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Digital Media Use Preference Indirectly Relates to Adolescent Social Anxiety Symptoms Through Delta-Beta Coupling
Abstract
Adolescence is a period of profound biological and social-emotional development during which social anxiety symptoms commonly emerge. Over the past several decades, the social world of teens has been transformed by pervasive digital media use (e.g., social media, messaging apps), highlighting the urgent need to examine links between digital media use and mental health. Prior work suggests that a preference to use digital media to communicate emotions, rather than face-to-face contexts, is associated with emotion regulation vulnerabilities. Difficulties with emotion regulation are a hallmark of elevated anxiety, and the maturation of frontal-subcortical circuitry underlying emotion regulation may make adolescents especially vulnerable to the possible detrimental effects of digital media use. The current study leveraged an emerging neurophysiological correlate of emotion regulation, delta-beta coupling, which captures cortical-subcortical coherence during resting state. We test links among digital media use preferences, delta-beta coupling, and anxiety symptoms with a sample of 80 adolescents (47 females; 33 males) ages 12–15 years (M = 13.9, SD = 0.6) (80% White, 2% Black/African American, 16% more than one race, 2% Hispanic/Latine). Youth had their EEG recorded during 6 min of resting-state baseline from which delta-beta coupling was generated. Youth self-reported their social anxiety symptoms and preferences for digital media use vs face-to-face modalities. Greater digital media use preferences for both positive and negative social-emotional communication were associated with elevated social anxiety symptoms indirectly through high delta-beta coupling. This suggests that neural regulatory imbalance may be a pathway through which adolescents’ habitual preferences for digital media use over face-to-face communication relate to elevated social anxiety.
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Adolescence is a critical developmental period of biological and social change during which 1 in 3 youth experience significant anxiety symptoms. The social-emotional lives of the majority of adolescents are largely conducted via digital media use (DMU; e.g., social media, text messaging). Yet the past decade of research on DMU and anxiety has yielded mixed results (e.g., Keles et al., 2020 review), leaving the complex role that DMU might play in the emergence and maintenance of anxiety poorly understood. A key step forward is to leverage psychophysiology to identify individual differences in cognitive and emotional processes that confer vulnerability to potential negative effects of DMU. Further, given the ubiquity of DMU, a greater focus is needed on measurements that move beyond sheer frequency to capture DMU in comparison to face-to-face (FTF) social interactions. This study examined attention bias (AB), characterized by selective and exaggerated attention toward or away from threat, as a moderator of the link between DMU and anxiety in adolescents (N = 75; 42 female) aged 12–14 years (M = 13.28, SD = 0.87). AB was indexed during a dot probe task using reaction time metrics (i.e., trial-level bias) and via ERPs capturing attentional selection and discrimination (N170) and cognitive control (N2) to threat compared to neutral faces. AB moderated associations between DMU and anxiety. A greater preference to use DMU vs FTF predicted greater anxiety among those with a greater behavioral bias away from threat, blunted N170, and blunted N2 in the presence of threat. Future research should examine potential causal and bidirectional links between DMU and anxiety and explore whether preferences for technology-mediated interactions and individual differences in threat processing increase risk.
Social anxiety disorder is among the most common forms of pediatric psychopathology. Social anxiety symptoms peak in adolescence and are associated with significant impairment encompassing familial, social, and academic domains. Considerable heterogeneity in symptomatology, risk factors, and biological underpinnings exists across anxious adolescents, which has implications for (1) understanding the developmental etiology of who is at highest risk, (2) identifying individual patterns of symptom course. In particular, fearful temperament is the best early-emerging predictor of the development of anxiety symptoms, and attention bias to threat and other neurobiological processes have been implicated as mechanisms but it is unknown for whom and to what degree these factors impair functioning and what the developmental course looks like across adolescence. The current study employs a longitudinal design capturing a wide range of anxiety symptom presentation (i.e., low risk, temperamental risk, and clinical anxiety). We follow adolescents (N = 195) annually across the transitions to middle- and high-school – ages 13, 14, 15, & 16 years. We implement a rich assessment of anxiety symptoms, temperament, attention bias, endocrine (cortisol), physiological (RSA) and neurobiological (EEG, ERP) processes. We aim to (1) characterize a biobehavioral (i.e., biased attention, neuroendocrine, physiological, and neural processes) pattern associated with fearful temperament and social anxiety in adolescence, (2) characterize trajectories of social anxiety in adolescence, with an emphasis on linking fearful temperament and anxiety across development, and (3) examine how social contextual factors, sex, and pubertal development shape social anxiety trajectories and moderated links between temperament and SA.
Emotion regulation is critical for adolescent functioning. Theories on the subject have evolved rapidly in recent years and have led to a more contextualized and dynamic conceptualization of emotion regulation processes. In this paper, based on the distinction between emotion regulation strategies and abilities, we propose future directions for research on emotion regulation development in adolescence. We first present evidence that emotional, cognitive, and social changes that occur in adolescence are central in emotion regulation development. We then review empirical findings on emotion regulation development by tying them to their conceptual foundations. We discuss their limitations and argue that building better conceptual clarity is essential to study emotion regulation. Because current knowledge on recent concepts that emerged in adult‐based models remains limited and contested in adolescence, we end this article by discussing new research perspectives to provide a better understanding of the topic. We stress the need for researchers in the field to adopt a more contextualized and person‐oriented approach, to combine different time scales and methods, and examine the predictors of emotion regulation as well as its outcomes.
In recent years, fear of positive evaluation has emerged as one of the key aspects of social anxiety, alongside fear of negative evaluation. Fears of evaluation intensify during adolescence, a time when individuals are expected to navigate new, emotionally challenging situations. The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between social anxiety, fear of positive and negative evaluation, and three emotion regulation strategies relevant to social anxiety, i.e., suppression, acceptance, and rumination. To this end, data were collected from 647 adolescents via an online survey and analyzed using structural equation modeling. We found that fear of negative evaluation was significantly related to rumination, whereas fear of positive evaluation was significantly and negatively related to acceptance. We further found an indirect effect of social anxiety on suppression via fear of positive evaluation and acceptance in a serial mediation and an indirect effect of social anxiety on rumination via fear of negative evaluation. Not only do fears of positive and negative evaluation appear to be distinct constructs, but they are also differentially associated with three emotion regulation strategies pertinent to social anxiety. Fear of evaluation and its associations with emotion regulation deficits might hinder the therapeutic process by acting as a deterrent to positive reinforcement or potentially impeding the development of a successful therapeutic alliance.
Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent disorders among youth and understanding cognitive vulnerabilities for these disorders is crucial for early prevention and treatment. The present study examined the role of intolerance of uncertainty (IU) in predicting the severity of anxiety disorder symptoms among a sample of Iranian youth. The relationships between IU and anxiety disorder symptoms among youth [N = 683, ages 8–18, M (SD)age= 14.02 (2.43); 58.07% girls] with and without anxiety disorders, and their parents [N = 676, ages 27–58, M (SD)age= 40.63 (5.72); 61.8% female], were examined. Significant associations were found between youth- and parent-report IU and youth anxiety disorder symptoms. Youth with higher scores on total IU and prospective/inhibitory IU dimensions had significantly higher levels of anxiety disorder symptoms. Furthermore, youth-reported prospective/inhibitory IU were significantly related to specific youth anxiety and related disorder symptoms including generalized anxiety, separation anxiety, physical injury fears, obsessive-compulsive, social anxiety and panic/agoraphobia disorder symptoms. Findings provide cross-sectional support for the role of IU as a transdiagnostic feature in predicting a wide range of anxiety disorder symptoms in youth. Implications for future clinical applications are discussed.
The bias-corrected bootstrap confidence interval (BCBCI) was once the method of choice for conducting inference on the indirect effect in mediation analysis due to its high power in small samples, but now it is criticized by methodologists for its inflated type I error rates. In its place, the percentile bootstrap confidence interval (PBCI), which does not adjust for bias, is currently the recommended inferential method for indirect effects. This study proposes two alternative bias-corrected bootstrap methods for creating confidence intervals around the indirect effect: one originally used by Stine (1989) with the correlation coefficient, and a novel method that implements a reduced version of the BCBCI's bias correction. Using a Monte Carlo simulation, these methods were compared to the BCBCI, PBCI, and Chen and Fritz (2021)'s 30% Winsorized BCBCI. The results showed that the methods perform on a continuum, where the BCBCI has the best balance (i.e., having closest to an equal proportion of CIs falling above and below the true effect), highest power, and highest type I error rate; the PBCI has the worst balance, lowest power, and lowest type I error rate; and the alternative bias-corrected methods fall between these two methods on all three performance criteria. An extension of the original simulation that compared the bias-corrected methods to the PBCI after controlling for type I error rate inflation suggests that the increased power of these methods might only be due to their higher type I error rates. Thus, if control over the type I error rate is desired, the PBCI is still the recommended method for use with the indirect effect. Future research should examine the performance of these methods in the presence of missing data, confounding variables, and other real-world complications to enhance the generalizability of these results.
Literature reviews on how social media use affects adolescent mental health have accumulated at an unprecedented rate of late. Yet, a higher-level integration of the evidence is still lacking. We fill this gap with an up-to-date umbrella review, a review of reviews published between 2019 and mid 2021. Our search yielded 25 reviews: seven meta-analyses, nine systematic, and nine narrative reviews. Results showed that most reviews interpreted the associations between social media use and mental health as “weak” or “inconsistent,” whereas a few qualified the same associations as “substantial” and “deleterious.” We summarize the gaps identified in the reviews, provide an explanation for their diverging interpretations, and suggest several avenues for future research.
Introduction. Tasked-based emotion regulation (ER) is linked to enhanced connectivity between amygdala and cortical regions during resting-state. However, it is unclear whether task-based ER and its neural correlates are related to dispositional ER strategy use. The present study aimed to (1) replicate previous findings on differential cortico-limbic coupling during resting-state depending on dispositional ER strategy use; and (2) to examine whether differences in cortico-limbic coupling predict experiential and neuronal ER success in a standard ER task. All hypotheses and the analysis plan were preregistered at https://osf.io/8wsgu.
Methods. N = 117 adults completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), underwent an 8-min resting-state fMRI acquisition, and completed an ER task during fMRI. The sample size was more than twice as large as in the original study. Functional connectivity maps of the amygdala were associated with activity in predefined cortical regions, and correlated with ERQ scores, experiential, and neuronal ER success.
Results. Opposed to prior findings, we could not replicate a correlation of dispositional ER strategy use with cortico-limbic functional connectivity (p > 0.05, FWE-corrected). Furthermore, there was no association of experiential and neuronal ER success with cortico-limbic functional connectivity (p > 0.05, FWE-corrected). All data, materials, and code for reproducible analyses can be found at https://osf.io/p7hb5/.
Discussion. The present preregistered replication study calls into question the reported association between individual differences in resting-state cortico-limbic connectivity and dispositional ER strategy use. Ongoing advances in brain imaging and distributed network approaches may leverage the identification of reliable functional connectivity patterns that underlie successful ER.
Background
Social media use (SMU) has become highly prevalent in modern society, especially among young adults. Research has examined how SMU affects well-being, with some findings suggesting that SMU is related to social anxiety and loneliness. Socially anxious and lonely individuals appear to prefer and seek out online social interactions on social media.
Objective
This systematic review examines social anxiety (SA) and loneliness (LO) in the context of SMU.
Methods
A multi-database search was performed. Papers published prior to May 2020 relevant to SMU and SA and/or LO were reviewed.
Results
Both socially anxious and lonely individuals engage online more problematically and seek out social support on social media, potentially to compensate for lack of in-person support. SA and LO are associated with problematic SMU; LO appears to be a risk factor for engaging problematically online.
Conclusions
LO is a risk factor for problematic SMU. More research on the relationship between SA and SMU is needed. To date, problematic SMU has been defined in terms of frequency rather than pattern of use. Most research has relied on self-report cross-sectional examinations of these constructs. More experimental and longitudinal designs are needed to elucidate potential bidirectional relationships between SA, LO, and SMU.
Decades of research has pointed to emotion regulation (ER) as a critical ingredient for health, well-being, and social functioning. However, the vast majority of this research has examined ER in a social vacuum, despite the fact that in everyday life individuals frequently regulate their emotions with help from other people. The present collection of preregistered studies examined whether social help increases the efficacy of reappraisal, a widely studied ER strategy that involves changing how one thinks about emotional stimuli. In Study 1 (N = 40 friend pairs), we compared the efficacy of reinterpreting the content of negative stimuli alone (solo ER) to listening to a friend reinterpret the stimuli (social ER). We found that social ER was more effective than solo ER, and that the efficacy of these strategies was correlated within individuals. In Studies 2 and 3, we replicated effects from Study 1, and additionally tested alternate explanations for our findings. In Study 2 (N = 40 individuals), we failed to find evidence that social ER was more effective than solo ER due to a difference in the quality of reinterpretations, and in Study 3 (N = 40 friend pairs), we found that social help did not significantly attenuate negative affect in the absence of reappraisal. In sum, we found that social help selectively potentiates the efficacy of reappraisal, and that this effect was not merely the outcome of social buffering. Together, these results provide insight into how social relationships can directly lend a hand in implementing ER strategies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Background
Variation in EEG‐derived delta–beta coupling has recently emerged as a potential neural marker of emotion regulation, providing a novel and noninvasive method for assessing a risk factor for anxiety. However, our understanding of delta–beta coupling has been limited to group‐level comparisons, which provide limited information about an individual’s neural dynamics.
Methods
The present study used multilevel modeling to map second‐by‐second coupling patterns between delta and beta power. Specifically, we examined how inter‐ and intraindividual delta–beta coupling patterns changed as a function of social anxiety symptoms and temperamental behavioral inhibition (BI).
Results
We found that stronger inter‐ and intraindividual delta–beta coupling were both associated with social anxiety. In contrast, the high‐BI group showed weaker coupling relative to the non‐BI group, a pattern that did not emerge when analyzing continuous scores of BI.
Conclusions
In characterizing inter‐ and intraindividual coupling across the sample, we illustrate the utility of examining neural processes across levels of analysis in relation to psychopathology to create multilevel assessments of functioning and risk.
Neuroimaging functional connectivity analyses have shown that the negative coupling between amygdala and cortical regions is linked to better emotion regulation (ER) in experimental task settings. However, less is known about the neural correlates of ER traits or dispositions. The present study aimed to (1) replicate the findings of differential cortico-limbic coupling during resting state depending on the dispositional use of emotion regulation strategies. Furthermore, the study aimed to (2) extend prior findings by examining whether differences in cortico-limbic coupling during resting state predict experiential and neuronal ER success in a standard ER task. To this end, N=107 healthy adults completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), underwent an 8-min resting-state fMRI acquisition and completed a reappraisal task during fMRI. Functional connectivity maps of basolateral and centromedial amygdala nuclei were estimated with a seed-based approach regarding associations with regions of the prefrontal cortex, and were then correlated with ERQ scores as well as experiential and neuronal ER success. All hypotheses and the analysis plan are preregistered at https://osf.io/8wsgu. Opposed to prior findings, we were not able to replicate a correlation of dispositional ER strategy use with functional connectivity between amygdala and PFC regions (p > 0.05, FWE-corrected). Furthermore, there was no association of experiential and neuronal reappraisal success with functional connectivity between amygdala and insula as well as PFC (p > 0.05, FWE-corrected). The present preregistered study calls into question the reported association between individual differences in resting state cortico-limbic connectivity and dispositional use of ER strategies. However, ongoing advances in functional brain imaging and distributed network approaches may leverage the identification of reliable functional connectivity patterns that underlie successful emotion regulation.
In this review, we evaluate evidence for the hypothesis that developmental changes in emotion regulation tendencies during adolescence depend on the maturation of affective control. Affective control refers to the application of cognitive control to affective contexts, that is, the capacity to attend and respond to goal-relevant affective information, while inhibiting attention and responses toward distracting affective information. The evidence suggests that affective control develops throughout adolescence into adulthood. However, the developmental trajectory appears not to be uniform across different facets of affective control. In particular, the capacity to inhibit attention and responses to distracting affective information may be reduced during adolescence relative to childhood and adulthood. Focusing on the association between affective control and emotion regulation development in adolescence, the research reviewed supports the notion of affective control as a cognitive building block of successful emotion regulation. Good affective control appears related to fewer ruminative tendencies in adolescence as well as more frequent and successful reappraisal in older adolescents. Lower use of habitual suppression, itself a type of affective inhibition, shows an association with updating capacity. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for mental health and the potential mental health benefits associated with improving affective control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Introduction
The current study examined motivations for social networking site use across three years during the transition from late adolescence to emerging adulthood. While research has been conducted examining reasons for social networking site usage and behavior, the clear majority have focused on samples of undergraduate college students and are cross‐sectional.
Methods
Changes in motivations for using social networking sites were examined in relation to problematic social networking site use and several behavioral and mental health outcomes in a sample of adolescents over three years.
Results
Using social networking sites to connect with others was relatively stable over a three‐year period. However, using social networking sites to seek information increased from late adolescence to emerging adulthood and was not related to any negative outcomes across three years. Using social networking sites to alleviate boredom also increased over time. Initial levels of social media use to alleviate boredom were associated with problematic social networking site use, financial stress, anxiety, and empathy at year three. Increases in using social networking sites to socially connect over time was related to problematic social networking site use, anxiety, delinquency, and empathy at year three. Using social networking sites for any reason was not related to depressive symptoms over three years.
Conclusions
The current study supports the growing body of literature suggesting that using social networking sites to alleviate boredom and socially connect, may place individuals at increased risk for developing pathological tendencies and patterns of behavior towards social networking sites.
Background:
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) in adolescents may be associated with the use of maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) strategies. The present study examined the use of maladaptive and adaptive ER strategies in adolescents with SAD.
Methods:
30 adolescents with SAD (CLIN) and 36 healthy adolescents for the control group (CON) aged between 11 and 16 years were assessed with the standardized questionnaires PHOKI (Phobiefragebogen für Kinder und Jugendliche) for self-reported fears as well as FEEL-KJ (Fragebogen zur Erhebung der Emotionsregulation bei Kindern und Jugendlichen) for different emotion regulation strategies.
Results:
Compared to controls, adolescents with SAD used adaptive ER strategies significantly less often, but made use of maladaptive ER strategies significantly more often. There was a significant positive correlation between maladaptive ER and social anxiety in adolescents. Examining group differences of single ER strategy use, the CLIN and CON differed significantly in the use of the adaptive ER strategy reappraisal with CLIN reporting less use of reappraisal than CON. Group differences regarding the maladaptive ER strategies withdrawal and rumination, as well as the adaptive ER strategy problem-solving were found present, with CLIN reporting more use of withdrawal and rumination and less use of problem-solving than CON.
Conclusions:
Promoting adaptive emotion regulation should be a central component of psychotherapy (cognitive behavioral therapy-CBT) for social anxiety in adolescents from the beginning of the therapy process. These findings provide rationale for special therapy programs concentrating on the establishment of different adaptive ER strategies (including reappraisal). As an increased use of maladaptive ER may be associated with SAD in adolescents, it may be paramount to focus on reduction of maladaptive ER (for example withdrawal and rumination) from the beginning of the psychotherapy process. Incorporating more ER components into psychotherapy (CBT) could increase the treatment efficacy. Further investigations of the patterns of emotion regulation in specific anxiety groups like SAD in adolescents is needed to continue to optimize the psychotherapy (CBT) concept.
Existing literature provides a complicated picture of the relationship between digital media use and psychological outcomes. Both correlational and some experimental studies suggest that social media use specifically can be associated with diminished psychological functioning in adolescents and young adults. However, these effect sizes are not large, and must be considered in light of studies that suggest some positive outcomes associated with some uses of digital media, and a range of moderators of the identified associations. Although a growing body of evidence suggests that digital stress may be an important intervening factor between digital media use and psychosocial outcomes, this literature is complicated by multiple nomenclatures for similar or identical constructs. Our review of the literature suggests four potentially related components of digital stress, including availability stress, approval anxiety, fear of missing out, and communication overload. This conceptualization is consistent with recent published frameworks for understanding digital media’s influence on peer relationships. Clinicians working with adolescents and young adults are encouraged to assess digital media use in the context of clients’ overall psychological and social functioning, and in consideration of clients’ specific uses of media. Future research is needed to examine the associations among components of digital stress and clinical outcomes, and to provide valid measures to assess digital stress in research and clinical settings.
Despite the pervasive use of computer-mediated communication, relatively little is known about its implications for emotional adjustment. Recent studies suggest that a preference for computer-mediated communication over other types of communication is associated with emotional vulnerabilities, and its active forms (e.g., direct communication) confer psychosocial benefits compared its passive forms (e.g., browsing Facebook). In this study, we simultaneously examined quality, quantity, and preferences for computer-mediated communication in relation to emotional competencies (emotion detection and regulation) and emotional well-being (self-report of mood and anxiety symptoms). In Study 1, participants (N = 123) completed a facial morphing task, a computerized assessment of the speed and accuracy of emotion detection, and the Social Media and Communication Questionnaire assessing quantity and preferences to communicate via computer-mediated communication versus face-to-face. More use of computer-mediated communication along with preferring it for casual communication, was associated with faster and more accurate emotion detection. More use of computer-mediated communication, along with preferring it for positive communication and expressing distress, was associated with more difficulties with emotion regulation. Study 2 (N = 32) added a task-based assessment of active and passive Facebook use in relation to measures of emotional functioning in Study 1. More active Facebook use was associated with greater emotional well-being, whereas more passive Facebook use was associated with less emotional well-being. Active and passive Facebook use was not significantly associated with self-report of broader computer-mediated communication preferences. Together, results suggest that greater use and preference for computer-mediated versus face-to-face communication may be related to heightened emotional sensitivity and more problems with emotion regulation, yet active versus passive use may serve to bolster emotional well-being.
While numerous studies suggest that emotion dysregulation is important in maintaining social anxiety among adults, the role of emotion regulation in children and adolescents with social anxiety is not yet well understood. In this systematic review, we use the process model of emotion regulation as a framework for understanding emotion regulation in children and adolescents with social anxiety. We performed a systematic literature search in the electronic data bases Medline and PsycINFO. Additional studies were identified by hand search. We identified 683 studies, screened their titles and abstracts, viewed 142 studies, and included 55 of these. Study results indicate that children and adolescents with social anxiety disorder or high social anxiety show emotion dysregulation across all five domains of emotion regulation, such as enhanced social avoidance, more safety behaviors, repetitive negative thinking, biased attention and interpretation of social information, and reduced emotional expression. While enhanced social avoidance seems to be specific to childhood social anxiety, other maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, such as repetitive negative thinking, seem to occur transdiagnostically across different childhood anxiety disorders. Implications for current theory, interventions and future research are discussed.
While becoming inextricable to our daily lives, online social media are blamed for increasing mental health problems in younger people. This systematic review synthesized evidence on the influence of social media use on depression, anxiety and psychological distress in adolescents. A search of PsycINFO, Medline, Embase, CINAHL and SSCI databases reaped 13 eligible studies, of which 12 were cross-sectional. Findings were classified into four domains of social media: time spent, activity, investment and addiction. All domains correlated with depression, anxiety and psychological distress. However, there are considerable caveats due to methodological limitations of cross-sectional design, sampling and measures. Mechanisms of the putative effects of social media on mental health should be explored further through qualitative enquiry and longitudinal cohort studies.
Resting state vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) is related to difficulties in emotion regulation (ER). The prefrontal cortex (PFC) provides inhibitory control over the amygdala during ER. Previous studies linked vmHRV with activity in the ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) during implicit ER. To date no study examined the relation between vmHRV and brain activity during explicit ER. vmHRV was measured during a 7 min baseline at T1 2–5 days preceding T2. At T2 n = 24 participants (50% female, Mage = 24.6 years) viewed neutral or emotional pictures of pleasant or unpleasant valence and were instructed to intensify or to reduce their present emotion using two ER strategies (reappraisal and response modulation) or to passively view the picture. Participants rated the valence of their emotional state from pleasant to unpleasant after ER. Whole-brain fMRI data were collected using a 1.5-T-scanner. We observed an association between resting state vmHRV and brain activation in the PFC and the amygdala during ER of unpleasant emotions. Groups based on vmHRV showed significant differences in the modulation of amygdala activity as a function of ER strategy. In participants with high vmHRV amygdala activity was modulated only when using reappraisal and for low vmHRV participants only when using response modulation. Similar, dorsomedial PFC activity in high vmHRV participants was increased when using reappraisal and in low vmHRV participants when using response modulation to regulate unpleasant emotions. These results suggest that individuals with low vmHRV might have difficulties in recruiting prefrontal brain areas necessary for the modulation of amygdala activity during explicit ER.
A new measure, the Online Social Support Scale, was developed based on previous theory, research, and measurement of in-person social support. It includes four subscales: Esteem/Emotional Support, Social Companionship, Informational Support, and Instrumental Support. In college and community samples, factor analytic and item response theory results suggest that subtypes of in-person social support also pertain in the online world. Evidence of reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity provide excellent psychometric support for the measure. Construct validity accrues to the measure vis-à-vis support for three hypotheses: (a) Various broad types of Internet platforms for social interactions are differentially associated with online social support and online victimization; (b) similar to in-person social support, online social support offsets the adverse effect of negative life events on self-esteem and depression-related outcome; and (c) online social support counteracts the effects of online victimization in much the same way that in-person friends in one social niche counterbalance rejection in other social niches.
As social media use becomes increasingly widespread among adolescents, research in this area has accumulated rapidly. Researchers have shown a growing interest in the impact of social media on adolescents’ peer experiences, including the ways that the social media context shapes a variety of peer relations constructs. This paper represents Part 2 of a two-part theoretical review. In this review, we offer a new model for understanding the transformative role of social media in adolescents’ peer experiences, with the goal of stimulating future empirical work that is grounded in theory. The transformation framework suggests that the features of the social media context transform adolescents’ peer experiences by changing their frequency or immediacy, amplifying demands, altering their qualitative nature, and/or offering new opportunities for compensatory or novel behaviors. In the current paper, we consider the ways that social media may transform peer relations constructs that often occur at the group level. Our review focuses on three key constructs: peer victimization, peer status, and peer influence. We selectively review and highlight existing evidence for the transformation of these domains through social media. In addition, we discuss methodological considerations and key conceptual principles for future work. The current framework offers a new theoretical perspective through which peer relations researchers may consider adolescent social media use.
Investigators have long recognized that adolescents’ peer experiences provide a crucial context for the acquisition of developmental competencies, as well as potential risks for a range of adjustment difficulties. However, recent years have seen an exponential increase in adolescents’ adoption of social media tools, fundamentally reshaping the landscape of adolescent peer interactions. Although research has begun to examine social media use among adolescents, researchers have lacked a unifying framework for understanding the impact of social media on adolescents’ peer experiences. This paper represents Part 1 of a two-part theoretical review, in which we offer a transformation framework to integrate interdisciplinary social media scholarship and guide future work on social media use and peer relations from a theory-driven perspective. We draw on prior conceptualizations of social media as a distinct interpersonal context and apply this understanding to adolescents’ peer experiences, outlining features of social media with particular relevance to adolescent peer relations. We argue that social media transforms adolescent peer relationships in five key ways: by changing the frequency or immediacy of experiences, amplifying experiences and demands, altering the qualitative nature of interactions, facilitating new opportunities for compensatory behaviors, and creating entirely novel behaviors. We offer an illustration of the transformation framework applied to adolescents’ dyadic friendship processes (i.e., experiences typically occurring between two individuals), reviewing existing evidence and offering theoretical implications. Overall, the transformation framework represents a departure from the prevailing approaches of prior peer relations work and a new model for understanding peer relations in the social media context.
Susceptibility to social influence is associated with a host of negative outcomes during adolescence. However, emerging evidence implicates the role of peers and parents in adolescents' positive and adaptive adjustment. Hence, in this chapter we highlight social influence as an opportunity for promoting social adjustment, which can redirect negative trajectories and help adolescents thrive. We discuss influential models about the processes underlying social influence, with a particular emphasis on internalizing social norms, embedded in social learning and social identity theory. We link this behavioral work to developmental social neuroscience research, rooted in neurobiological models of decision making and social cognition. Work from this perspective suggests that the adolescent brain is highly malleable and particularly oriented toward the social world, which may account for heightened susceptibility to social influences during this developmental period. This chapter underscores the need to leverage social influences during adolescence, even beyond the family and peer context, to promote positive developmental outcomes. By further probing the underlying neural mechanisms as an additional layer to examining social influence on positive youth development, we will be able to gain traction on our understanding of this complex phenomenon.
This study investigated adolescent and parent reports of adolescent social media use and its relation to adolescent psychosocial adjustment. The sample consisted of 226 participants (113 parent-adolescent dyads) from throughout the United States, with adolescents (55 males, 51 females, 7 unreported) ranging from ages 14 to 17. Parent and adolescent reports of the number of adolescents' social media accounts were moderately correlated with parent-reported DSM-5 symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity, ODD, anxiety, and depressive symptoms, as well as adolescent-reported fear of missing out (FoMO) and loneliness. Lastly, anxiety and depressive symptoms were highest among adolescents with a relatively high number of parent-reported social media accounts and relatively high FoMO. The implications of these findings and need for related longitudinal studies are discussed.
Neuroimaging functional connectivity (FC) analyses have shown that the negative coupling between the amygdala and cortical regions is linked to better emotion regulation in experimental settings. Nevertheless, no studies have examined the association between resting-state cortico-amygdalar FC and the dispositional use of emotion regulation strategies. We aim at assessing the relationship between the resting-state FC patterns of two different amygdala territories, with different functions in the emotion response process, and trait-like measures of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Forty-eight healthy controls completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) and underwent a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging acquisition. FC maps of basolateral and centromedial amygdala (BLA/CMA) with different cortical areas were estimated with a seed-based approach, and were then correlated with reappraisal and suppression scores from the ERQ. FC between left BLA and left insula and right BLA and the supplementary motor area (SMA) correlated inversely with reappraisal scores. Conversely, FC between left BLA and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex correlated directly with suppression scores. Finally, FC between left CMA and the SMA was inversely correlated with suppression. Top-down regulation from the SMA seems to account for the dispositional use of both reappraisal and suppression depending on the specific amygdala nucleus being modulated. In addition, modulation of amygdala activity from cingulate and insular cortices seem to also account for the habitual use of the different emotion regulation strategies.
In this meta-analytic and narrative review, we examine several overarching issues related to the study of coping, emotion regulation, and internalizing and externalizing symptoms of psychopathology in childhood and adolescence, including the conceptualization and measurement of these constructs. We report a quantitative meta-analysis of 212 studies (N = 80,850 participants) that measured the associations between coping and emotion regulation with symptoms of internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. Within the meta-analysis we address the association of broad domains of coping and emotion regulation (e.g., total coping, emotion regulation), intermediate factors of coping and emotion regulation (e.g., primary control coping, secondary control coping), and specific coping and emotion regulation strategies (e.g., emotional expression, cognitive reappraisal) with internalizing and externalizing symptoms. For cross-sectional studies, which made up the majority of studies included, we examine 3 potential moderators: age, measure quality, and single versus multiple informants. Finally, we separately consider findings from longitudinal studies as these provide stronger tests of the effects. After accounting for publication bias, findings indicate that the broad domain of emotion regulation and adaptive coping and the factors of primary control coping and secondary control coping are related to lower levels of symptoms of psychopathology. Further, the domain of maladaptive coping, the factor of disengagement coping, and the strategies of emotional suppression, avoidance, and denial are related to higher levels of symptoms of psychopathology. Finally, we offer a critique of the current state of the field and outline an agenda for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record
Screen time is negatively associated with markers of health in western youth, but very little is known about these relationships in Chinese youth. Middle-school and high-school students (n = 2625) in Wuhan, China, completed questionnaires assessing demographics, health behaviors, and self-perceptions in spring/summer 2016. Linear and logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine whether, after adjustment for covariates, screen time was associated with body mass index (BMI), eating behaviors, average nightly hours of sleep, physical activity (PA), academic performance, and psychological states. Watching television on school days was negatively associated with academic performance, PA, anxiety, and life satisfaction. Television viewing on non-school days was positively associated with sleep duration. Playing electronic games was positively associated with snacking at night and less frequently eating breakfast, and negatively associated with sleep duration and self-esteem. Receiving electronic news and study materials on non-school days was negatively associated with PA, but on school days, was positively associated with anxiety. Using social networking sites was negatively associated with academic performance, but positively associated with BMI z-score, PA and anxiety. Screen time in adolescents is associated with unhealthy behaviors and undesirable psychological states that can contribute to poor quality of life.
Dysfunctional emotion regulation is an important predictor of psychopathology. Although many clinical programs focus on emotion regulation skills, the successful application of these programs in children and adolescents requires knowledge on the normative use of emotion regulation strategies over age. To this end, the current cross-sectional study examined changes in emotion regulation throughout childhood and adolescence. The use of seven adaptive and five maladaptive emotion regulation strategies was measured with the FEEL-KJ in a representative sample (N = 1397) of Dutch children and adolescents between 8 and 18 years old. Overall, the results indicated reduced use of adaptive strategies and increased use of maladaptive strategies in participants between 12 and 15 years old compared with younger or older participants. The findings of the current study indicate that adolescence is characterized by a maladaptive shift in emotion regulation. Given that the continued use of dysfunctional emotion regulation plays an important role in the development and maintenance of psychopathology, these results highlight the importance of prevention and treatment programs focused on emotion regulation to shield vulnerable adolescents against mental illness. Full text is available at http://rdcu.be/pccS.
Despite social media use being one of the most popular activities among adolescents, prevalence estimates among teenage samples of social media (problematic) use are lacking in the field. The present study surveyed a nationally representative Hungarian sample comprising 5,961 adolescents as part of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD). Using the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) and based on latent profile analysis, 4.5% of the adolescents belonged to the at-risk group, and reported low self-esteem, high level of depression symptoms, and elevated social media use. Results also demonstrated that BSMAS has appropriate psychometric properties. It is concluded that adolescents at-risk of problematic social media use should be targeted by school-based prevention and intervention programs.
The role of emotion regulation in subclinical symptoms of mental disorders in adolescence is not yet well understood. This meta-analytic review examines the relationship between the habitual use of prominent adaptive emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal, problem solving, and acceptance) and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (avoidance, suppression, and rumination) with depressive and anxiety symptoms in adolescence. Analyzing 68 effect sizes from 35 studies, we calculated overall outcomes across depressive and anxiety symptoms as well as psychopathology-specific outcomes. Age was examined as a continuous moderator via meta-regression models. The results from random effects analyses revealed that the habitual use of all emotion regulation strategies was significantly related to depressive and anxiety symptoms overall, with the adaptive emotion regulation strategies showing negative associations (i.e., less symptoms) with depressive and anxiety symptoms whereas the maladaptive emotion regulation strategies showed positive associations (i.e., more symptoms). A less frequent use of adaptive and a more frequent use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies were associated with depressive and anxiety symptoms comparably in the respective directions. Regarding the psychopathology-specific outcomes, depressive and anxiety symptoms displayed similar patterns across emotion regulation strategies showing the strongest negative associations with acceptance, and strongest positive associations with avoidance and rumination. The findings underscore the relevance of adaptive and also maladaptive emotion regulation strategies in depressive and anxiety symptoms in youth, and highlight the need to further investigate the patterns of emotion regulation as a potential transdiagnostic factor.
Despite societal and empirical interest in the impact of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on anxiety in adolescents, little is known about the associations between specific aspects of CMC use and anxiety severity and the role of individual vulnerability factors. In this study, we examined the links between two contexts of CMC, preference for CMC over face-to-face interactions and perceived social media social media burden, along with an anxiety-related cognitive vulnerability factor and attention bias to threat. Participants were mildly to severely anxious 12- to 14-year-olds (N = 78, Mage = 12.89, 55% female). They self-reported on CMC preferences and social media burden and on anxiety symptoms in two domains (generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and social anxiety) and completed an eye-tracking assessment of attention bias. We tested the hypothesis that preferring CMC over face-to-face communications and perceiving greater social media burden would predict more severe anxiety symptoms, particularly among those with greater attention bias to threat. As predicted, greater feelings of social media burden predicted more severe anxiety symptom severity (GAD only) but only among those with greater attention bias to threat. The potential role of attention bias in associations between CMC and adolescent anxiety and the specificity of effects on GAD symptom severity is discussed.
Emotion regulation (ER), the ability to flexibly monitor and modify emotions, is related to positive adjustment throughout the lifespan. Biological indexes of ER in childhood that predict behavior are valuable for clinical applications and our understanding of affective neurodevelopment. Delta-beta correlation (DBC), or the coupling between resting state slow-wave (delta) and fast-wave (beta) neural oscillations derived from EEG, may be a metric of the functional coherence between subcortical and cortical neural circuitry implicated in ER. Yet, little is understood about how DBC corresponds to observed ER during emotional challenges. To address this question, in the present study, resting-state EEG was recorded to generate DBC when children were 5 to 7 years old (T1) and again two years later (T2). Children also completed two emotionally challenging behavioral tasks [delay of gratification (DoG) task and waiting task (WT)] from which observed ER strategies were subsequently coded. Results showed that higher DBC was associated with greater use of adaptive, and relatively active, ER strategies. Specifically, higher frontal DBC at T1 longitudinally predicted greater use of the ER strategy alternative activity engagement and greater parent-reported positive ER at T2. These findings add to growing evidence supporting the use of resting state DBC as a neurophysiological index of ER with clinically and developmentally relevant predictive power.
Adolescence is a dynamic period for the development of emotion regulation. For many individuals, emotion regulation skills improve dramatically during adolescence. However, for some youth adolescence marks the beginning or worsening of psychopathology characterized by difficulties with emotion regulation. In the present review, I describe evidence that caregiving experiences play an outsized role in shaping interindividual variability in emotion regulation during adolescence. After describing work demonstrating links between caregiving – with an emphasis on parental socialization practices – and emotion regulation outcomes, I characterize our current understanding of how behavioral and neurobiological indices of emotion regulation develop normatively across adolescence. Using cognitive reappraisal as an exemplar emotion regulation strategy, I outline ways that caregiving might impact interindividual variability in emotion regulation neurodevelopment. I conclude by identifying two key future directions for adolescent emotion regulation research.
Intolerance of uncertainty (IU) is the trait propensity to react negatively to uncertainty. To date, very few studies have explored early childhood predictors of IU. The current study identifies relations between child temperament assessed at age 3 (N = 559) and IU assessed at ages 12 (N = 432) and 15 (N = 415). Temperament was assessed through both laboratory observation (Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery) and maternal report (Children’s Behavior Questionnaire). IU was assessed through both maternal rating and child self-report using the 12-item Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale for Children. Higher levels of temperamental negative emotionality/neuroticism and lower levels of temperamental positive emotionality/extraversion assessed at age 3 predicted higher levels of IU in early-mid adolescence. Unique relationships were found at the trait facet level, and differences were observed between informants. These findings suggest that certain early child temperament traits can serve as markers of risk for difficulty dealing with uncertainty later in life. Future research should explore whether this relationship translates to increased risk for psychopathology.
Social media (SM) use has increasingly changed how adolescents interact with their peers, yet it remains unclear how peer interactions on social media differ from in-person peer interactions. The current study evaluated whether the context (social media or in-person) of adolescent girls’ worst and best peer interactions influenced their emotional responses to peer interactions and sustained affect in everyday life. In this study, a total of 110 adolescent girls (11–13 years old; mean age = 12.28 years) completed ecological momentary assessment (EMA) for 16 days following an initial baseline visit. Participants reported their worst (i.e., most negative) and best (i.e., most positive) interactions with peers since the last prompt, the context in which it occurred (social media or in-person), emotional reactivity during the interaction, and momentary affect. Multilevel models indicated that negative peer interactions that occurred on social media were more likely to be associated with sustained negative affect, but not negative emotional reactivity during the interaction. Positive interactions on social media were more likely to be associated with both lower positive emotional reactivity and lower sustained positive affect. Findings indicate that peer interactions on social media may differentially impact girls’ emotional reactivity and sustained affect, particularly for positive interactions with peers. Findings highlight that social media and in-person peer interactions may impact how girls experience and respond to positive and negative peer interactions, which may have implications for peer relationships and onset of psychopathology during this vulnerable period.
Smartphones have become a seemingly indispensable device in everyday life. Although research on this phenomenon has mostly investigated the intensive use of smartphones as a risky behavior, recent studies suggest that different types of use can lead to positive outcomes. This study investigated the moderating role of emotion regulation in the association between smartphone use and functional impairment, and between smartphone use and psychological well-being, besides exploring moderating effects of types of smartphone use. A total of 308 individuals participated in an online survey. Participants responded to standardized measures of emotion regulation strategies, psychological well-being, and functional impairment, and reported on their smartphone use including actual hours of use recorded on their smartphone. As expected, smartphone use was negatively associated with psychological well-being; however, cognitive reappraisal presented a moderating effect, weakening this relationship. When cognitive reappraisal was associated with use for communication, this negative relationship was even weaker. On the other hand, while smartphone use was positively associated with functional impairment, emotion suppression presented a moderating effect, strengthening this relationship. And when emotion suppression was associated with use for entertainment, this association became even stronger. The findings demonstrate that implications of smartphone use vary according to types of use and emotion regulation strategies.
Background
This study examined the longitudinal associations between social media use, co-rumination (repeatedly discussing personal problems with peers), and internalizing symptoms during early adolescence.
Methods
Self-report measures were administered to a diverse sample of 1,205 early adolescents (51% girls; 51% non-Hispanic White; Mage= 12.75, SD = .71) at three time points (during the fall of 2016, spring of 2017, and fall of 2017).
Results
Findings indicated that daily social media use predicted engagement in co-rumination, which in turn predicted increases in internalizing symptoms. Specifically, co-rumination significantly mediated social media use and anxiety symptoms.
Limitations
Study limitations include the use of self-report data and the geographically limited sample (restricted to the Northeastern United States).
Conclusions
Findings from this study highlight an important interpersonal pathway by which social media use may confer risk for internalizing problems. Prevention and intervention programs designed to reduce the negative effects that social media use may have on adolescent internalizing problems should target co-rumination as a modifiable behavior and provide skills training in the use of more positive, adaptive coping strategies.
Positive shyness is thought to be an approach‐dominant form of shyness, whereas non‐positive shyness is thought to be an avoidance‐dominant form of shyness. This study examined electrocortical and behavioral correlates of motivation and emotion in relation to these shy subtypes in 67 children (Mage = 10.41 years, SD = 3.23). Using resting state electroencephalography, findings revealed that positive shy and low shy children had greater relative left frontal alpha asymmetry compared to non‐positive shy children, and positive shy children had a higher frontal delta–beta correlation compared to other groups. Non‐positive shy children scored highest on parent‐reported school avoidance. These findings converge with previous work reporting distinct correlates in positive and non‐positive shyness, extending this to two brain measures of motivation and emotion.
Many studies have found a link between time spent using social media and mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety. However, the existing research is plagued by cross-sectional research and lacks analytic techniques examining individual change over time. The current research involves an 8-year longitudinal study examining the association between time spent using social media and depression and anxiety at the intraindividual level. Participants included 500 adolescents who completed once-yearly questionnaires between the
ages of 13 and 20. Results revealed that increased time spent on social media was not associated with increased mental health issues across development when examined at the individual level. Hopefully these results can move the field of research beyond its past focus on screen time.
Heightened delta-beta correlation has been conceptualized as reflecting exaggerated neural regulation and has been implicated in anxiety. Behavioral inhibition (BI) is a temperament characterized by wariness to novelty and is a robust predictor of anxiety, but delta-beta correlation has not been investigated in relation to childhood BI. We examined the relation between BI and between-subjects (i.e., across participants) and within-subjects (i.e., across data epochs) measures of baseline EEG delta-beta correlation in 118 children. Using a between-subjects measure, children scoring high on BI had higher delta-beta correlation relative to low BI children at frontal and central, and marginally higher in parietal, brain regions. Using a within-subjects measure, continuous BI scores were positively correlated with central and parietal delta-beta correlation. Delta-beta correlation may be a neural correlate of BI in childhood that displays differences in region specificity, correlation strength, and variability of correlation values when comparing between- and within-subjects measures.
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) are highly comorbid, and together they result in greater functional impairment and a poorer prognosis than either condition alone. Theoretical models implicate impairments in emotion regulation in the development and maintenance of internalizing disorders, yet there has been no systematic comparison of emotion regulation in social anxiety and depression. The current review presents an in-depth examination of the literature on two widely-studied emotion regulation strategies, expressive suppression (ES) and cognitive reappraisal (CR), in SAD and MDD. Our review indicated that SAD is broadly characterized by an overreliance on ES, which is associated with negative social and emotional consequences. SAD is also characterized by ineffective utilization of CR, which inhibits the potential positive emotional benefits of this adaptive emotion regulation strategy. In contrast, MDD is broadly characterized by an underutilization of CR, which may be particularly detrimental in stressful or uncontrollable situations. For both SAD and MDD, treatment intervention appears to address deficits in CR but not ES. After reviewing the literature, we propose multiple pathways by which impairments in ES and CR may increase risk for the co-occurrence of SAD and MDD. Clinical implications and future research directions are also discussed.
Effortful control (EC) is characterized by the ability to effectively inhibit and execute behaviors that are adaptively attuned to a specific context. Two event-related potentials (ERPs) known as the error-related negativity (ERN) and N2 are thought to measure EC, but the nature and function of these neural markers are not well understood in children. The present study provides the first comprehensive meta-analytic review of mean-level amplitude differences in the ERN and N2 from childhood to adolescence to quantify developmental changes in their magnitudes. I propose a developmental perspective on the conflict monitoring theory that facilitates evaluation of the claim that the ERN and N2 are measures of EC. As children’s ability to correct their errors improves with age, increased post-response processing generated by the larger discrepancy between error and correct trials is expected to be characterized by increases in the ERN. As children’s ability to ignore distracting information improves with age, decreased processing of irrelevant information is expected to be characterized by decreases in the N2. Meta-analysis of ERN studies (k = 26; N = 1, 519) and N2 studies (k = 19; N = 1, 095) indicated a 0.02 µV increase in ERN amplitude per month and 0.02 µV reduction per month in N2 amplitude across childhood and adolescence. These results are consistent with the hypotheses based on the proposed developmental account of the conflict monitoring theory. Findings suggest that there may be dissociable age effects of the ERN and N2 that are related to the development of EC.
Recent research has shown that social networking sites (SNS) use is a risk factor for depression, but little research has studied the relation between SNS addiction and depression, and less is known about the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this relation. The present study examined whether rumination mediated the relation between SNS addiction and depression, and whether the mediating effect was moderated by self-esteem. Our theoretical model was tested using concurrent data collected from 365 Chinese adolescents. The participants completed the measures of SNS addiction, depression, rumination, and self-esteem. The results indicated that SNS addiction was positively associated with depression. Mediation analysis indicated that rumination mediated the relation between SNS addiction and depression. Moderated mediated analysis further revealed that the path between rumination and depression was stronger for individuals with lower self-esteem than individuals with higher self-esteem. Limitations and implications of this study were discussed.
Background:
Anxiety disorders are common in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and frequently comorbid with other mental disorders.
Objective:
The main aim of the present study was to examine the incidence, recurrence and comorbidity rates of anxiety disorders across four developmental periods, namely, during childhood (5 - 12.9 years), adolescence (13 - 17.9 years), emerging adulthood (18 - 23.9 years), and adulthood (24 - 30 years).
Method:
Eight hundred and sixteen participants from a large community sample were interviewed twice during adolescence, at age 24, and at age 30. They completed self-report measures of psychosocial functioning and semi-structured diagnostic interviews during adolescence and adulthood.
Results:
The result showed first incidence of anxiety disorders to be significantly higher in childhood and adulthood than in adolescence and emerging adulthood. Female gender was associated with first incidence, but not with recurrence. Significant comorbidity was found between anxiety disorders and major depressive disorder (MDD) across the four developmental periods. The comorbidity between anxiety and substance use disorders (SUD) was significant in childhood, emerging adulthood and adulthood, but not in adolescence. The presence of anxiety disorders during childhood and adolescence significantly increased the probability of having an anxiety disorder during emerging adulthood.
Limitations:
The participants are ethically and geographically homogenous.
Conclusion:
Incidence and recurrence rates of anxiety disorders differed across four diverse developmental periods. The magnitude of comorbidity between anxiety disorders and MDD was comparable across periods.
In this article, we highlight the importance of dynamic reorganization of neural circuitry during adolescence, as it relates to the development of emotion reactivity and regulation. We offer a neurobiological account of hierarchical, circuit-based changes that coincide with emotional development during this time. Recent imaging studies suggest that the development of the emotional brain involves a cascade of changes in limbic and cognitive control circuitry. These changes are particularly pronounced during adolescence, when the demand for self regulation across a variety of emotional and social situations may be greatest. We propose that hierarchical changes in circuitry, from subcortico-subcortical to subcortico-cortical to cortico-subcortical and finally to cortico-cortical, may underlie the gradual changes in emotion reactivity and regulation throughout adolescence into young adulthood, with changes at each level being necessary for the instantiation of changes at the next level.
There are growing concerns about the impact of digital technologies on children's emotional well-being, particularly regarding fear, anxiety, and depression. The 2 mental health categories of anxiety and depression will be discussed together because there is significant symptom overlap and comorbidity. Early research has explored the impact of traditional media (eg, television, movies) on children's acute fears, which can result in anxieties and related sleep disturbances that are difficult to remedy. More recent research deals with the interactive nature of newer media, especially social media, and their impacts on anxiety and depression. Key topics of inquiry include the following: anxiety and depression associated with technology-based negative social comparison, anxiety resulting from lack of emotion-regulation skills because of substituted digital media use, social anxiety from avoidance of social interaction because of substituted digital media use, anxiety because of worries about being inadequately connected, and anxiety, depression, and suicide as the result of cyberbullying and related behavior. A growing body of research confirms the relationship between digital media and depression. Although there is evidence that greater electronic media use is associated with depressive symptoms, there is also evidence that the social nature of digital communication may be harnessed in some situations to improve mood and to promote health-enhancing strategies. Much more research is needed to explore these possibilities.
Mediation of X’s effect on Y through a mediator M is moderated if the indirect effect of X depends on a fourth variable. Hayes [(2015). An index and test of linear moderated mediation. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 50, 1–22. doi:10.1080/00273171.2014.962683] introduced an approach to testing a moderated mediation hypothesis based on an index of moderated mediation. Here, I extend this approach to models with more than one moderator. I describe how to test if X’s indirect effect on Y is moderated by one variable when a second moderator is held constant (partial moderated mediation), conditioned on (conditional moderated mediation), or dependent on a second moderator (moderated moderated mediation). Examples are provided, as is a discussion of the visualization of indirect effects and an illustration of implementation in the PROCESS macro for SPSS and SAS.