Premium
The BlackBerry Project: The Hidden World of Adolescents' Text Messaging and Relations With Internalizing Symptoms
Author(s) -
Underwood Marion K.,
Ehrenreich Samuel E.,
More David,
Solis Jerome S.,
Brinkley Dawn Y.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of research on adolescence
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.342
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1532-7795
pISSN - 1050-8392
DOI - 10.1111/jora.12101
Subject(s) - psychology , text messaging , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , social psychology , applied psychology , internet privacy , computer science
In this naturalistic study of adolescents' text messaging, participants ( N = 172, 81 girls, age 14) were given BlackBerry devices configured to save their text messages to a secure archive for coding. Two 2‐day transcripts collected 4 months apart within the same academic year were microcoded for content. Results showed that most text message utterances were positive or neutral and that adolescents sent text messages primarily to peers and to romantic partners. Only a few sex differences emerged. Frequency of text messages containing negative talk positively predicted overall internalizing symptoms and anxious depression. Text messaging about sex was positively associated with overall internalizing and somatic complaints for girls, but not for boys.