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The power and the pain of adolescents’ digital communication: Cyber victimization and the perils of lurking.
Author(s) -
Marion K. Underwood,
Samuel E. Ehrenreich
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
american psychologist/the american psychologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.124
H-Index - 230
eISSN - 1935-990X
pISSN - 0003-066X
DOI - 10.1037/a0040429
Subject(s) - social media , psychology , psycinfo , digital media , power (physics) , social psychology , internet privacy , medline , computer science , world wide web , physics , quantum mechanics , political science , law
Many adolescents are heavily engaged with social media and text messaging (George & Odgers, 2015; Lenhart, 2015), yet few psychologists have studied what digital communication means for adolescents' relationships and adjustment. This article proposes that psychologists should embrace the careful study of adolescents' digital communication. We discuss theoretical frameworks for understanding adolescents' involvement with social media, present less widely recognized perils of intense involvement with social media, and highlight positive features of digital communication. Coconstruction theory suggests that adolescents help to create the content of digital communication that shapes their lives, and that there may be strong continuity between adolescents' offline and online lives (Subrahmanyam, Smahel, & Greenfield, 2006). However, psychological theories and research methods could further illuminate the power and the pain of adolescents' digital communication. Psychologists need to understand more about subtle but potentially serious risks that adolescents might face: The agony of victimization by even a single episode of cyberbullying and the pain of social exclusion and comparison resulting from vast amounts of time reading large social media feeds and seeing friends doing things without you and comparing your inner emotional experience to everyone else's highly groomed depictions of their seemingly marvelous lives. If we seek to understand developmental psychopathology and to help youth at risk, psychologists need to embrace careful study of the content of adolescents' online communication, parents need to talk with their children about their own online experiences and become familiar with social media themselves, and clinicians need to address adolescents' online social lives in prevention and treatment programs. (PsycINFO Database Record

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