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Abstract
Introduction: Social-media can contribute to building up adolescents' relationships, but they might
also bring negative exclusionary experiences. Being excluded is a subtle yet hurtful form of
relational aggression, which affects people’s psychological wellbeing, especially during
developmental stages. In this study, we (1) analyzed the effects of social-media exclusion adapting
the Ostracism Online paradigm to a cohort of Italian preadolescents (Mage = 11.47, 53% girls) and
(2) tested the efficacy of two potential recovery strategies (i.e., social bonds vs. social surrogate).
Method: Inclusionary status was manipulated through the number of "likes" participants received
on a fictitious online social network. In the exclusion condition, participants received fewer likes
than everyone else. In the inclusion condition, participants received a similar number of likes of
other users. Then, all participants were asked to think of a significant positive relationship with a
family member (social bonds), a celebrity (social surrogate), their present moment thoughts
(control).
Results: Preadolescents who received fewer likes than others reported higher levels of need threat
(i.e., belong, self-esteem, meaningful existence, but not control) and negative emotions. Moreover,
the social-bonds strategy generally brought a faster psychological recovery from social-media
exclusion than the control condition. The efficacy of social-surrogates strategy was greater for boys
than for girls, probably due to different choices in their favorite celebrities.
Conclusion: These findings show how offline life offers compensatory opportunities for
adolescents’ online life. When the lack of “Likes” signal exclusion on social-media, thinking of an
existing social relationship help adolescents to cope with this negative experience.
Keywords: Social-media, Social exclusion, Adolescents, Ostracism, Social bonds.
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Being liked or not being liked:
A study on social-media exclusion in a preadolescent population
Human relationships, especially with peers, are fundamental parts of adolescents’ life and
wellbeing. Friends provide social support and give a sense of belongingness and protection in a
phase where identity is still developing (del Valle, Bravo & López, 2010). However, peer
relationships can be troubled. They can flourish and dissipate quickly, in a whirl of confederation
and hostility. Negative dynamics can arise, with detrimental consequences for adolescents’
wellbeing (Rigby, 2003); exclusion is one of these. In the present work, we build on research on
social exclusion (Riva, 2016) to examine - for the first time experimentally - the effects of ostracism
in online interactions among adolescents and the efficacy of coping strategies to restore their
threatened needs. In a recent review, Timeo, Riva, & Paladino (in press) have outlined the potential
effectiveness of some psychological and behavioral coping strategies against the detrimental effects
of exclusion in the developmental age. Among others, and based on previous research on adults (see
Riva, 2016), making new social connections or cultivating old bonds was identified as one of the
strategies to deal with exclusion and mitigate the hurt feelings derived from it. In the present study,
we tested this strategy by asking preadolescents to recall a significant social relationship with a
close other (social bond) – or with their favorite celebrity (social surrogate) in an experimentally
created social media exclusion context.
Social exclusion and its consequences
Social exclusion has been broadly defined as the experience of being kept apart from others
physically (e.g., social isolation) or emotionally (e.g., being ignored; Riva & Eck, 2016). In this
view, social rejection—being explicitly told one is not wanted—and ostracism— being ignored—
represent the two core experiences of social exclusion. Exclusion hurts, and the unpleasantness it
causes has been associated with that of physical pain (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004). Being
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excluded threats an individual’s psychological needs such as belonging, self-esteem, sense of
control, and meaningful existence and elicits negative emotions (including sadness and anger;
Williams, 2009). Most importantly, following ostracism, children and adolescents seem to suffer
greater threat compared to their adult counterparts (Abrams, Weick, Thomas, Colbe, & Franklin,
2011; Sebastian, Viding, Williams, & Blakemore, 2010). Adolescents appear to be particularly
sensitive to the evaluation of their peers with significant consequences on their self-identity
construction (Harter, 1999). As a consequence, being exposed to prolonged exclusion during
childhood or adolescence has been linked to internalizing problems like depression and anxiety
(Gazelle & Ladd, 2003), conduct problems and diminished capacity to self-regulate (Barkley, Salvy
& Roemmich, 2012; Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocco & Twenge, 2005; Ladd, 2006; Salvy et al.,
2011), lower cognitive performance (Tobia, Riva & Caprin, 2017) and poorer academic
achievement (Buhs, Ladd & Herald, 2006; Hawes et al., 2012). Exclusion can also trigger
aggressive behavior (Reijntjes et al., 2010; Reijntjes, Stegge, Terwogt, Kamphuis & Telch, 2006)
and, when prolonged over time, lead some individuals to desperate acts (Leary, Kowalski, Smith &
Phillips, 2003).
Social-media exclusion
Contexts in which kids and adolescents report experiences of exclusion are school, sports
team, religious groups (Ladd & Kochenderfer-Ladd, 2016), and, more recently, online interactions
(Allen, Ryan, Gray, McInerney & Waters, 2014). This is not surprising given the role that the
Internet, and particularly social media, plays in our social interactions. Social media have changed
the time and space in which people connect with each other, increasing the potential number of
contacts, but not necessarily their quality (for a recent review see, Allen et al. 2014). For instance,
Ahn and Shin (2013) found that social media use is linked to connectedness, but only face-to-face
interactions go hand in hand with a reduced feeling of social isolation. In addition, because the
online world creates the conditions - anonymity and physical distance - for moral disengagement,
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negative behaviors are frequent (e.g., cyberbullies or haters, Pornari & Wood, 2010; online
relational aggressions, Zweig, Lachman, Yahner, & Dank, 2014; Morelli, Bianchi, Chirumbolo, &
Baiocco, 2018). Considering that in the European Union 93% of 9-16 year-old users go online at
least weekly (60% almost daily) and 59% have a social media profile (Livingstone, Haddon,
Görzig, & Ólafsson, 2011), the risk to come across negative experiences online is particularly high.
Social exclusion can manifest in the social media context in a variety of ways, with people
being left out from instant-messaging groups, not being included in online conversations, or
receiving no or few requests of contacts. A prototypical experience of social media exclusion is
feeling ignored when few, or no one, react to one’s own profile or contents posted with comments
or with a “Like” (Reich, Schneider, & Heling, 2018; Wolf et al., 2015). Considering the relevance
of social media among adolescents and that adolescents seem to be more vulnerable to the effects of
ostracism (Abrams et al., 2011; Pharo, Gross, Richardson, & Hayne, 2011), studies investigating
cyberostracism in this population are especially needed.
Most relevant to the potential adverse outcomes of social media exclusion (e.g., receiving
fewer likes), is how adolescents respond to it. They can cope with being excluded in functional or
dysfunctional ways. The latter is likely to promote a vicious cycle of exclusion and maladaptive
responses (e.g., becoming passive or aggressive; Riva, 2016). Therefore, there is a need to explore
psychological strategies to functionally cope with everyday instances of social media exclusion. To
date, few studies tested the efficacy of coping strategies to deal with exclusion in adults and even
fewer did so with adolescents (Timeo, Riva, & Paladino, in press), to the best of our knowledge,
none in the context of social media ostracism.
The present research
The present research aims at extending current work at least in three respects. First, we
considered the phenomena of social media exclusion in a preadolescent population. Groups and
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more generally social interactions with peers play a fundamental role in adolescents’ social and
emotional development (Brown, & Larson, 2009; Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). In
contemporary industrialized societies, a significant part of social interactions occurs in the virtual
world. Therefore, there is a need to investigate adolescents’ reactions to peers’ exclusion in the
context of social media. Accordingly, in the present research, we relied on the Ostracism Online
paradigm (Wolf et al., 2015) - that simulates the environment of a social network platform, where
the inclusionary status is conveyed through the number of Likes received by the profiles. This
paradigm has been successfully used with adults, showing that receiving few (vs. average) “like”
can thwart fundamental needs. Thus, the first goal of the present research is to test, for the first time,
the effects of the Ostracism Online paradigm with young participants (11-14 years). As anticipated
this is especially relevant as the social network environment is becoming a pervasive reality for
young populations, but also as it may bring convergent evidence of the effects of exclusion amongst
different experimental procedures (e.g., Cyberball; Williams et al., 2000).
Secondly, we tested and compared the effectiveness of two psychological strategies (i.e.,
social bonds and social surrogates) to cope with social exclusion. The recall of a close relationship
(social bond; e.g., McConnell, Brown, Shoda, Stayton & Martin, 2011) is a strategy that has been
tested on adults, showing promising results. Reminders of social relationships as photographs of
friends (Gardner, Pickett, & Knowles, 2005), Facebook icons (Knausenberger, Hellmann, &
Echterhoff, 2015), or memories about family members or friends (McConnell et al., 2011; Twenge,
Baumeister, Tice, & Stucke, 2001) buffer against the adverse effects of exclusion. Another potential
strategy to cope with social exclusion involves recalling of an imagined relationship (social
surrogate) people may have with a celebrity (e.g., a favorite actor or singer). Previous studies
involving adults have shown some positive effects of social surrogates, expressed as parasocial
interactions (Knowles, 2013), nature (Poon, Teng, Wong, & Chen, 2016) and spiritual
connectedness (Hales, Wesselmann & Williams, 2016). These strategies were already tested - at the
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same time - in a previous study with the adult population focusing on the downstream behavioral,
interpersonal consequences of exclusion, that is aggressive behavior (Twenge et al., 2007, Study 3).
It was found that social bonds reduced aggressive tendency in socially excluded participants, and
that social surrogates produced a similar, although weaker, effect likely because the relationship
was only imagined (Twenge et al., 2007, Study 3). In this respect, we aimed at extending the
findings from the adult population, as we cannot directly assume that an effective strategy with
adults (i.e., recalling a family member as a social bond) would be suitable also for preadolescents.
Moreover, celebrities and models are especially important during adolescence (Raviv, Bar-Tal,
Raviv & Ben-Horin, 1996), this opens up to the possibility that - differently from adults - social
surrogates are as useful as social bonds to overcome adversities in this population.
Finally, although previous studies (Twenge et al., 2001; 2007) have brought evidence of the
efficacy of these strategies on the behavioral outcome (i.e., aggression), they did not test their
effects on the affective and psychological responses. In this perspective, we aim at expanding
previous findings obtained in adults to new outcome variables. We measured the psychological
reaction of participants (needs threat and emotions) according to the different stages of the Need-
threat model (Williams, 2009). This model predicts that reactions to exclusion unfold during time.
In the first phase, the person feels the painful, yet functionally adaptive, effect of exclusion
(reflexive stage). In the second phase, the individual can start to elaborate and cope with the
exclusionary experience (reflective stage). In line with William’s model (2009), we hypothesized
our strategies to be effective only in this second phase. In our research, we measured needs
satisfaction and negative emotions in relation to an exclusionary event (reflexive stage) and
subsequently again after the induction of a psychological strategy (reflective stage). To assess the
efficacy of each strategy, we focused on recovery, that is, the improvement of the threatened needs
and negative emotions in the reflective compared to the reflexive stage. Nonetheless, we explored
the possible effects of social-media exclusion and coping strategies on behavioral intentions,
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focusing on two primary constructs. The first construct regards the desire to affiliate with a bully
classmate. Indeed, excluded participants might accept less selectively their friendships, as they want
to replenish their need to belong, thus affiliating with antisocial profiles (Hales & Williams, 2018).
The second construct regards prosocial and antisocial behavioral intentions, as past research
suggested that ostracism can increase both prosocial (Maner, DeWall, Baumeister, & Schaller,
2007) and antisocial behaviors (Twenge et al., 2007).
Method
Participants
The research project - approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Trento – was
presented to eight schools in an urban area of north-east of Italy. Two public middle schools agreed
to collaborate to the research. Participants were 167 preadolescents (78 males, Mage = 11.47 years,
SD = 0.63; Age Range 10-14) recruited among their students. Their parents were adequately
informed about the methods and aims of this survey and gave consent to research participation.
Materials and procedure
Experimental task
The survey was built and distributed using the Qualtrics® online platform (2018).1 The
experiment was presented as a study on the formation of interpersonal relationships on the internet.
Students were told they would have interacted with peers they did not know on an online platform.
Afterward, they would have answered some questions about their experience on the platform.
To manipulate the inclusionary status (exclusion vs. inclusion), we adapted the Ostracism
Online paradigm to the preadolescent population (Wolf et al., 2015). In this paradigm, participant
are led to believe that they are interacting with other people on an online platform similar to a social
media. In our study, participants were asked to describe themself and to choose an avatar to create
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an online profile. Afterward, their profile was uploaded and became visible on the online platform
together with that (description + avatar) of eight ostensibly more profiles; these were allegedly
created by peers with whom they was interacting online. In actuality, these profiles were created by
the researchers for the research purpose. In this phase, participants read other profiles and were
informed of the possibility to give “likes” to those they appreciated and that their own profile could
receive “likes” by the others as well. Specifically, each participant saw eight other profiles, so the
maximum of “likes” s/he could receive was eight. We created two arrays of different profiles, and
for each array, we created two versions counterbalanced for the order of appearance on the screen.
Profiles were matched to the age of the participants. Participants in the inclusion condition received
approximately 5 “likes,” a number that was in line with what was received from the other profiles,
whereas participants in the exclusion condition were the only person to receive one “like”.
Subsequently, participants were randomly assigned to a coping strategy condition.
Participants in the social bonds condition and in the social surrogates condition were asked to recall
their favorite family member and their favorite celebrity, respectively, and to and write down why
they appreciate this person. In the control condition, participants were asked to write down their
present-moment thoughts and feelings (see Hales et al., 2016). In each condition, they had to write
at least 200 characters. Participants in the inclusion condition only completed the control strategy,
so that the combination of the inclusionary status and coping strategy manipulation led to an
independent variable with four levels (Exclusion-bonds, Exclusion-surrogates, Exclusion-Control,
and Inclusion-Control).
Dependent variables
Need threat and negative emotions. Participants were presented twice with an adapted
version of the Need-Threat Scale (Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000) and a measure of negative
emotions.
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For the reflexive stage (right after the Inclusionary-status manipulation), participants filled
out items related to the threat of belong (3 items, e.g., “I felt rejected”), self-esteem (3 items, e.g.,
“My self-esteem was high”, reverse coded), control (3 items, e.g., “I felt I had control”), and
meaningful existence (3 items, e.g., “I felt invisible”) referring to their experience on the social
media platform. Moreover, they rated their emotional reaction of sadness, anger, pain, anxiety, and
happiness (reverse coded). Responses were recorded on a 1 (Not at all) to 7 (Extremely) Likert
scale and were averaged to create overall indexes (see Table 1).
After the manipulation of the coping strategy, need threat and emotions were assessed again
for the reflective stage (referring to their feelings at the present moment, i.e., “I feel rejected,” “I
feel angry”).
Choice of an ambiguous schoolmate. Participants were asked to what extent they would
have accepted an invitation from a same same-sex schoolmate who was described as popular, but
bully (i.e., mocking other schoolmates) preadolescent. Response were registered on a scale from 0
to 100.
Prosocial and antisocial intentions. Participants read a post allegedly from one of the people
of the online platform, asking for “likes” to win a photography competition. Participants could
either help or hamper the person win by giving (prosocially) or removing (antisocially) “likes” from
the picture, respectively. The scale ranged from -10 to +10 “likes.”
Manipulation check. At the end of the survey, participants indicated how many “likes” they
received during their interactions on the online platform and whether other participants received the
same number of “likes.” Participants also rated how much they felt excluded, ignored and popular
during the game (1= “Not at all”; 7 =“Extremely”).
Before ending the experiment, all participants completed the social bonds strategy as a
buffering task.
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Data analyses overview
Data were analyses with the linear model (lm) function from the R Stats Package, running
on the R environment (RStudio Version 1.1.383, 2009-2017). Two analytic strategies were
followed. To examine the effects of online exclusion, the linear models included the between-
subjects factor Inclusionary-status, coded at two levels (inclusion vs. exclusion). To test the effects
of the psychological strategies (i.e., social bonds and social surrogate), the between-subjects factor
Condition variable with four levels (Exclusion-bonds, Exclusion-surrogates, Exclusion-Control, and
Inclusion-Control) was considered in the linear model. Exploratory, the role of participants sex was
examined; if statistical significant, participants’Sex was included as factor in the analyses and
results were reported. One participant was excluded from the analyses because s/he reported having
received a number of “Likes” that largely exceed the maximum of possible Likes (100 vs. max 8).
Results
Manipulation checks
Means in function of the Inclusionary-status manipulation are shown in Table 1. Participants
who received fewer likes were aware of it, F(1, 161) = 208.29, p < .001, reported feeling more
excluded, F(1, 163) = 17.21, p < .001, ignored, F(1, 163) = 16.99, p < .001, and less popular, F(1,
163) = 7.62, p = .006, than their counterpart. Moreover, excluded participants were less likely to
say that the other participants on the online platform received their same number of “likes,” Nex
=77vs47; Nin = 4vs36, χ2(1) = 30.79 p < .001. Further analyses contrasting all four experimental
groups (Exclusion-bonds, Exclusion-surrogates, Exclusion-Control, and Inclusion-Control) showed
no differences between the three exclusion conditions (all ps > .30). Therefore, the paradigm
successfully created a situation of social-media exclusion (vs. inclusion).
The psychological consequences of social media exclusion
Need threat and negative emotions (reflexive stage)
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The effect of the Inclusionary-status factor was tested for each of the four needs (reflexive
stage; see Table 1). Compared to included participants, excluded participants reported higher levels
of threat for belong, F(1, 164) = 17.66, p < .001, self-esteem, F(1, 164) = 9.80, p =.002, and
meaningful existence, F(1, 164) = 14.19, p = .002, but not for control, F(1, 164) = 2.95, p =. 089.
Thus, control was not included in further analyses to test the effects of the coping strategies on the
recovery from social exclusion.
Excluded participants reported higher levels of sadness, F(1, 164) = 7.96, p = .005, pain,
F(1, 164) = 8.38, p =.004, anger, F(1, 164) = 4.75, p = .031, and lower levels of happiness, F(1,
164) = 4.80, p = .030, compared to included participants. No difference emerged for anxiety, F(1,
164) = 2.54, p =. 11; thus anxiety was not included in further analyses.
Thus, social media exclusion threatened basic needs (except for control) and increased
negative emotions (except for anxiety). In the following section, we focus on the contribution of
coping strategies to recover from these effects of being excluded.
Testing the effects of psychological strategies on recovery from exclusion
Need-threat Recovery
An overall Need threat-score was computed by averaging the ratings of all need-threat items
(except control, as it was not affected by the manipulation of social exclusion) for the reflexive (α =
.86) and for the reflective stage (α = .85). To test the role of the strategies, the Condition factor
(Exclusion-bonds, Exclusion-surrogates, Exclusion-Control, and Inclusion-Control) was considered
in the analysis. An Effect of Condition emerged for the overall Need-score at the Reflexive stage,
F(3, 162) = 6.96, p <.001. Participants reported lower needs-threat in the Inclusion condition, than
in the Exclusion conditions, all ts(gdl)>3.14, all ps <. 001. However, the three exclusion conditions
(i.e., Exclusion-bonds, Exclusion-surrogates, Exclusion-Control) did not differ among themselves at
the reflexive stage (all p > .38, see Table 2). Thus, an index of Recovery was then obtained by
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subtracting the score at the reflective stage from the one at the reflexive stage. A positive score
indicated a greater recovery.
This Recovery index was analyzed in a model including Condition (Exclusion-bonds,
Exclusion-surrogates, Exclusion-Control, and Inclusion-Control), participants Sex (Male-Female),
and the interaction term. An effect of Condition emerged, F(3, 158) = 7.78, p <.001 (see Figure 1).
No recovery/change occurred in the Inclusion-Control condition, t(157) = .17, p =.86 (contrast to
zero), as needs were not threaten. Compared to the Inclusion-Control condition, participants in
Exclusion-Control condition showed some recovery, t(158) = 2.17, p = .032. However, participants
in the Exclusion-bonds condition showed a greater recovery when compared to participants both in
the Inclusion-Control, t(158) = 4.65, p <.001, and in Exclusion-Control condition t(158) = 2.38, p =
.018. Reminding of a social surrogate had somehow an effect, as participants in this condition
reported a greater recovery of their needs compared to the Inclusion-Control, t(158) = 3.57, p <
.001; no other comparison was significant.
Figure 1. Mean levels of need recovery, calculated as the subtraction of need threat at the reflective
stage from the need threat at the reflective stage, for the four treatment conditions.
-0,4
-0,2
0
0,2
0,4
0,6
0,8
1
1,2
1,4
Inclusion-Control Exclusion-control Exclusion-bonds Exclusion-surrogates
Need recovery
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These effects were qualified by the Conditions, Sex interaction, F(3, 158) = 2.94, p = .035
(see Figure 2). Contrast revealed that the surrogate strategy was most beneficial for boys than for
girls, t(158) = -2.60, p = .010. Moreover boys using this strategy showed a greater recovery than
those in the Inclusion-Control, t(158) = -3.92, p < .001, and the Exclusion-Control condition, t(158)
= -2.63, p = .009, but similar to the Exclusion-bonds condition, t(158) = -1.04, p = .30. Instead, for
girls, Exclusion-bonds condition produced a significantly better recovery than the Inclusion-
Control, t(158) = -3.59, p < .001, and the Exclusion-surrogates condition, t(158) -2.44, p = .016,
even though there was no difference with the Exclusion-Control conditions, t(158) -1.64, p = .102.
Following up on this finding, at an exploratory level, we looked at the choices of the social
surrogate (i.e., the preferred famous person) made by boys and girls. We found that all boys in the
social surrogate condition (N= 21) chose a social surrogate of the same sex, whereas girls were
equally divided into choosing same-sex (N= 8) or other-sex surrogates (N= 9).
Emotional recovery
The average of the ratings of the emotions (except anxiety, as it was not affected by the
manipulation) at the reflexive (α= .75) and the reflective stage (α= .65) was obtained. Then the
Recovery index for emotions was calculated. No significant effect emerged for the treatment
Condition, F(3, 161) = 1.3, p = .28. All the three exclusion conditions showed some recovery, as the
index was always superior and greater than zero, but they did not differ among themselves (all ps >
.4).
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Figure 2. Mean levels of need recovery depending on the treatment condition and the gender of the
participant.
Choice of an ambiguous schoolmate and prosocial/antisocial intentions
Overall, participants tended not to accept the invitation by a bully classmate and acted
prosocially (see Table 2). This tendencies did not vary across Conditions (Exclusion-bonds,
Exclusion-surrogates, Exclusion-Control, and Inclusion-Control), F(3, 162) = 0.29, p = .84, and
F(3, 162) = 0.54, p = .65, for the choice of schoolmate and prosociale/antisocial intentions
respectively.
Discussion
The present findings extended current knowledge in several respects. First, we tested for the
first time the effects of the Ostracism Online paradigm (Wolf et al., 2015) on preadolescents. This
paradigm has been previously used only with adults and university students (Fossati et al., 2017;
Schneider et al., 2017). Our results are coherent with previous studies (Schneider et al., 2017; Wolf
et al., 2015): receiving fewer “Likes” than others poses a threat to all fundamental needs except
control. The need for control seems not to be affected by this paradigm, differently from other
experimentally created experiences of exclusion (e.g., Cyberball; Williams, et al., 2000). Here, in
-1
-0,5
0
0,5
1
1,5
Inclusion-Control Exclusion-control Exclusion-bonds Exclusion-surrogates
Need recovery
Male
Female
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this virtual environment, excluded participants are still able to act (e.g., they can keep adding
“likes” on other profiles, while, in the Cyberball task they cannot throw the ball when they do not
receive it).
Nevertheless, our results show how little signs of acceptance and appreciation, as the
“Likes” on a social media page, can be effective cues in conveying a sense of belonging or
exclusion in the developmental phases. Preadolescents potentially can go through similar
experiences many times; it becomes therefore essential to equip them with coping strategies in order
to better handle possible psychologically-threatening situations they may encounter in the virtual
context.
No effect of exclusion on behavioral intentions (i.e., the choice of the ambiguous
schoolmate and the prosocial/aggressive task) was found. This null finding could be attributed to
some specificity of the study design, as the poor validity of the measures (e.g., an excessively
extreme profile of a bully for middle school students to express the desire to affiliate with).
Alternative, these null effects might be attributable to participants having fully recovered from the
exclusion situation when responding to these measures at the end of the survey (see Williams,
2009). Another explanation might refer to the notion that aggressive behavior may be linked with
the victim’s decreased need for control (see also Gerber & Wheeler, 2009), which was not
threatened by our paradigm. Note however that this is the first study to investigate the behavioral
consequences of the Ostracism online paradigm in a sample of preadolescents. Future studies are
needed to investigate the consequences of the online exclusion on the behavioural reactions and the
possible moderation of control on the aggressive intentions, to disentangle these alternative
explanations.
The other main contribution of the present study concerns the efficacy of the psychological
strategies - recalling a close relationship vs. a social surrogate - to recovery from the negative
effects of social exclusion. Both strategies were minimal (i.e., writing for a few minutes about a
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person of one’s own family), as they were designed as a fast remedy to contrast daily episodes of
exclusion. The results seem promising. Whereas some recovery occurred spontaneously (see the
Exclusion-control condition), recalling of a close relation had a greater effect on the threatened
needs. This findings add to previous studies showing that thinking of social bonds diminishes
aggressive behavior (Twenge et al., 2007) and preserves mental health in excluded adults (Aydin et
al., 2012). Our results have a twofold implication. They suggest that preadolescents are able to
implement this strategy and that reminders of social bonds (specifically family as prompted in the
experiment) influence how they react to negative experience on social media. We can speculate that
this strategy works as it does not require high-order cognitive abilities, that may be still lacking at
this developmental age, but relies on an affective process. By thinking of a close social connection,
the need to belong is fulfilled, leading to a recovery. Another possibility is that, by thinking of a
pre-existing social bond, the victim relativizes the ostracism experience and put it into a broader
perspective. The single episode may be more easily disregarded as just a negative moment amongst
other positive relationships. Future studies should better account the mechanism through which this
strategy works.
Recalling a favorite famous person (social surrogate) showed results in between the
Exclusion-control and the Exclusion-bonds condition. Also, the social surrogate strategy seemed to
help the need-satisfaction recovery of boys significantly more than for girls. One explanation for
this difference involves the type of celebrity participants chose. Boys selected only same-sex
characters (e.g., famous actors, YouTubers or sports players), instead girls equally selected same-
sex and other-sex characters. We speculate that the choice of a same-sex character might be guided
by some resemblance or modeling mechanisms (i.e., “I like this character because is similar to me”
or “I like this character because I would like to become like him/her”). Instead, the other-sex choice
might have involved some attraction mechanism (i.e., “I would like him to be my boyfriend”),
increasing, in turn, feelings of exclusion, as the relationship is unreachable. However, these
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considerations should be taken with caution because of the limited number of female and male
participants in each condition. Finally, our findings suggest new insights into the influence of
celebrities, and the virtual relationships they create, on adolescent’s wellbeing. Research (Giles, &
Maltby, 2004; Greene, & Adams-Price, 1990) has pointed to the role of these parasocial
connections, referring to them as a secondary attachment, which provides a pseudo-friends group
during a period of adolescents’ progressive emancipation from parental support. The present
research suggests that, they may also represent a resource (at least for male) adolescents to bounce
back the exclusion threats.
Some limitations concern the external validity of the study, as this was carried out using a
controlled experimental procedure, so that the exclusion situations were simulated in a safe and
confined environment, to preserve the psychological wellbeing of participants. The manipulation
was minimal (being based on a difference of a few likes), with just one clue of exclusion, happening
in a context of privacy, with unknown people that were not salient for participants. Also, the
recovery strategy was designed to be minimal, with just a few instructions and minutes to be
implemented. In a real-life environment, however, such factors could differ, for instance, social
exclusion could be publicly acted, carried out by significant others (e.g., classmates), and prolonged
over time (Riva, Montali, Wirth, Curioni, & Williams, 2017).
Conclusion
Overall, this research speaks of the effects of exclusion on social-media in preadolescents. In
effect, the virtual world and, most importantly, social networks, are becoming more and more
pervasive in preadolescents’ life and their construction of social relationships (Common Sense
Media, 2009). Accordingly, social media have become new environments where children and
adolescents may encounter exclusion, amongst others, like school, sport and activity groups. Our
research has shown - for the first time in a controlled setting – that receiving few “Likes” elicits the
18
feeling of being ignored and excluded and threatens fundamental needs and emotional well-being.
However, thinking of a close one helps to restore the needs.
Besides engaging in social activity to prevent exclusion from happening (Unit & Britain,
2001), it is crucial also to equip children and adolescents with coping skills. In perspective,
considering that during adolescence, abilities to self-regulate after exclusion are still emerging
(Vijayakumar, Cheng & Pfeifer, 2009), it is particularly important to identify strategies that can be
used by these populations to cope with exclusion. In this sense, our findings add a piece into this
quest by testing a psychological strategy to help preadolescents overcome the adverse effects of
exclusion on social media.
19
Footnotes
1In a pre-experimental session (a week before the experiment), we assessed some individual
and contextual variables, which are not be discussed in the present paper. The scales used were the
Social Subscale from the Italian adaptation of the Multidimensional Self-Concept Scale (TMA;
Bracken 2003), the Bullying and Ostracism Screening Scale (BOSS; Saylor et al., 2012) and the
child version of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski, Rieffe, Jellesma,
Terwogt, & Kraaij, 2007; CERQ-k).
20
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