Loes Keijsers

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

This article aims to provide a critical analysis of how much we know about the effectiveness of parental monitoring in preventing adolescent delinquency. First, it describes the historical developments in parental monitoring research. Second, it explains why it is uncertain whether causal inferences can be drawn from contemporary research findings...

Parenting theories describe that fluctuations in parenting and adolescent adaptation are linked within the same families. Studies on these so-called 'within-family' effects between parenting and adolescent adaptation are summarized in the current systematic review. Through a database and backward citation search, 46 eligible peer-reviewed studies w...

Few people are as important for an adolescent’s development as their parents. However, most research on parent-adolescent relationships describes long-term population-wide effects. Therefore, little is known about everyday interactions between adolescents and parents in individual families. Ecological Momentary Assessment [EMA] measures families se...

Transactional processes between parental support and adolescents' depressive symptoms might differ in the short term versus long term. Therefore, this multi-sample study tested bidirectional within-family associations between perceived parental support and depressive symptoms in adolescents with datasets with varying measurement intervals: Daily (N...

Person–environment interactions might ultimately drive longer term development. This experience sampling study (Data collection: 2019/20 the Netherlands) assessed short-term linkages between parent–adolescent interaction quality and affect during 2281 interactions of 124 adolescents (Mage = 15.80, SDage = 1.69, 59% girls, 92% Dutch, Education: 25%...

Background. Popular media suggest that overparenting - excessive and developmentally inappropriate parental involvement – explains the increased anxiety in today’s youth. However, longitudinal evidence for this claim is limited, as most research relies on cross-sectional, group-level associations. To address this gap, the present study investigates...

Social media use is often highlighted as an important cause of the recent rise in depression among adolescents. However, this perspective overlooks a crucial reverse causality, namely that levels of depression might also shape adolescents’ social media use. In a diary study among 479 adolescents (Mage = 15.98; 16.9% clinically depressed), we assess...

Development is an iterative dynamic process that unfolds over time. Few theories, however, discuss the speed of developmental processes. Therefore, decisions about measurement timing often rely on arbitrary or practical choices, disregarding the timescale dependency of the results. As an exemplary case, this preregistered study assessed reciprocal...

Background Anxiety symptoms among adolescents have been increasing globally. The present study aimed to better understand the role of parenting, which is believed to act as both a risk and protective factor for anxiety while also being impacted by adolescent anxiety. Specifically, this preregistered study examined the bidirectional associations bet...

Parenting processes occur within families and unfold over time. According to Self-Determination Theory (SDT), helicopter parenting can threaten youth’s psychological need satisfaction and undermine well-being. This study represents the first investigation of these theorized within-family, time-lagged processes. The research followed 350 late adoles...

Introduction Adolescent psychology is embracing intensive longitudinal methods, such as diaries and experience sampling techniques, to investigate real‐life experiences. However, participants might perceive the repetitive self‐reporting in these data collection techniques as burdensome and demotivating, resulting in decreased compliance rates. In t...

Introduction. Adolescent psychology is embracing intensive longitudinal methods, such as diaries and experience sampling techniques, to investigate real-life experiences. However, participants might perceive the repetitive self-reporting in these data collection techniques as burdensome and demotivating, resulting in decreased compliance rates. In...

This chapter challenges the traditional unidirectional view of parental monitoring, by presenting a novel theoretical dynamic process model of parent-adolescent communication in which parents and adolescents causally influence each other. A review of empirical studies highlights that adolescents are active agents who strategically manage informatio...

Delve into the ideal resource for theory and research on parental monitoring and adolescents' disclosure and concealment from parents. This handbook presents ground-breaking research exploring how adolescents respond to parents' attempts to control and manage their activities and feelings. The chapters highlight how adolescents' responses are as im...

To better understand the effects of social media use on adolescents' psychosocial functioning, this study examined the temporal stability of social media effects across two separate 3‐week experience sampling methodology (ESM) studies conducted 6 months apart in 2019 and 2020. Participants were 297 adolescents ( M age = 14.1 years, SD = 0.7, 58.9%...

Digital technology enables parents and adolescents to communicate anywhere and anytime. Knowledge of parent–adolescent online communication, however, is mainly based on cross‐sectional studies. In this preregistered 100‐day diary study, 479 adolescents ( M age = 15.98, 54.9% girls; 96.9% Dutch) reported daily if they had communicated with their par...

Background Mental health problems among children and adolescents increased in recent years, while mental health services are overburdened with long waiting lists. eHealth interventions, that is, interventions delivered digitally via apps or websites, offer a promising approach to prevent and efficiently treat emerging mental health problems in yout...

Introduction. Adolescent psychology is embracing intensive longitudinal methods, such as diaries and experience sampling techniques, to investigate real-life experiences. However, participants might perceive the repetitive self-reporting in these data collection techniques as burdensome and demotivating, resulting in decreased compliance rates. In...

Social media use is often highlighted as an important cause of the recent rise in depression among adolescents. However, this perspective overlooks a crucial reverse causality, namely that levels of depression might also shape adolescents’ social media use. In a diary study among 479 adolescents (16.9% clinically depressed), we assessed their level...

Social media use is often highlighted as an important cause of the recent rise in depression among adolescents. However, this perspective overlooks a crucial reverse causality, namely that levels of depression might also shape adolescents’ social media use. In a diary study among 479 adolescents (Mage = 15.98; 16.9% clinically depressed), we assess...

This study investigated the effects of active private, passive private, and passive public social media use on adolescents’ affective well-being. Intensive longitudinal data (34,930 assessments in total) were collected through a preregistered three-week experience sampling method study among 387 adolescents. N = 1 time series were investigated, usi...

Introduction Health behaviours such as exercise and diet strongly influence well-being and disease risk, providing the opportunity for interventions tailored to diverse individual contexts. Precise behaviour interventions are critical during adolescence and young adulthood (ages 10–25), a formative period shaping lifelong well-being. We will conduc...

We recently introduced a new, unified approach to investigate the effects of social media use on well-being. Using experience sampling methods among sizeable samples of respondents, our unified approach combines the strengths of nomothetic methods of analysis (e.g., mean comparisons, regression models), which are suited to understand group averages...

Mobile Health (mHealth) interventions have the potential to improve early identification, prevention, and treatment of mental health problems. Grow It! is a multiplayer smartphone app designed for youth aged 12–25, allowing them to monitor their emotions and engage in daily challenges based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) principles. Recently...

Resilience, the dynamic process of adapting to or recovering from stress, predicts well-being and mental health. While most studies have investigated resilience after major life events, less is known about resilience in everyday life. To understand how individuals cope with everyday stress, and the associations with other psychosocial variables, we...

Introduction. Adolescent psychology is embracing intensive longitudinal methods, such as diaries and experience sampling techniques, to investigate real-life experiences. However, participants might perceive the repetitive self-reporting in these data collection techniques as burdensome and demotivating, resulting in decreased compliance rates. In...

To better understand among whom, when, and why social media use affects psychosocial functioning, this study examined the temporal stability of social media effects across two separate three-week experience sampling methodology (ESM) studies with a six-month gap between them. Participants were 297 adolescents (Mage = 14.08 years, SD = .70, 59% girl...

Background Parent–adolescent relationship quality is theorized to be an important correlate of adolescent affective well‐being. Little is known about the within‐family processes underlying parent–adolescent relationship quality and affective well‐being over a period of months. This three‐wave, preregistered study examined within‐ and between‐family...

Background. While there is ample theoretical and empirical interest in overparenting, little is known about how overparenting of adolescents operates in everyday family life. This study describes the development and validation of a novel instrument to assess overparenting with Experience Sampling Methods – The Momentary Overparenting (MOP) scale. M...

Adolescents spend a substantial portion of their time using social media. Yet, there is a lack of understanding regarding how often parents and adolescents communicate about this social media use. To address this gap, we developed the Parent-Adolescent Communication about Adolescents’ Social Media Use Scale (PACAS). In a first data wave, among 388...

Digital technology enables parents and adolescents to communicate anywhere and anytime. Knowledge of parent-adolescent online communication, however, is mainly based on cross-sectional studies. In this preregistered 100-day diary study, 479 adolescents (Mage = 15.98, 54.9% girls; 96.9% Dutch) reported daily if they had communicated with their paren...

Development is an iterative dynamic process that unfolds over time. Few theories, however, discuss the speed of developmental processes. As an exemplary case, this study assessed reciprocal associations between parent-adolescent conflict and ill-being with daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, bimonthly, and three-monthly intervals. A 100-day diary stu...

Background With the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) participants are asked to provide self-reports of their symptoms, feelings, thoughts and behaviours in daily life. This preregistered systematic review assessed how ESM is being used to monitor emotional well-being, somatic health, fatigue and pain in children and adolescents with a chronic somat...

Numerous theories suggest that parents and adolescents influence each other in diverse ways; however, whether these influences differ between subgroups or are unique to each family remains uncertain. Therefore, this study explored whether data-driven subgroups of families emerged that exhibited a similar daily interplay between parenting and adoles...

Background: Anxiety symptoms in adolescents have been increasing worldwide. To better understand the role of parents, whose behavior might be both a risk and protective factor for adolescents’ anxiety, this preregistered study examined the associations between parenting practices and generalized anxiety symptoms in adolescence. Methods: We used mes...

Numerous theories suggest that parents and adolescents influence each other in diverse ways; however, whether these influences differ between subgroups or are unique to each family remains uncertain. Therefore, this study explored whether data-driven subgroups of families emerged that exhibited a similar daily interplay between parenting and adoles...

This study investigated the short-term dynamic within-person relationship between adolescents’ self-presentation on social media and their self-esteem. It also examined whether this association depended on adolescents’ satisfaction with peer feedback and their preoccupation with such feedback. We conducted a 100-day daily diary study among 371 adol...

Numerous theories and empirical studies have suggested that parents and their adolescent children reciprocally influence each other. As most studies have focused on group-level patterns, however, it remained unclear whether this was true for every family. To investigate potential heterogeneity in directionality, we applied a novel idiographic appro...

Numerous theories and empirical studies have suggested that parents and adolescent children reciprocally influence each other. However, as most studies have focused on group-level patterns, it remained unclear whether this is true for every family. To expose potential heterogeneity in families’ direction of effects, we applied a novel idiographic a...

This preregistered longitudinal study examined changes in adolescents' depressive and anxiety symptoms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic using latent additive piece-wise growth models. It also assessed whether support from and conflict with mothers, fathers, siblings, and best friends explained heterogeneity in change patterns. One hundred an...

We recently introduced a new, unified approach to investigate the effects of social media use on well-being. Using experience sampling methods among sizeable samples of respondents, our unified approach combines the strengths of nomothetic methods of analysis (e.g., mean comparisons, regression models), which are suited to understand group averages...

This experience sampling study examined whether autonomy-supportive and psychologically controlling interactions with parents are intertwined with adolescents' momentary affect. For 7 days (in 2020), 143 adolescents (Mage = 15.82; SDage = 1.75; 64% girls; 95% European, 1% African, 3% unknown) reported 5 or 6 times a day how they felt and how intera...

BACKGROUND Mobile Health (mHealth) may improve early identification, prevention, and treatment of mental health problems. The multiplayer smartphone app Grow It!, lets 12-25 years old adolescents monitor their emotions and provides them with daily challenges based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). OBJECTIVE This preregistered study evaluates...

According to environmental sensitivity models, children vary in responsivity to parenting. However, different models propose different patterns, with responsivity to primarily: (1) adverse parenting (adverse sensitive); or (2) supportive parenting (vantage sensitive); or (3) to both (differentially susceptible). This preregistered study tested whet...

Although parental overprotection is theorized to have lasting negative effects throughout a child’s life, there is limited empirical evidence available on its long-term significance on adolescent well-being. This preregistered, three-wave longitudinal study investigated the association of maternal and paternal perceived overprotection in early adol...

According to environmental sensitivity models, children vary in responsivity to parenting. However, different models propose different patterns, with responsivity to primarily (1) adverse parenting (adverse sensitive) or (2) supportive parenting (vantage sensitive), or (3) to both (differentially susceptible). This preregistered study tested whethe...

Introduction The corona virus (COVID‐19) pandemic may have a prolonged impact on people's lives, with multiple waves of infections and lockdowns, but how a lockdown may alter emotional functioning is still hardly understood. Methods In this 100‐daily diaries study, we examined how to affect intensity and variability of adolescents (N = 159, Mage =...

Even though each adolescent is unique, some ingredients for development may still be universal. According to Self-Determination Theory, every adolescent’s well-being should benefit when parents provide warmth and autonomy. To rigorously test this idea that each family has similar mechanisms, we followed 159 Dutch parent-adolescent dyads (parent: Ma...

Adolescents are at increased risk for developing mental health problems. The Grow It! app is an mHealth intervention aimed at preventing mental health problems through improving coping by cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-inspired challenges as well as self-monitoring of emotions through Experience Sampling Methods (ESM). Yet, little is known abou...

Adolescents are at increased risk for developing mental health problems. The Grow It! app is an mHealth intervention aimed at preventing mental health problems through improving coping by cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-inspired challenges as well as self-monitoring of emotions through Experience Sampling Methods (ESM). Yet, little is known abou...

This experience sampling study examined whether autonomy-supportive and psychologically controlling interactions with parents are intertwined with adolescents’ momentary affect. For 7 days, 143 adolescents (Mage = 15.82; SDage = 1.75; 64% girls; 71 Belgian, 72 Dutch) reported 5 or 6 times a day how they felt and how interactions with parents were e...

Background. While there is ample theoretical and empirical interest in overparenting, little is known about how overparenting of adolescents operates in everyday family life. This study describes the development and validation of a novel instrument to assess overparenting with Experience Sampling Methods – The Momentary Overparenting (MOP) scale. M...

This preregistered longitudinal study examined changes in adolescents' depressive and anxiety symptoms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic using latent piece-wise growth models. It also assessed whether perceived support from and conflict with mothers, fathers, siblings, and best friends could explain heterogeneity in these change patterns. 192...

Adolescent mental health and well-being have been adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this preregistered longitudinal study, we evaluated whether adolescents’ well-being improved after playing the multiplayer serious game app Grow It! During the first lockdown (May–June 2020), 1282 Dutch adolescents played the Grow It! app (age = 16.67,...

In this 100-daily diary study, we examined how affect intensity and variability of adolescents (N=159, Mage=13.3) and parents (N=159, Mage=45.3) changed after the onset and during (>50 days) the second COVID-19 lockdown in the Netherlands. Using preregistered piecewise growth models, we found only an unexpected increase in parents’ positive affect...

Even though each adolescent is unique, some ingredients for development may still be universal. According to Self-Determination Theory, every adolescent’s well-being should benefit when parents provide warmth and autonomy. To rigorously test this idea that each family has similar mechanisms, we followed 159 Dutch parent-adolescent dyads (parent: Ma...

One of the key challenges faced by many parents is to manage the pervasiveness of social media in adolescents’ lives and its effects on adolescents’ well-being (e.g., life satisfaction) and ill-being (e.g., depressive symptoms). Parents may manage adolescents’ social media use and social media-induced well-being and ill-being through media-specific...

Research has shown that some individuals benefit from using social media because it may help them to obtain social capital. This article questions who are most likely to benefit: the socially rich (i.e., individuals with a preference for social interaction, support, or without interpersonal problems) or the socially poor? It is hard to provide a de...

Transactional processes between parental support and adolescents’ depressive symptoms might differ in the short term versus long term. Therefore, this multi-sample study tested bidirectional within-family associations between perceived parental support and depressive symptoms in adolescents with datasets with varying measurement intervals: Daily (N...

Adolescence is a window of opportunity for youth worldwide. However, it is also a phase in which many behavioral or emotional problems emerge. In this inaugural address (in Dutch), I present an overview of research on how parenting may contribute to adolescent well-being - as well as the limitations of existing nomothetic work. With new technology,...

BACKGROUND Stress is an important causal factor in common mental disorders such as burnout and depression. To aid in the early detection of chronic stress, machine learning models are increasingly trained to learn mathematical mappings from digital footprints to self-reported stress. Earlier work has studied general principles in population-wide st...

Background: Stress is an important predictor of mental health problems such as burnout and depression. Acute stress is considered adaptive, whereas chronic stress is viewed as detrimental to well-being. To aid in the early detection of chronic stress, machine learning models are increasingly trained to learn the quantitative relation from digital...

Background: Anxiety and mood problems in adolescents often go unnoticed and may therefore remain untreated. Identifying and preventing the development of emotional problems requires monitoring and effective tools to strengthen adolescents' resilience, for example, by enhancing coping skills. Objective: The current study describes the developmental...

A recurring hypothesis in the literature is that “passive” social media use (browsing) leads to negative effects on well-being. This preregistered study investigated a rival hypothesis, which states that the effects of browsing on well-being depend on person-specific susceptibilities to envy, inspiration, and enjoyment. We conducted a three-week ex...

Who benefits most from using social media is an important societal question that is centered around two opposing hypotheses: the rich-get-richer versus the poor-get-richer hypothesis. This study investigated the assumption that both hypotheses may be true, but only for some socially rich and some socially poor adolescents and across different time...

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic brought about worldwide challenges and had a profound impact on family dynamics, relationships, and routines. At the same time, the impact may differ largely due to regional differences in the numbers of infections and severity of pr...

This Dutch multi-informant study examined effects of the first COVID-19 lockdown (LD; e.g., school closure and social restrictions) on parent-adolescent relationships. Four biweekly measurements before and 4 biweekly measurements during the LD were collected among adolescents (N = 179, Mage = 14.26 years, 69% girls) and their parents (N = 144, Mage...

Potential harmful effects of social media use on well-being have received ample attention in the public and scientific debate. Recent research suggests, however, that some individuals benefit from using social media. This article therefore questions: Who are likely to benefit most from social media, the socially rich (e.g., extraverted or socially...

Who benefits most from using social media is an important societal question that is centered around two opposing hypotheses: the rich-get-richer versus the poor-get-richer hypothesis. This study investigated the assumption that both hypotheses may be true, but only for some socially rich and some socially poor adolescents and across different time...

The aim of this preregistered study was to compare and explain the effects of (a) time spent on social media (SM) and (b) the valence (positivity or negativity) of SM experiences on adolescents’ self-esteem. We conducted a 3-week experience sampling (ESM) study among 300 adolescents (13–16 years; 126 assessments per adolescent; 21,970 assessments i...

Few people are as important for an adolescent’s development as their parents. However, most research on parent-adolescent relationships describes long-term population-wide effects. Therefore, little is known about everyday interactions between adolescents and parents in individual families. Ecological Momentary Assessment [EMA] measures families se...

Few people are as important for an adolescent’s development as their parents. However, most research on parent-adolescent relationships describes long-term population-wide effects. Therefore, little is known about everyday interactions between adolescents and parents in individual families. Ecological Momentary Assessment [EMA] measures families se...

Person-environment interactions might ultimately drive longer-term development. This experience sampling study assessed short-term linkages between parent-adolescent interaction quality and affect during 2,281 interactions of 124 adolescents(Mage=15.80, SDage=1.69,59% girls, 92% Dutch, Education: 25% low, 31% middle, 35% high, 9% other). Adolescent...

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic brought about worldwide challenges and had a profound impact on family dynamics, relationships and routines. At the same time, the impact may differ largely due to regional differences in the numbers of infections and severity of pre...

Transactional processes between parental support and adolescents’ depressive symptoms might differ in the short term versus long term. This multi-sample study tested bidirectional within-family associations between parental support and adolescents’ depressive symptoms on varying measurement intervals: Daily (N = 244, Mage = 13.8 years, 38% male), b...

BACKGROUND Anxiety and mood problems in adolescents often go unnoticed and may therefore remain untreated. Identifying and preventing the development of emotional problems requires monitoring and effective tools to strengthen adolescents' resilience, for example, by enhancing coping skills. The current study describes the developmental process and...

Background: Anxiety and mood problems in adolescents often go unnoticed and may therefore remain untreated. Identifying and preventing the development of emotional problems requires monitoring and effective tools to strengthen adolescents' resilience, for example, by enhancing coping skills. Objective: This study describes the developmental proc...

During the COVID-19 crisis, the governmental restrictions seriously affected the daily lives of adolescents (aged 12–25). They could not attend school, had to limit face-to-face contact with peers, and had to stay at home with their parents. This chapter combines insights from theoretical models on adolescent development with some of the first empi...

Procrastination is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon. Although research suggests smartphones might be involved, little is known about the momentary association between different patterns of smartphone use and procrastination. In a preregistered study, 221 students ( M age = 20, 55% female) self-reported procrastination five times a day for 30 da...

The aim of this preregistered study was to compare and explain the effects of (a) time spent on social media (SM), and (b) the valence (positivity or negativity) of SM experiences on adolescents’ self-esteem. We conducted a three-week experience sampling study among 300 adolescents (13-16 years; 126 assessments per adolescent; 21,970 assessments in...

Introduction This study aimed at differentiating normative developmental turmoil from prodromal depressive symptoms in adolescence. Method Negative and positive mood (daily) in different contexts (friends, home, school), and (subsequent) depressive symptoms were assessed in Dutch adolescents. Results & conclusion Mixture modeling on one cross‐sec...

Procrastination is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon. Although research suggests smartphones might be involved, little is known about the momentary association between different patterns of smartphone use and procrastination. In a preregistered study, 221 students (Mage = 20, 55% female) self-reported procrastination five times a day for 30 days...

Lack of parental support is related to more adolescent negative mood. However, little is known about how fluctuations of parental support relate to fluctuations of negative mood within adolescents in daily life. The current study aimed to elucidate these processes at a day to day micro-level and examined to which extent adolescents would differ in...

The formation and maintenance of friendship closeness is an important developmental task in adolescence. To obtain insight in real-time processes that may underly the development of friendship closeness in middle adolescence, this preregistered experience sampling study [ESM] investigated the effects of social media use on friendship closeness. The...

Eighteen earlier studies have investigated the associations between social media use (SMU) and adolescents’ self-esteem, finding weak effects and inconsistent results. A viable hypothesis for these mixed findings is that the effect of SMU differs from adolescent to adolescent. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a preregistered three-week experie...

Procrastination is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon. Although research suggests smartphones might be involved, little is known about the momentary association between different patterns of smartphone use and procrastination. In a preregistered study, 221 students (Mage = 20, 55% female) self-reported procrastination five times a day for 30 days...

A recurring hypothesis in the literature is that “passive” social media use (browsing) leads to negative effects on well-being. This preregistered study investigated a rival hypothesis, which states that the effects of browsing on well-being depend on person-specific susceptibilities to envy, inspiration, and enjoyment. We conducted a three-week ex...

This study investigated the effects of active private, passive private, and passive public social media use on adolescents’ well-being. Intensive longitudinal data (34,930 assessments in total) were collected through a preregistered three-week experience sampling study among 387 adolescents. Person-specific, N=1 time series were investigated, using...