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TYPE Original Research
PUBLISHED 24 July 2024
DOI 10.3389/fdpys.2024.1419756
OPEN ACCESS
EDITED BY
Christian Berger,
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile
REVIEWED BY
Shelia Kennison,
Oklahoma State University, United States
Raquel António,
University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE), Portugal
*CORRESPONDENCE
Elizabeth Al-Jbouri
ealjbouri@brocku.ca
RECEIVED 18 April 2024
ACCEPTED 08 July 2024
PUBLISHED 24 July 2024
CITATION
Al-Jbouri E, Volk AA, Spadafora N and
Andrews NCZ (2024) Friends, followers, peers,
and posts: adolescents’ in-person and online
friendship networks and social media use
influences on friendship closeness via the
importance of technology for social
connection. Front. Dev. Psychol. 2:1419756.
doi: 10.3389/fdpys.2024.1419756
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Friends, followers, peers, and
posts: adolescents’ in-person and
online friendship networks and
social media use influences on
friendship closeness via the
importance of technology for
social connection
Elizabeth Al-Jbouri*, Anthony A. Volk, Natalie Spadafora and
Naomi C. Z. Andrews
Department of Child and Youth Studies, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada
Introduction: With the proliferation of smartphones, social media access and
use is ubiquitous. As such, many adolescent friendships now comprise both in-
person and online contexts. Our paper explores the relationship between these
contexts in two parts: the first is an exploratory comparison of in-person and
online friendship networks with peers at school using descriptive social network
analysis; the second, an investigation of how the use of dierent social media
platforms relates to the importance placed on social media for connectedness
and friendship closeness.
Methods: Participants were 547 adolescents (M=15.25 years, 52% male, 55%
white) from six schools in Southern Ontario, Canada. Participants completed
a peer nomination survey on their relationships with peers at school and a
self-report survey on social media use.
Results: While in-person and online networks are largely overlapping, there
are important dierences between the two. Results from the path analyses
suggest that length of cell phone usage, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube
were positively associated with the importance placed on technology for social
connection and that this importance was also positively associated with feelings
of friendship closeness. Daily cell phone usage, Instagram, and Snapchat use
were positively indirectly associated with friendship closeness through the
importance of technology for social connection.
Discussion: Our findings also suggest slight gender dierences, with daily
time spent on a smartphone only significantly positively associated with the
importance of technology for social connection for girls. Implications for future
study are discussed.
KEYWORDS
peer relationships, adolescence, friendship, social media, friendship closeness
Introduction
Canadian youth report that socialization is their number one reason for using the
internet (MediaSmarts, 2022). Much of this internet use takes place on social media
platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Social media is ubiquitous and easily
accessible, with almost 80% of adolescents owning their own smartphones (Moreno et al.,
2022;Moreno and Radesky, 2023). With friendships serving as the most important social
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Al-Jbouri et al. 10.3389/fdpys.2024.1419756
relationships for this developmental period (Bukowski et al., 1996),
investigating the role of technologies (such as social media) as a
context for friendship is critical.
Blakemore and Mills (2014) argue that not only is adolescence
a developmentally sensitive period, but also a period during which
individuals are particularly sensitive to cultural shifts, including
those related to technology. Extant literature struggles to keep pace
with the cultural shifts around adolescent social media use. For
example, adolescents are slowly leaving platforms such as Facebook
and moving on to other platforms (Van Zalk, 2020;MediaSmarts,
2022). As such, it is necessary that research investigates the use
of social media platforms that contemporary youth are actually
using in their day to day lives, such as TikTok and Snapchat,
which are largely absent from the extant literature. By examining
the platforms that adolescents are using with their friends, we aim
to investigate how adolescents’ friendships unfold, in-person and
online, and how these dynamic friendship contexts may or may not
overlap. Further, it is important to consider the role of the different
social media platforms and how their use might be influenced by
characteristics, such as gender and social connection, to influence
their feelings of friendship closeness.
To investigate these questions, we must first discuss friendship
and why it is particularity important in adolescence. Friendship
is generally defined as a voluntary relationship predicated on
liking, reciprocity, and commitment (e.g., Bukowski et al., 1996;
Hartup, 1996;Bagwell et al., 2021). During adolescence there
is a significant shift from the family to the peer group, with
friends taking on the role of primary agents of socialization
(Bukowski et al., 2011;Bagwell and Schmidt, 2013). Compared
to childhood friendships, adolescent friendships are characterized
by greater opportunities for intimacy and equality, and they take
on a more abstract, relational quality, compared to earlier, more
concrete, self-centered, and play-based relationships (Bukowski
et al., 2011). In the adolescent years (13–19 years old), increasingly
sophisticated relational capacities emerge, including those related
to “sustained mutuality, perspective taking, intimacy, loyalty,
reciprocity, commitment, and equality” (White et al., 2018, p.
270). Thus, the formation and maintenance of friendships is a
key developmental task in adolescence (e.g., Bagwell and Schmidt,
2013).
It is not just the formation and maintenance of friendships that
matter, but also the characteristics of those friendships. Across the
lifespan, closeness is a key characteristic of friendships (Johnson
et al., 2003;Rubin et al., 2006). Closeness refers to the modes of
engagement, interaction, and expression between friends (Polimeni
et al., 2002). Friendships throughout the life course exist on a
continuum of intimacy (e.g., Jeske, 2019) and greater closeness is
an important indicator of overall friendship quality (e.g., Johnson
et al., 2003). Close friends are particularly important for wellbeing
during adolescence, with the formation and maintenance of these
close friendships considered a key developmental task during
this period of life (e.g., Hartup and Stevens, 1999;Berndt, 2002;
Raboteg-Saric and Sakic, 2013). Meta-analyses demonstrate that
close friendships serve as a protective factor against morbidity and
mortality and that these effects hold over both short (e.g., 3 months)
and long (50 years) periods of time (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010).
The link between friendship closeness and wellbeing is thought
to be rooted in the support found within these relationships,
especially during times of stress, when close friends can provide
care, understanding, and validation, as well as by acting as a secure
base for growth and exploration during happier times (Farrell et al.,
2022). Increasingly, these close friendships are occurring on and
over social media.
Social media can generally be described as online platforms
that promote the interaction of individuals via the creation of,
and interactions with, online content such as pictures, videos,
and text posts (Carr and Hayes, 2015). The difficulty in defining
what constitutes social media is in part due to its constantly
evolving nature. For example, the last 20 years has borne witness
to the emergence and proliferation of a variety of social media
platforms, including but not limited to: Facebook (2004), YouTube
(2005), Reddit (2005), Twitter (2006), Tumblr (2007), WhatsApp
(2009), Instagram (2010), Snapchat (2011), Twitch (2011), and
TikTok (2016).
Social media can be categorized by its various functions. For
example, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are primarily social
networking sites, while Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit function
as micro- and macro- blogging sites, respectively (Ryan et al.,
2017). Another example is WhatsApp, which acts as an instant
messaging service (Ryan et al., 2017), serving a similar function
to text messaging. Further, there are social media platforms
such as TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube, which do not fall neatly
into these pre-defined categories. To address the changing social
media landscape, Obar and Wildman (2015) proposed that
social media be characterized by four factors: (1) the use of
Web 2.0 technology; (2) a basis of user-generated content; (3)
individual members moderated by a larger organization; and (4)
the facilitation of online social networks via the connection of
individuals’ profiles.
Research on adolescents and young adults suggests that social
media use may be associated with friendship closeness; however, the
extant literature suggests that this association may be mixed (Phua
et al., 2017;Waterloo et al., 2017). On the one hand, some research
showed that frequent social media use can augment feelings of
friendship closeness in adolescence (Valkenburg and Peter, 2011;
Uhls et al., 2017;Nesi et al., 2018). Baiocco et al. (2011) found that
adolescent friendships that occurred in both on and offline spaces
were more intimate than those that took place in only one setting
or the other. Yau and Reich (2018) also reported that higher levels
of social media use were associated with higher levels of friendship
closeness in adolescence, with this association potentially built
upon relational processes that occur both in-person and online,
such as validation and self-disclosure (Yau and Reich, 2020). On the
other hand, some research shows that while social media bolstered
in-the-moment feelings of friendship closeness for adolescents, it
actually contributed to long-term decreases in feelings of friendship
closeness over the course of a few months (Pouwels et al., 2021;
Dumas et al., 2023).
In contrast, a handful of studies with adult samples suggest
that social media use can both help and hinder feelings of social
connectedness (Sheldon et al., 2011;Ahn and Shin, 2013;Grieve
et al., 2013;Ryan et al., 2017). Other adult studies suggest that the
association is in fact neutral, showing no association between social
media use and friendship closeness (e.g., Burke and Kraut, 2014;
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McEwan et al., 2018). As such, it may be that social media use has
effects on friendship closeness that are unique during adolescence.
While there is a foundational body of research to suggest that
social media use is associated with friendship closeness during
adolescence, there is less research examining potential associations
between social media use and social connectedness during this life
stage. Social connectedness is a multidisciplinary construct that
encapsulates feelings of belongingness, support, and care, as well
as the quantity, quality, and diversity of relationships (Centers
for Disease Control Prevention, 2023). Compared to friendship
closeness, social connectedness captures broader feelings around
and across relational contexts (e.g., peers, family, community;
Viner et al., 2012), while friendship closeness specifically describes
feelings of intimacy within friendships (Polimeni et al., 2002).
Social media can be viewed as a context that may potentially
promote social connectedness in adolescence (Riley et al., 2023).
While the integration of social media into everyday life provides
new opportunities for adolescent social connection (Riley et al.,
2023), it also introduces new pressures that may negatively impact
feelings of social connectedness. Its role in the social fabric
of friendships makes disconnection from social media difficult:
adolescents feel pressure to remain digitally connected (Popat
and Tarrant, 2023). Physically disconnecting from social media
accompanied by the aptly named feeling of “disconnection anxiety”
(Popat and Tarrant, 2023). As such, adolescents feel compelled
to continue engaging over social media, for fear of the social
disconnectedness that may occur if they were to remove themselves
from it (Thomas et al., 2017;Scott et al., 2019). Adolescents admit
that the importance of social media to social connectedness may
contribute to overuse, reliance, and decreased quality of offline
interactions (Mulisa and Getahun, 2018;O’Reilly et al., 2019;Scott
et al., 2019). Adolescents express that disconnecting from social
media might make them ‘out of the loop’, risking offline exclusion,
with the idea of disconnecting without informing their friends
contributing to adolescents’ anxiety (Kennedy and Lynch, 2016;
Thomas et al., 2017;Scott et al., 2019).
These studies highlight the potential importance of social
media and technology for social connectedness, especially during
adolescence. Work by Ryan et al. (2017) suggests that this
importance lies in social media’s ability to enhance social capital,
foster sense of community, and potentially combat loneliness. As
such, an important factor to consider in relation to social media’s
role in adolescent perceptions of friendship closeness—for better
or for worse—is the degree to which adolescents place importance
on social media for social connectedness.
Further, it seems that gender may influence the potential
relationship between social media use, the importance of social
media for social connection, and friendship closeness. This
variation may be the result of gender’s influence on how youth
engage with social media, particularly during adolescence when
gendered affiliation and behavior can intensify (e.g., Hill and Lynch,
1983;Priess and Lindberg, 2014). Prominent theories of gender
and friendship may support how girls and boys may use social
media differently, especially when considering interactions with
their friends. For example, Gender Socialization Theory posits
that lifelong gendered socialization contributes to gender-types
behavior and attitudes in interpersonal relationships, such that boys
are socialized to be assertive and independent, with friendships
built around shared group activities, while girls are socialized to
be cooperative and caring, with friendships built on intimacy,
support, and self-expression (Maccoby, 1990;Rose and Rudolph,
2006). Similarly, Social Identity Theory suggests that adolescents
reify their gendered identities through group membership with
same gendered peers and in contrast with other gendered peers.
As a result, adolescents engage in gendered patterns of behavior
that reinforce their affiliation with their gender (Tajfel and Turner,
2004).
These theories of gendered behavior in friendship may also
apply to the observed gender differences in adolescent social media
use. Existing empirical research suggests that girls tend to spend
more time on social media than boys do, and their use tends
to be more frequent and intense compared to their male peers
(Rideout and Robb, 2018;Su et al., 2020). Girls tend to favor visually
oriented platforms, while boys are more drawn to platforms for
video sharing and gaming (Pew Research Center, 2018). Girls also
tend to engage in higher levels of social comparison, feedback
seeking, and solicitation of help from friends over social media than
boys (e.g., Nesi and Prinstein, 2015;Yau and Reich, 2019) and they
seem to be more susceptible to negative outcomes associated with
social media use, such as depression, anxiety, poor body image, and
low self-esteem (Blomfield Neira and Barber, 2014). It is important
to consider gender differences in relation to social media use and
friendship because of these theoretical and empirical differences
in usage and outcomes, and since most youth friendships occur
with same gender peers (Rubin et al., 2016). As such, we also
investigate whether social media’s influence on social connection
and friendship closeness varies by gender.
The current study
With all of this in mind, this study addresses four main gaps
in the literature by: (a) providing an investigation of the overlap
between the same participants’ in-person and online friendships
with peers from school; (b) testing the association between social
media use and friendship connection with the inclusion of up-to-
date, popular social media platforms (i.e., TikTok, Snapchat); (c)
building upon the prior research that examines the relationship
between social media use and friendship closeness through the
inclusion of a potentially important mediator, the importance
of social media use for social connection; and (d) testing the
differences in these relationships based on gender.
With these gaps in mind, our study investigates adolescents’
in-person and online friendships, with two main goals. First, we
aim to understand the characteristics of adolescents’ in-person
friendship networks and compare them to their online friendship
networks (Objective 1). This first goal addresses the lack of social
network research examining overlapping adolescent online and
offline friendship networks (Van Zalk, 2020). To our knowledge,
the comparison of adolescent friendship networks with the same
participants in two different contexts (in-person and online) has
yet to be explored in the literature. Thus, we aim to fill this gap by
mapping these two contexts across all of the grade-level friendship
networks in our sample and to explore some of the descriptive
network statistics (e.g., density, reciprocity) of these networks. We
anticipate that the social network characteristics of the offline and
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online networks will overall display similarities across number of
nominations and reciprocity, but the online networks may be less
dense than the in-person ones, as per previous research on online
relationships (e.g., Hampton et al., 2011).
Next, we explore links between online social media usage and
adolescents’ feelings of overall friendship closeness using a path
model, considering whether this association may work indirectly
through the importance of technology for social connection
(Objective 2). Empirical evidence suggests that social media use
is associated with friendship closeness in adolescence (sometimes
positively, other times, negatively) and there is theoretical evidence
(e.g., Popat and Tarrant, 2023) to suggest that social media
use may also influence feelings of social connection. Thus, we
aim to investigate the potential links between social media use,
importance placed on social media for social connection, and
feelings of friendship closeness. We expect that social media use
will be positively associated with friendship closeness (in line with
Uhls et al., 2017;Nesi et al., 2018), and that the hypothesized
link between social media usage and friendship closeness will
work indirectly through the importance of technology for social
connectedness, an association that has yet to be empirically tested.
Finally, we explore potential gender differences in these
associations using a multiple groups analysis, as previous research
has established that there are differences in how boys and
girls use social media (e.g., Su et al., 2020). We anticipate a
positive association between social media and the importance of
social media for social connection for girls, whose relationships
(theoretically and empirically) tend to rely more heavily on
feelings of intimacy and self-disclosure than boys’ relationships. We
hypothesize that this relationship will be stronger for girls than for
boys. Further, we expect that more visually salient platforms such as
Snapchat and Instagram will be more strongly, positively associated
with girls’ friendships and more activity-based platforms, such as
Twitch and YouTube, might be more relevant for boys’ friendships.
Methods
Participants
Participants were 547 adolescents between the ages of 13–18
years old (M=15.25 years, SD =1.42). Of the sample, 52%
identified as boys, 44% identified as girls, 2% as Other, and 2%
selected Prefer not to say. Participants identified as predominantly
White (56%), in line with the overall racial demographics of
the regional population. Participants also identified as Mixed
(13%), Latin (11%), Black (7%), Southeast Asian (4.4%), Other
(4.4%), West Asian (2%), East Asian (1.5%), and South Asian
(1.1%). Most participants identified with average or above average
socioeconomic status (74.4%), while just under one fifth of the
participants identified as lower or much lower socioeconomic
status compared to the average Canadian family (18.5%).
Procedure
Data were collected as part of a larger, ongoing longitudinal
investigation of youth peer relationships in schools (2019–2024;
see also Andrews et al., 2021;Kim et al., 2021;Dane et al., 2022;
Lapierre and Dane, 2022;Spadafora et al., 2022;Prabaharan et al.,
2024;Spadafora and Volk, 2024). Participants were drawn from five
participating elementary schools (Grade 8) and one high school
(Grades 9–12) in southern Ontario, Canada. These schools were
assigned to our study by the local school board. Active parental
consent and student assent was obtained for elementary student
participants (n=120), with an overall consent rate of 89% and
an overall participation rate of 83%. Passive consent procedures
were employed for the high school participants, resulting in a
consent and participation rate of 95% (10 participants opted out
of participation).
The data for this study were drawn from the project’s fourth
wave of data collection in the Spring of 2023, when we added the
specific questions to do with social media for the purposes of this
current study. Over the course of 3 weeks, principal investigators
and trained research assistants visited grade 8 classrooms at the
five elementary schools and grades 9–12 homeroom classes at
the one high school in Southern Ontario, Canada. Participants
independently completed both a peer nomination and self-report
Qualtrics (an electronic survey platform)-based surveys using
Android tablets. Researchers were available to answer questions and
assist students with language or reading comprehension difficulties,
if needed.
Measures
Self-report
Cell phone use
Cell phone use was measured using two questions. The first, Do
you have your own cell phone? identified which participants have
their own cell phone (Yes) and which do not (No). Participants who
answered Yes to the question on cell phone ownership were directed
to a second question, which asked: On average, how many hours per
day do you spend on your cell phone? with response options of: Less
than 1 h,1–2 h,2–3 h,3–4 h, and More than 5 h.
Social media use
Social media use was measured by a scale adapted from
the Pew Research Center (2022). This scale presents participants
with the following social media platforms: Twitter, Instagram,
Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, Tumblr, Reddit, TikTok, Twitch,
and WhatsApp. For each, participants were asked to indicate the
frequency of their use on a 6-point Likert scaling ranging from
1 (Never) to 6 (Almost Constantly). As expected, the Cronbach’s
alpha for this scale is not high (α=0.59), since it is capturing the
frequency of social media use across 10 different, not necessarily
associated platforms (e.g., it is reasonable that youth who use
Snapchat frequently may not also use Reddit frequently).
Importance of social media and technology to
social connection
The importance of social media and technology to social
connection (hereafter referred to as “social connection” for
simplicity) was assessed using the Social Connection subscale of the
Adolescents’ Digital Technology Interactions and Importance scale
(Moreno et al., 2020). This five-item subscale captures adolescents’
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perceptions of the role of social media in social connectedness
by asking: How important, if at all, is it for you to use media
and technology platforms for the following purposes? Participants
respond on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (Not at all
important) to 5 (Extremely important), to 5 items, such as: See what
people are up to without asking them about it or Contribute to a
private conversation. The sample derived reliability was 0.80.
Friendship closeness
Friendship closeness was measured using the question: How
close to your friends do you feel right now? (Pouwels et al., 2021).
Participants responded using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1
(Not at all) to 5 (Extremely close).
Peer nomination
In-person and online friendship
Both in-person and online friendships were measured using
peer nomination items. For in-person friendships, participants
were asked: Who are your best or closest friends? For online
friendships, participants were asked: Which friends do you interact
with most on social media? For both in-person and online
friendships, participants were limited to the peers with whom they
share a school and grade. As such, participants were only able to
select peers within their grade level who attended the same school
(e.g., students in Grade 8 at School A could only nominate students
in Grade 8 from School A). Elementary school participants were
instructed to select as many individuals as they thought met the
description from a provided roster of all grade-level peers who
had parental consent (n=12–39). High school participants were
instructed to select from 0 to 7 individuals in their grade that
matched the description by typing responses into dialogue boxes
on the survey, which offered autocomplete responses of the names
of the students in their grade Only those with consent (95% of high
school population) were included in the analyses; if a student who
had revoked consent or assent (n=10) was nominated in the free
response box, their nomination was removed during data cleaning.
Data analysis
To address our first research question, we applied principles
of social network analysis to our peer nomination data. Social
network analysis refers to a range of theoretical and methodological
tools for examining connections between entities—in this case, the
entities are individual adolescents, but social network analysis has
been used in other social sciences and public health research to
track a variety of relationships, including economic trade, disease
transmission, and social capital (Luke and Harris, 2007). The use
of Social Network Analysis is an increasingly popular and nuanced
way of approaching large, relational data sets in developmental
psychology (Neal, 2020). Social network analysis can be particularly
helpful for investigating youth peer relationships and their
structures in school settings (e.g., Sijtsema and Lindenberg, 2018;
Neal and Veenstra, 2021).
We employed three specific social network methodologies:
network visualization, network descriptive statistics, and Quadratic
Assignment Procedure (QAP) autocorrelations. Exploring the
composition of adolescents’ in-person and online networks is the
first objective of this paper; as such, we begin with an examination
of network visualizations, which offer clear, visual representations
of complex relational patterns and offer insight into relational
structures that might not be otherwise visible (Freeman, 2000;
Scott, 2017). From here, we explored two important network
descriptives: density and reciprocity. Density and reciprocity
provide information on the level of cohesion within a group,
as well as the degree to which relationships within a network
are balanced or unbalanced (Knoke and Yang, 2008). Lastly, we
explored the degree to which our in-person and online networks
overlap using QAP autocorrelations. QAP autocorrelations employ
simulated permutations of the provided data structures (much
like bootstrapping) to test whether two structures are significantly
related to one another and addresses the non-independence of
overlapping network’s observations (Krackhardt, 1987;Borgatti
et al., 2018). In this case, it tests whether the friendship ties in the
in-person network are significantly associated with the friendship
ties in the online network.
All procedures were conducted in RStudio (R Version 3.2.1), a
free online software for statistical computing and data visualization
(https://cran.r-project.org/). All analyses utilized the statnet suite of
packages (Statnet Development Team, 2003–2023). Edgelists based
on friendship nominations were uploaded to RStudio and statnet
syntax was utilized to generate the network visualizations, density,
and reciprocity scores, and QAP autocorrelation values.
To address our second research question, we utilized SPSS
Version 29 and MPlus software version 8.6 (Muthén and Muthén,
2021) to run path analyses using Maximum Likelihood Estimation
(Kline, 2016).
Results
Descriptive statistics
Just under half of the participants (45%) reported spending
more than 4 h on their cell phone daily (28% 3–4 h, 17% 2–3 h,
10% 2 h or less). Participants used TikTok and Snapchat most
frequently, with 43%−44% of participants reporting using these
platforms “almost constantly.” Participants’ platform use seemed
to be split: there were some platforms that most participants
reported using (YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok); and some
platforms that were less frequently used (WhatsApp, Twitter/X,
Facebook, Twitch, Reddit, Tumblr; for complete breakdown of
reported social media use frequencies, see Table 1). Participants
indicated an overall moderate importance of social media for
social connection (M=2.90, SD =0.94). On average, most
items were regarded as “slightly” or “moderately” important, with
using platforms to “direct message, converse, chat, or talk with
another person one on one” deemed the most important to social
connection (M=3.83, SD =1.20).
Participants nominated and were nominated by around three
peers (M=3.22 and 2.95, respectively) as their best or closest
friends in their grade. Of these nominations, on average, 1.36 were
mutual. Participants nominated M=2.19 peers as friends they
interact with often online and were nominated by M=2 peers. For
online friendships, an average of 0.65 nominations were mutual. In
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TABLE 1 Reported frequency of social media use by platform (%).
Platform Sample use Almost
constantly
Several times
a day
Several times
a week
Once a week Less than
once a week
Never
YouTube 91% 20% 26% 25% 10% 10% 9%
Snapchat 87% 43% 29% 9% 4% 3% 13%
Instagram 84% 14% 32% 24% 7% 6% 16%
TikTok 82% 44% 24% 8% 4% 3% 18%
WhatsApp 35% 5% 5% 9% 7% 9% 65%
Twitter 33% 3% 2% 7% 8% 13% 67%
Facebook 29% 3% 3% 5% 7% 12% 71%
Twitch 28% 2% 2% 5% 7% 12% 72%
Reddit 24% 2% 3% 3% 5% 9% 78%
Tumblr 9% 1% 1% 2% 1% 3% 91%
this sample, 22% of participants reported feeling “extremely close”
to their friends right now. Most participants reported either feeling
“very close” (40%) or “moderately close” (27%) to their friends, with
smaller percentages of participants feeling “slightly close” (7%) or
“not at all” close to their friends (4.5%).
Research objective 1: exploring and
comparing in-person and online friendship
networks using social network analysis
To investigate the first research objective, we utilized Social
Network Analysis to explore the nine complete networks that
make up our sample. These networks reflect the pre-determined
boundaries selected by the authors: that one network is comprised
of one grade-level at one school (e.g., two grade 8 classes at School
A would be one network; one grade at class at School B would be
another network, etc; Marsden, 2011;Neal, 2020). Our sample is
thus comprised of five grade 8 networks and four secondary/high
school networks, one network for each grade for grades 9–12. The
grade 8 elementary school networks ranged in size from 12 to 39
participants (M=23); the high school grade level networks ranged
from 130 to 154 participants (M=142). All nine, self-contained
networks in our sample had consent and participation rates of 80%
or higher.
Network visualizations and descriptives
Network visualizations were constructed, with one in-person
friendship network and one online friendship network created
for each of the nine networks (see Figure 1 for an example; see
Supplementary material for a compilation of all 18 networks).
Nodes represent individual participants and arrows indicate the
relationship from nominator to nominatee. Ties represented by
double headed arrows are reciprocal. These diagrams visually
map the friendships of participants, offering descriptive insight
as well as opportunities for comparison between in-person and
online networks.
Comparing each in-person network visualization to its online
counterpart, there was overall consistency in the friendship ties that
youth report in both contexts. However, there was not complete
overlap in the two networks—some in-person friendships did not
translate to online ones and vice versa. There were at least one to
two examples of this difference for each set of networks. Further,
it appeared that certain individuals who were isolates in their in-
person networks were connected to others in online settings (see
Figure 1 and Supplementary material).
To further compare these two social contexts, we explored
two network level descriptive statistics: network density and
network reciprocity (see Supplementary material,Table 1). Density
represents the proportion of friendships that exist within the
network, given the number of potential friendships that could exist
in those same networks (Agneessens, 2023). In-person network
densities ranged between 0.02 and 0.30, while online network
densities ranged between 0.02 and 0.36. In general, the five
elementary school networks were denser than the four high school
networks. In other words, more of the potential friendships in the
elementary school networks were reflected as actual friendships
than in the high school networks. There did not appear to be a clear
pattern of difference or similarity when comparing the densities of
the in-person networks to the online ones.
Reciprocity captures the degree to which ties in a network
tend toward or away from being reciprocated (Agneessens,
2023). As would be expected of friendship networks, both the
in-person and online networks displayed levels of reciprocity
higher than chance. There did not seem to be any meaningful
differences between in-person and online rates of reciprocity across
these networks.
Quadratic assignment procedure
autocorrelations
A series of QAP correlations were conducted to determine
the degree to which the existence of in-person friendships is
associated with the existence of online friendships, based on 1,000
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FIGURE 1
In-person and online friendship network visualizations. From left to right, top to bottom: Grade 8 In-person network, Grade 8 online network, Grade
12 In-person network, Grade 12 online network.
TABLE 2 Reported frequency of social media platform use by gender.
Overall
(n=535)
Boy
(n=285)
Girl (n=242)
YouTube 91% 95% 86%
Snapchat 87% 85% 92%
Instagram 84% 79% 91%
TikTok 82% 79% 87%
WhatsApp 35% 30% 40%
Twitter 33% 42% 22%
Facebook 29% 27% 28%
Twitch 28% 42% 13%
Reddit 24% 35% 9%
Tumblr 9% 10% 6%
replications. The QAP test results indicated that in-person and
online friendships were positively correlated with one another,
with test values ranging from 0.50 to 0.69. Thus, as expected,
networks were strongly correlated, though test values also indicate
variation between the two contexts (see Supplementary material,
Table 2).
Research objective 2: the association
between social media use and friendship
closeness
Preliminary analyses
The second objective of this study was to explore how social
media might relate to feelings of friendship closeness and to
investigate how the influence of social media might vary based on
usage effects, such as different platform use, and user effects, such
as age and gender. Variables met all assumptions (e.g., normality,
multicollinearity). All bivariate correlations, means, and standard
deviations for observed variables are presented in Table 3.
Overall, participants’ time spent on cell phones was positively
associated with both technology use for social connection and
friendship closeness but not related to reported number of friends
in either context. Snapchat and TikTok use were positively
associated with friendship closeness. Instagram and Snapchat use
were positively associated with importance placed on technology
for social connection, as well as number of in-person (for Snapchat
only) and online friendships. In contrast, Facebook use was
negatively associated with number of friends in-person and online.
Number of in-person and online friends were positively associated
with the importance of technology for social connection and with
one another. Age was negatively associated with all measures of
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TABLE 3 Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations for observed variables.
Observed
variable
M
(SD)1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
1.Age 15.25
(1.42)
–−0.006 0.041 −0.103∗0.138∗∗ 0.260∗∗ 0.142∗∗ −0.082 −0.079 0.123∗∗ 0.137∗∗ −0.023 0.023 0.182∗∗ 0.011 −0.243∗∗ −0.278∗∗ −0.140∗∗ −0.258∗∗ −0.258∗∗ −0.175∗∗
2.Gender N/A – 0.148∗∗ −0.062 −0.142∗∗ 0.119∗∗ 0.016 0.029 −0.164∗∗ −0.042 −0.249∗∗ 0.066 −0.195∗∗ 0.075 0.085∗0.013 −0.068 −0.074 0.006 −0.012 −0.026
3.Daily time
on cell phone
4.04 (1.07) – 0.117∗∗ 0.093∗0.238∗0.127∗∗ 0.223∗0.063 −0.059 −0.085 0.286∗∗ −0.007 0.089∗0.225∗∗ −0.002 −0.003 −0.016 0.013 0.041 0.049
4.Friendship
closeness
3.68 (1.03) – −0.055 0.055 −0.013 0.187∗∗ −0.015 −0.010 −0.026 0.144∗∗ 0.023 −0.024 0.199∗∗ 0.253∗∗ 0.256∗∗ 0.269∗∗ 0.154∗∗ 0.215∗∗ 0.240∗∗
5. Twitter 1.73 (1.28) – 0.114∗∗ 0.317∗∗ −0.036 0.213∗∗ 0.360∗∗ 0.347∗∗ 0.106∗0.365∗∗ 0.169∗∗ 0.067 −0.097∗−0.060 −0.048 −0.90∗−0.088∗−0.005
6.Instagram 3.93 (1.63) – 0.222∗∗ 0.347∗∗ −0.057 0.064 −0.079 0.348∗∗ 0.000 0.193∗∗ 0.306∗∗ −0.021 −0.018 000 0.062 0.030 0.137∗∗
7.Facebook 1.63 (1.21) – 0.102∗−0.005 0.327∗∗ 0.198∗∗ 0.136∗∗ 0.204∗∗ 0.313∗∗ 0.072 −0.104∗−0.100∗−0.013 −0.089∗−0.099∗−0.003
8.Snapchat 4.67 (1.69) – −0.133∗∗ −0.068 −0.164∗∗ 0.563∗∗ 0.005 0.032 0.385∗∗ 0.113∗∗ 0.162∗∗ 0.121∗∗ 0.228∗∗ 0.198∗∗ 0.239∗∗
9. YouTube 4.07 (1.54) – 0.074 0.202∗∗ −0.122∗∗ 0.259∗∗ 0.075 0.046 0.037 0.035 0.105∗−0.006 −0.055 0.030
10. Tumblr 1.23 (0.86) – 0.426∗∗ −0.002 0.312∗∗ 0.240∗∗ 0.010 −0.118∗−0.060 −0.019 −0.105∗−0.053 0.002
11. Reddit 1.52 (1.15) – −0.117∗∗ 0.467∗∗ 0.130∗∗ −0.041 −0.086 −0.057 0.006 −0.058 −0.101∗0.020
12. TikTok 4.48 (1.88) – 0.020 0.039 0.259∗∗ 0.071 0.067 0.062 0.081 0.121∗∗ 0.125∗∗
13. Twitch 1.61(1.17) – 0.104∗−0.010 −0.095∗−0.008 0.048 −0.118∗∗ −0.053 0.032
14.
WhatsApp
1.94 (1.51) – 0.042 −0.162∗∗ −0.142∗∗ −0.078 −0.106∗−0.113∗∗ −0.016
15. Overall
social
connection
2.93 (0.94) – 0.095∗0.119∗∗ 0.173∗∗ 0.184∗∗ 0.177∗∗ 0.286∗∗
16. Mutual
in-person
friendships
1.36 (1.64) – 0.707∗∗ 0.708∗∗ 0.577∗∗ 0.550∗∗ 0.476∗∗
17. Received
in-person
friendships
2.95 (2.48) – 0.428∗∗ 0.529∗∗ 0.697∗∗ 0.340∗∗
18. Sent
in-person
friendships
3.22 (3.02) – 0.360∗∗ 0.330∗∗ 0.582∗∗
19. Mutual
online
friendships
0.65 (1.18) – 0.643∗∗ 0.501∗∗
20. Received
online
friendships
2.01 (2.23) – 0.291∗∗
21. Sent
online
friendships
2.19 (2.81) -
∗p<0.05.
∗∗p<0.001.
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friends and friendship closeness, and positively associated with
Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit and WhatsApp use.
Descriptive statistics also suggest that gender was associated
with social media use. Girls reported more time spent on their cell
phones, with 51.7% of girls in the sample reporting spending 4 or
more hours on their cell phones per day, compared to 35.8% of
boys. Girls also reported higher rates of Instagram use, with 19%
of girls reporting using Instagram “almost constantly,” compared
to 9% of boys, as well as higher rates of Snapchat use, with 55%
of girls reporting using Snapchat and TikTok “almost constantly,”
compared to 33 and 34% of boys respectively. Girls also reported
placing greater importance on the role of technology in social
connection. Boys reported greater overall use of Twitter, YouTube,
Reddit, and Twitch (see Table 2).
Path model of social media use and friendship
closeness
The relationship between social media use, technology for
social connection, and friendship closeness was investigated using
a structural path model with gender and age as a covariate (see
Figure 2). Direct and indirect effects were estimated with Maximum
Likelihood estimation, with indirect effects using bootstrapped
confidence intervals of 10,000 replications (95% bias corrected).
For the sake of parsimony, the model did not contain social
media platforms that were deemed less prevalent to adolescents’
lives based on theory and the extant literature (Facebook, Twitter,
Tumblr, Reddit, Twitch, or WhatsApp). The omission of these
platforms from the overall model was further supported by their
empirical lack of statistical significance in preliminary analyses.
The model included age, gender, daily cell phone time, and social
media platform use (Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube) as
independent variables predicting levels of friendship closeness.
The model also included the association between these variables
working indirectly through the importance of technology for
social connection.
Due to the exploratory nature of these analyses, we tested all
direct paths from social media platforms to social connection, as
well as all direct paths to friendship closeness. With a fully saturated
model, global fit indices are not interpretable (Field, 2018). There
was a direct positive association between cell phone time and
the importance of technology for social connection, with those
that reported more daily time on their cell phone also placing
more importance on the role of technology for social connection.
Similarly, there were significant direct paths from Instagram,
Snapchat, and YouTube use to the importance of technology
for social connection. Greater importance of using technology
for social connection was positively associated with friendship
closeness (see Figure 2 and Table 4 for full direct effects).
There was a direct negative association between age and
friendship closeness, with reports of friendship closeness
decreasing as participant age increased. There were significant
positive indirect effects from daily cell phone use and friendship
closeness via social connection (see Table 5 for indirect effects).
There were also significant positive indirect effects from Instagram,
Snapchat, and YouTube to friendship closeness through social
connection. These indirect associations indicate that social media
for social connection may be an important mechanism influencing
how young people use social media, integrate it in their friendships,
and how social media use may be playing a role in young people’s
perceptions of friendship closeness in contemporary contexts.
Multiple groups analysis by gender
We conducted a multiple groups analysis to determine if the
relationships between social media use and friendship closeness
would vary based on gender (boys vs. girls). First, we compared
two models: one with direct paths fully constrained to gender
invariance, the other with direct paths free to vary across gender
(testing all direct paths from age, daily cell phone time, and the
social media platforms Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok
to the importance of technology for social connection). The fully
constrained model indicated worse fit than the unconstrained
model [1χ2(44) =188.76, p<0.000], indicating gender variance
in one or more of the direct paths. As such, each path of interest
was systematically constrained by gender and compared to a less
constrained model, using a chi-square difference test to determine
which path(s) varied significantly by gender. This process indicated
that while there were no gender differences in the association
between social media use and friendship closeness, gender did seem
to significantly influence the association between some social media
platform use (time spent on a smartphone, Snapchat, and TikTok)
and the importance of technology for social connection. Daily time
spent on a smartphone was only significantly positively associated
with the importance of technology for social connection for girls,
not boys [1χ2(43) =4.09, p=0.04]. For both boys and girls,
Snapchat use was associated with placing importance on the role
of technology for social connection [1χ2(43) =7.63, p=0.006];
however, this relationship appeared to be stronger for girls than
for boys. See Figure 3 for final, partially constrained model with
significant paths that varied by gender [χ2(4) =171.22, p<0.001;
RMSEA =0.112 (0.095, 0.130); CFI =0.064; SRMR =0.186].
Discussion
The first goal of this study was addressed using descriptive
statistics and social network analysis. Consistent with other reports
of North American adolescent cell phone ownership (e.g., Statistics
Canada, 2016), 97% of this sample reported owning a cell phone.
Social media use was also consistent with contemporaneous
North American samples (e.g., Moreno et al., 2022). Participants’
platforms of choice, however, continue to illustrate how quickly
trends move. Our sample reported TikTok and Snapchat as the
two most frequently used platforms, and Instagram still maintained
a degree of popularity (84% of our sample). Facebook, however,
seems to have fallen out of popularity with adolescents, with only
29% of our sample reporting its use.
Our results suggest some age-related differences in social media
platform use, with older participants reporting greater use of
Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, and WhatsApp,
reflecting the potential increased online autonomy that may come
with time over the course of adolescence (e.g., access to cell phones
may increase, while parental monitoring may decrease, with age).
Older participants also reported fewer friends, both in-person and
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FIGURE 2
Significant direct and indirect paths between social media use and friendship closeness via social connection. *p<0.05, **p<0.001.
TABLE 4 Unstandardized and standardized direct and total eects.
Variable Social connection Friendship closeness
BSE β95% CI BSE β95% CI
Age −0.007 0.027 −0.010 −0.091, 0.071 −0.069 0.032 −0.094∗−0.181, −0.007
Gender 0.177∗0.079 0.095∗0.011, 0.179 −0.015 0.093 −0.007 −0.097, 0.083
Time on phone 0.091∗0.037 0.104∗0.021, 0.187 0.064 0.044 0.067 −0.023, 0.157
Instagram 0.105∗∗ 0.026 0.182∗∗ 0.095, 0.270 −0.018 0.031 −0.029 −0.124, 0.067
Snapchat 0.170∗∗ 0.027 0.304∗∗ 0.212, 0.397 0.057 0.033 0.094 −0.012, 0.200
YouTube 0.055∗0.024 0.091∗0.013, 0.168 −0.011 0.029 −0.016 −0.101, 0.068
TikTok 0.004 0.025 0.007 −0.089, 0.103 0.019 0.029 0.035 −0.069, 0.139
Social connection 0.163 0.051 0.149∗∗ 0.058, 0.240
∗p<0.05.
∗∗p<0.001.
online, perhaps indicating a pruning of friendships as adolescence
progresses and individuals perhaps invest more time in increasing
intimacy with smaller numbers of individuals.
Our findings also support gender differences in platform
choice. Girls reported spending more time on their phones and
were more likely to use Instagram (an app based on the social
presentation of self-curated images). This is in line with previous
research suggesting girls’ preference toward visually oriented social
media (Dumas et al., 2023). In contrast, boys were more likely
to use either text-based platforms (e.g., Reddit, Twitter) or video
and video-game related platforms (e.g., YouTube, Twitch) (see
also Lenhart, 2015). It is important to consider these gendered
patterns of use, as evidence suggests that not only are there
gendered patterns in friendship structure and behavior, but also
gendered patterns in the associated outcomes of those friendships
(Rose, 2002;Rubin et al., 2008). Our findings generally support
how gendered socialization influences engagement with social
media platforms.
The descriptive findings offer continued support for the
potential differences that social media introduces to adolescent
friendships. On average, participants indicated that social media
was moderately important to social connection, placing the
greatest emphasis on social media platforms’ ability to facilitate
direct conversations with others one-on-one. The importance
of social media for facilitating direct conversations could
be attributed to various functional, emotional, and cognitive
affordances associated with social media (Moreno and Uhls,
2019).
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Comparing in-person and online friendship
networks
To our knowledge, this study is the first to compare the in-
person and online friendship networks of adolescents’ school-based
peer networks. Network visualizations indicated a high degree of
overlap between adolescents’ friendships in person and online;
however, the two contexts did not completely overlap. While
certain dyads, trios, and smaller friend groups seemed to exist
across both contexts, there were, for instance, examples of isolates
in one network not being isolates in the other. The test values for
the bivariate and QAP correlations indicate a degree of overlap (r
=0.4–0.6), but these relationships were not as high as expected,
considering the networks are comprised of the same individuals
across both contexts, surveyed at the same point in the school year.
Why might there be a high degree, but not complete, overlap?
One explanation is logistical: if an individual is included as a
friend in-person but not online, it may reflect their access (or lack
thereof) to a personal cell phone, cellular data, or social media
accounts that would facilitate their nomination as an online friend.
Another explanation is that social media may allow adolescents to
interact with, and become close to, a variety of peers online, not
necessarily limiting youth to their close, in-person friendships. For
example, an adolescent’s best friends in-person may be those that
they share classes with, but their best friend online may be a peer
from a previous semester with whom they maintain contact online.
The large overlap between friendships in both contexts, however,
suggests that friendships are co-constructed across contexts and
that many of them can be understood as conjoint (in-person and
online) friendships (Subrahmanyam et al., 2006;Van Zalk, 2020).
Network reciprocity values supported that both in-person
and online networks were mostly reciprocal: this is unsurprising
considering some degree of reciprocity is often considered a central
tenet of friendship (White et al., 2018). When comparing the
densities of in-person and online networks, there was not a clear
pattern of difference or similarity. This finding could reflect that in-
person and online social networks are so entangled that there would
be no observable patterns of difference between the two—or it
could reflect that the densities of these networks are not particularly
relevant or meaningful.
Social media use, friendship closeness and
social connection
The second aim of the study was to explore the interplay
between specific social media platform use, reported importance
of social media for social connection, and friendship closeness.
Overall, age was negatively associated with friendship closeness,
such that the older participants were, the lower their reported levels
of friendship closeness. These lower levels of friendship closeness
for older participants may be attributable to the developmental
differences between early and later adolescence. These results
may highlight the heightened importance of friendship and group
membership in early adolescence, an emphasis that may wane as
individuals approach later adolescence, feel potentially more self-
assured in their social identity, or begin the transition to emerging
TABLE 5 Indirect eects from social media use to friendship connection
via importance of technology for social connection.
BSE β95% CI
Age 0 0.006 0 −0.013, 0.012
Gender 0.027∗0.017 0.014∗0.002, 0.037
Time on phone 0.015∗0.009 0.016∗0.002, 0.038
Instagram 0.017∗0.008 0.027∗0.005, 0.036
Snapchat 0.028∗0.010 0.045∗0.010, 0.051
YouTube 0.009∗0.006 0.014∗0.001, 0.024
TikTok 0.001 0.004 0.001 −0.008, 0.010
∗Significance determined by 95% CIs that do not include 0.
adulthood. Age was not, however, related to the importance of
technology for social connection, suggesting that social media may
play a relatively stable role in its importance to young people’s social
lives over the course of adolescence.
The associations between cell phone use, Instagram, Snapchat,
YouTube, and social connection suggest that those who use these
technologies more often may place greater importance on the role
of technology in their social lives—or vice versa. The indirect
association between social media use and friendship closeness
through the importance of technology for social connection may
also be the result of the ways in which social media might change
the social norms and expectations around friendship (Nesi et al.,
2018). For example, Instagram and Snapchat offer interfaces that
make use of affordances that might be particularly salient for
adolescents’ sense of social connection. On Instagram, posts made
on the main feed (pictures and/or videos) remain on an individual’s
profile and pop up on their followers’ (friends’?) homepages, relying
heavily on the quality of visibility (Nesi et al., 2018). The posting of
new stories is signaled to others by a change in the perimeter color
of one’s profile picture. Posts and stories make use of a “tagging”
system, allowing individuals to indicate who is in the post and
who can re-share it. As such, belongingness can be indicated to
the broader peer group through these public displays of friendship,
perhaps enhancing feelings of closeness.
Instagram and Snapchat also make use of a direct message
function, which takes advantage of the importance of self-
disclosure in fostering intimate friendships (Valkenburg and Peter,
2009) and the affordance of immediacy provided by social media
(Nesi et al., 2018;Moreno and Uhls, 2019). The direct message
function might be important for enhancing feelings of closeness,
since it is removed from the public-facing pressure that likes,
comments, and shares on the newsfeed may produce (Kennedy
and Lynch, 2016;Moreno and Uhls, 2019). Snapchat is particularly
designed to promote self-disclosure in real-time: adolescents can
take a picture or video of an experience as it’s happening, caption
it, and start an immediate dialogue with the receiver. Snapchat
offers extrinsic motivation to constantly share with friends over
the platform via the function of “streaks” that record consistent
reciprocal communication between two users.
What remains unclear, however, is if the significant effects
associated with these platforms are due to affordances inherent
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FIGURE 3
Multiple groups analysis by gender. Paths that vary by gender indicated in bold. *p<0.05, **p<0.001.
and/or unique to these two interfaces specifically, or if these effects
are just greater for some platforms because they are the platforms of
choice for adolescents at this moment in time. We suggest that both
hypotheses may be true. Platforms such as Facebook serve similar
functions and make use of similar affordances as Instagram and
Snapchat; however, the former has lost favor among adolescents.
TikTok and YouTube, on the other hand, fit different niches. Both
are video based and allow for sharing and bonding over content via
direct messaging. Yet while TikTok use was reported frequently, it
was not significantly associated with social connection or friendship
closeness (whereas YouTube was). YouTube offers longer and more
varied content than TikTok but is a generally more passive platform
akin to traditional television and may thus appeal to more boys who
might be relatively less interested in direct social interactions than
in shared experiences of watching sports, comedy, music, or video
gameplay. Its links to friendship closeness and connectedness might
thus reflect its reinforcement of common interests between friends
who can strengthen their friendship by sharing mutually interesting
social media.
The role of gender
The association between social media use for social connection
and friendship closeness did not vary based on gender. The use
of specific social media platforms and the importance of social
media for social connection, however, varied. These differences may
lie in the opportunities some platforms offer for consistent self-
disclosure and co-rumination (Desjarlais and Joseph, 2017), aspects
of friendships more commonly considered characteristic of girls’
friendships than boys’ friendships. This reasoning may also explain
why time spent on cell phones was significantly associated with
social connectedness for girls and not boys, since this variable may
also capture non-social media cell phone usage for social purposes,
such as text messaging, video calls, and phone calls (e.g., Liu and
Yang, 2016).
Limitations and future directions
There are a few important limitations to this study. First,
its cross-sectional design means that while we can comment on
apparent associations, we cannot make causal claims. This aspect
of the study’s design is especially important to consider when
interpreting the association between social media use and the
importance placed on technology for social connection. To offer
greater clarity and provide evidence for causal claims, future
work should investigate this association longitudinally to better
understand whether social media use augments the importance
placed on it, or vice versa.
It is also important to note whose information is not captured
by this study, but who theory and research suggest would engage in
unique social media use: namely, adolescents who identify as non-
binary (Allen et al., 2021). In this sample, we were limited by the
small number of adolescents who identified as non-binary (<10).
It is also important to note that this study focuses on in-person
and online friendships amongst peers at school; as such, it does
not capture how the associations between these variables may be
similar or different for friendships in different contexts including
in-person settings such as extra-curricular activities, sports, or the
neighborhood, as well as online settings such as online gaming,
long-distance friendships, or online communities that are explicitly
fostered between youth who feel othered in their physical settings
but are able to seek out communities with similar others in online
settings (e.g., nonbinary youth).
Future work is needed to investigate how these different
settings may influence our results, particularly as they might
apply to minoritized youth. Future research should also gather
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more detailed information around the nature of platform use (i.e.,
specific functions—posting, direct messaging, scrolling). Future
work may also utilize more specific measures of friendship
and friendship closeness via ranking nomination of friends or
identifying which friends one would turn to in different scenarios.
Conclusion
This study explores an adolescent peer context of emerging
importance: the potential overlap between adolescents’ friendships
in-person and online. Modern life occurs increasingly in digitally
mediated spaces and there is no generation for whom this
is truer than today’s adolescents; the first generation to come
of age as “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001). The integration of
smartphones in adolescents’ lives means that their friendships—
arguably the quintessential peer context in adolescence (Bukowski
et al., 2011)—plays out not only in both physical and online
spaces, but also across the two. Investigating the effects of social
media on adolescent friendships can aid our understanding of
friendship in-person, online, and across these two contexts. This
study indicates that though there appears to be overlap between
in-person and online peer contexts, especially in relation to
peers at school, there is also something unique to friendships in
online spaces.
It is imperative to consider how social media inadvertently
alters adolescent friendships, as well as the ways in which social
media platforms influence friendships by design, as interfaces
are intended to encourage both use and reliance. The extant
literature emphasizes the largely negative developmental impacts
of social media, which the authors do not deny; however, this study
also suggests that social media can be a tool for supporting the
development and maintenance of friendship closeness, a finding
that may be of particular importance to youth who might otherwise
feel isolated from (or by) their peers. With its current cultural
hold and lack of constraints for young people, it is important
to consider how adolescent relationships may have changed to
incorporate the use of social media and how this incorporation
could be used to bolster protective factors (such as friendship
closeness) and combat the risk factors that social media produces
(e.g., cyberbullying, low self-esteem). Thus, understanding the
ramifications of adolescents’ social media use on their friendships—
namely, to better understand who is using what platforms, for what
purposes, and how this may impact their social relationships and
overall wellbeing—can provide critical insights into the importance
of peers.
Data availability statement
The datasets presented in this article are not readily available
because, given that we are working with minors in a dataset that
could potentially allow for individual identification, we do not have
ethical approval from our university or school board REBs to share
our data. Requests to access the datasets should be directed at:
AV, tvolk@brocku.ca.
Ethics statement
The studies involving humans were approved by Brock
University Research Ethics Board. The studies were conducted
in accordance with the local legislation and institutional
requirements. Written informed consent for participation in
this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardians/next
of kin.
Author contributions
EA-J: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition,
Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft,
Writing – review & editing. AV: Funding acquisition, Investigation,
Supervision, Writing – review & editing. NS: Conceptualization,
Investigation, Supervision, Writing – review & editing. NA:
Supervision, Writing – review & editing.
Funding
The author(s) declare financial support was received for the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The Study
was funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant #435-2017-0303 and a
SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship-Doctoral.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the
absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be
construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the
authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated
organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the
reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or
claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or
endorsed by the publisher.
Supplementary material
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found
online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fdpys.2024.
1419756/full#supplementary-material
Frontiers in Developmental Psychology 13 frontiersin.org
Al-Jbouri et al. 10.3389/fdpys.2024.1419756
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