and in the protest movement that followed it, key elements of Chicago's liberal-labor coalition espoused the egalitarian values of the Popular Front. Far from an exercise in bread-and-butter moderation, the strike became the occasion for a larger social uprising. This expression of united front commitment drew on the example of the Unemployed Councils and the front-line militancy that is often only associated with the Flint sit-down strike and the general strikes of 1934. In Chicago, the Little Steel strike raised the possibility that steelworkers might embrace the ‘civic unionism’ that animated the left-led unions of the era.     

Parental Control of the Time Preadolescents Spend on Social Media: Links with Preadolescents’ Social Media Appearance Comparisons and Mental Health

Time spent on social media and making online comparisons with others may influence users’ mental health. This study examined links between parental control over the time their child spends on social media, preadolescents’ time spent browsing social media, preadolescents’ appearance comparisons on social media, and preadolescents’ appearance satisfaction, depressive symptoms, and life satisfaction. Preadolescent social media users (N?=?284, 49.1% female; aged 10–12) and one of their parents completed online surveys. Preadolescents, whose parents reported greater control over their child’s time on social media, reported better mental health. This relationship was mediated by preadolescents spending less time browsing and making fewer appearance comparisons on social media. Parental control over time spent on social media may be associated with benefits for mental health among preadolescents.     

The Effects of Gender and Family,Friend, and Media Influences on Eating Behaviors and Body Image During Adolescence

The current study expands upon body image research to examine how gender, self-esteem, social support, teasing, and family, friend, and media pressures relate to body image and eating-related attitudes and behaviors among male and female adolescents (N = 177). Results indicated that adolescents were dissatisfied with their current bodies: males were concerned with increasing their upper body, whereas females wanted to decrease the overall size of their body. Low self-esteem and social support, weight-related teasing, and greater pressures to lose weight were associated with adolescents’ negative body esteem, body image, and eating attitudes. Females displayed more high risk eating behaviors—which were associated with more psychosocial risk factors—than males, whose high risk attitudes and behaviors were only associated with low parental support and greater pressure to be muscular. Reducing adolescents’ perceptions of appearance-related pressure from family and friends may be key for enhancing body image and decreasing links between low self-esteem and negative eating behaviors and weight-related perceptions. Rheanna N. Ata is currently a research assistant at the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center, Miriam Hospital/Brown University. She is interested in body image and eating disorders and completed this research during her undergraduate studies at the College of the Holy Cross. Alison Bryant Ludden is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on social relationships and problem behaviors during adolescence, with a special interest in school as a developmental context. She is an assistant professor of psychology at the College of the Holy Cross. Megan M. Lally is currently a graduate student in psychology at Pepperdine University. She completed this research during her undergraduate studies at the College of the Holy Cross.     

Social context and the subjective experience of different types of rock music

The psychological impact and meaning of rock music for adolescents needs to be addressed as a joint function of the type of music and the social context in which it is listened. Young adolescents in this study carried pagers for one week and reported their affect, arousal, and psychological involvement in their activities, including music listening, when signaled at random times. Regression analyses indicate that social context has its greatest impact on soft rock where subjective states are dramatically higher when this music is listened to with friends, as opposed to alone. This suggests that intimate companionship transforms the themes of longing and sadness characteristic of this music into a more positive and binding experience. Subjective states experienced listening to this music are also high when listening occurs in the bedroom, a finding that indicates a consistency between the music's themes and the use of the bedroom as a place for contemplation and reflection. Top 40 and hard rock/heavy metal music are experienced positively across a variety of social contexts, suggesting that their energy and collective message allows teens to experience mastery and power over their environment, even in contexts that are ordinarily lonely and alien. The one exception is when hard rock/heavy metal is listened to in the presence of family members, a situation that creates very negative subjective states. This is undoubtedly due to the dissonance of this music's themes with parental values.This research was carried out at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago with a grant to Reed Larson from the National Institute of Mental Health (No. MH38324).He received his M.A. from University of Windsor. He is in the final stages of completing a Ph.D. dissertation investigating the role the news media play in contributing to selected social and political attitudes toward AIDS.He received Ph.D. from the Committee on Human Development, University of Chicago. His research focuses on daily experience associated with health and psychopathology in adolescence and across the life span.     

The Protective Role of Parental Media Monitoring Style from Early to Late Adolescence

The goal of the current study was to examine the protective role that maternal media monitoring might have for adolescents. This was done by considering whether styles of media monitoring either directly reduced media use, or whether they buffered the associations between aggressive media use and adolescents’ prosocial behavior, aggression, and delinquency. Participants were 681 adolescents from two cities in the United States (51% female; 73% white), and their mothers, who provided data at two different time points, 2 years apart (when adolescents were roughly ages 13 and 15). Mixture modeling results revealed that mothers used four different styles of media monitoring made up of combinations of active and restrictive monitoring as well as forms of co-use. Styles that included active monitoring and connective co-use (i.e., engaging in media with the intent to connect with children) were directly associated with less media use, and moderated links between adolescents’ media use and behavioral outcomes concurrently but not longitudinally. The discussion was focused on the strength of considering multiple strategies of media monitoring together, and how this approach can inform future research in the area of parental media monitoring.     

Promoting Social Competence in Children: A Classroom Approach to Social and Cognitive Skill Training

Socialization procedures are becoming increasingly necessary to help fecilitate the social competence of many children. Classroom procedures for promoting social competence in the schools are discussed. Two methods for encouraging healthy social interaction, social skills training and interpersonal cognitive problem solving, are described as a classroom approach. Service delivery.     

The Effects of Media Violence on Anxiety in Late Adolescence

Exposure to media violence is related to anxiety in youth, but the causality of the effect has not been established. This experimental study examined the effects of media violence on anxiety, blood pressure, and heart rate in late adolescents. We also examined whether these responses varied by previous exposure to media and real-life violence. College students (N = 209; M age = 18.74; 75 % female; 50 % Caucasian, 34 % African American, 9 % Asian, 3 % Hispanic, and 3 % other racial minorities) were randomized to view either violent or nonviolent high-action movie clips. Participants reported on their anxiety before and after watching the clips, as well as their previous exposure to violence. Measures of blood pressure and heart rate were taken at baseline and during movie viewing. Participants watching violent movie clips showed a greater anxiety increase than those watching nonviolent clips. Both groups experienced increased blood pressure and reduced heart rate during movie watching compared to baseline. Prior exposure to media violence was associated with diminished heart rate response. Additionally, students previously exposed to high levels of real-life violence showed lower blood pressure increases when watching violent clips compared to nonviolent clips. Thus, relatively brief exposure to violent movie clips increased anxiety among late adolescents. Prior exposure to media and real-life violence were associated with lower physiological reactivity to high-action and violent movies, respectively, possibly indicating desensitization. Future studies should investigate long-term anxiety and physiological consequences of regular exposure to media violence in adolescence.