Online Communication and Adolescent Relationships

From the journal The Future of Children, a collaboration of The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and The Brookings Institution, this article examines United States (US) adolescents' relationships with friends, romantic partners, strangers, and their families in the context of their online communication activities.

From the article:
"In this article, [the authors] first describe how adolescents are using these new forms of electronic media to communicate and then present a theoretical framework for analyzing these uses. [The authors] discuss electronic media and relationships, analyzing, in turn, relationships with friends, romantic partners, strangers, and parents. [They] then explore how parents and schools are responding to adolescents' interactions with electronic media. Finally, [they] examine how adolescents are using electronic media in the service of identity construction."


As stated in the article, popular adolescent communication forms include: e-mail; instant messaging; text messaging; chat rooms; bulletin boards; blogs; social networking utilities, such as MySpace and Facebook; video sharing such as YouTube; photo sharing such as Flickr; massively multi-player online computer games, such as World of Warcraft; and virtual worlds, such as Second Life and Teen Second Life. The authors show that adolescents are using these communication tools primarily to reinforce existing relationships, as well as gather information about new social contacts. "Society's traditional adolescent issues — intimacy, sexuality, and identity — have all been transferred to and transformed by the electronic stage. Among the hallmarks of the transformation are greater teen autonomy, the decline of face-to-face communication, enhancement of peer group relations at the possible expense of family relations, and greater teen choice.


Given the connectedness between the physical and virtual worlds, the challenge is to keep adolescents safe (both physically and psychologically) while at the same time allowing for the explorations and interactions that are crucial for healthy psychosocial development." Interactions with strangers were found to relieve social anxiety, sometimes at the cost of sexual predation. "Although ... virtual contacts can endanger adolescents, research has found that interactions with strangers may also help alleviate the negative effects of social rejection in the physical world. The benefits of exploring identity and intimacy online must also be weighed against the harmful effects of viewing sexual content and being bullied online." The document suggests that the possibility of role playing or identity experimentation online may give adolescents an identity development tool. "The thrust of the research at present suggests that real-world relationships and adolescent issues influence adolescents' electronic communication at least as much as electronic communication influences their real-world relationships and developmental outcomes."