Jennifer Shapka

The growing popularity of the Internet has significantly impacted how youth socialize. For example, social networking websites have become established as “social tools” that facilitate peer relations. Previous research has examined the extent to which those who have a relatively large number of friends in-person (i.e., high offline support) versus those who have fewer friends (i.e., low offline support) are differentially impacted by social networking opportunities. According to recent findings, those with higher offline support use online communicative tools to enhance their existing relationships (i.e., the Rich Get Richer hypothesis). However, research has not examined the possibility that youth who are marginalized, such as those who identify as lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB), use the Internet to enhance their social connectedness, thus compensating for lower levels of offline support (i.e., Social Compensation Theory). The current study examined whether online support moderated the relationship between offline support and well-being differentially for heterosexual and LGB-identifying youth. Findings indicated that overall, offline support was associated with greater ratings of well-being while online support was associated with lower ratings of well-being. Furthermore, it was found that offline support was most strongly associated with well-being for LGB-identifying youth who were highly active online. The results of this study suggest that online support does not compensate for offline support for either heterosexual or LGB-identifying youth. These findings point to the urgency of finding alternative ways to promote in-person support networks for LGB-identifying youth.

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The objective of the current study was to explore parents’ perceptions about the influence of pornography consumption on adolescent sexual development. Additional factors that may impact parents’ perceptions about adolescent pornography consumption were also examined, including parenting style, age, gender, ethnicity, education level, religious beliefs, and beliefs about sex and sexuality. Data was collected from 500 participants who had adolescents between the ages of 13-18 years, through an online survey. Findings indicated that parents who practice more authoritative child rearing styles perceive pornography to be more harmful for their adolescent(s). As well, the strength of the relationship between authoritative parenting, and the belief’s that pornography is harmful for adolescents changed as a function of permissiveness. Conversely, parents who exercise more authoritarian parenting styles believe pornography to be less harmful for adolescents. In addition, as permissive attitudes increased for our authoritarian parents, beliefs that pornography is harmful for adolescents decreased. Our results imply that permissive sexual attitudes, and various predictors such as age, gender, ethnicity are important moderators of the association between parenting styles and perceptions about adolescent pornography consumption.

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With the increasingly ubiquitous use of mobile phones in modern culture, particularly among university students, recent research has focused on the behaviours, characteristics, and effects of mobile phone use, with the evaluation of addictive features largely dominating work in this area. Given the lack of consensus regarding the etiology and standard measure of this addiction model, the objective of this study was to explore the possibility of an alternative framework for understanding university students’ relationships with their mobile phones (i.e., that of attachment theory rather than addiction). To this end, data was collected from 403 undergraduate participants (between the ages of 18-25, who owned a smartphone with at least one active social media account) recruited from two large Canadian universities. Participants responded to an online questionnaire including measures of sociodemographic information (e.g., gender, ethnicity, mobile phone use), adult attachment dimensions, mobile phone attachment, problematic mobile phone use, and their device’s perceived relationship-facilitating function. Findings indicated that, overall, participants were forming some degree of attachment to their mobile phones, and that this was particularly true for those higher in attachment anxiety. Further, attachment anxiety was found to be related to characteristics of problematic mobile phone use, and this relationship was mediated by features of mobile phone attachment. Thus, results from this study supported the use of an attachment theory framework for understanding what has typically been conceptualized as mobile phone addiction (i.e., there was an indirect relationship between attachment anxiety and problematic mobile phone use through participants’ attachments to their mobile phones). As the first study to examine the relationship between mobile phone attachment and problematic mobile phone use, findings from this work have important implications for understanding university students’ relationships with their mobile phones, while offering insight into some of the alarming behaviours that have emerged alongside increasing mobile phone use.

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This study involved the analysis of child and youth injury-event descriptions that were provided by adult household members to the USA’s National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) during 2006-2010. The goal was to see if and how injury-events were described differently by injury-event type (intentional vs. unintentional) and point-of-view (parent vs. non-parent) based on linguistic features, and to note whether such features were an expression of experiential and interpersonal processes from the physical, psychological, or contextual domains. The linguistic analyses also included a query of proxy estimates of deceit to allow for the tracing of potential covert mentions of awareness intent. Findings from this study indicated that the language-use patterns for intentional injury-event descriptions included greater linguistic detail that set them apart from other types of injury-event descriptions, including unintentional, and were more similar to non-parent provided injury-event descriptions. The same was the case for the trialed proxy estimates of deceit. The utility of identifying language-use patterns provides added means to inform the eventual development of a supplementary intentional injury query rubric for use by helping professionals –alongside their existing practice– in disciplines that have an intentional injury intervention and prevention mandate. It is anticipated that the proposed linguistic method of inquiry will contribute to filling the knowledge gap noted in the intentional maltreatment injury (IMI) literature concerning the need to make more accurate the complex process of determination of intent when children and youths present with an intentional injury that is not visibly obvious or severe, and the injury-event is described as if it was unintentional.

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The current research examined the characteristics of post-secondary students who use social media, their motivation for using social media and its relationship to university adjustment, as well as the moderating role played by self-regulation, socio-demographic variables, and social support. A total of 403 undergraduate students from two Canadian universities participated in this research, answering questions pertaining to motivations for social media use, social and academic adjustment to university, self-regulation, social support, and socio-demographics. Results show that four motivations for social media use emerged: self-promotion, entertainment, socialization, and university-related. Motivations for social media use were similar across platforms, regardless of socio-demographics, social support, and self-regulation, highlighting the universality of social media. Further findings indicate that the relationship between self-promotion motivations for social media use and social adjustment was moderated by social support, self-regulation, academic performance, and age; whereas there was not relationship between self-promotion and academic adjustment to university. Socialization motivations for social media use was positively linked to social adjustment to university. Self-regulation moderated the relationship between academic adjustment and both socialization and university related motivations for social media use. Lastly, there were no significant relationships or interactions between entertainment motivations for social media sue and either social or academic adjustment to university. As we move into an increasingly technological world, it is important to understand the nuances of how and why emerging adults are using social media to ensure adaptive patterns of internet use, including successful adjustment to university. This work further points to the need to better understand motivations for social media use, in particular, self-promotion motivations, and their impact on the university experience.

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The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate online risk-taking behaviour among adolescents. A total of 189 adolescents were given an online self-report questionnaire containing 20 examples of possible online posts. Half of the participants were presented with an application prior to the questionnaire that provided relevant, in-the-moment information about how their posts might be used and seen by others, and the other half were given an irrelevant Internet facts application. The likelihood of posting online content was assessed based on the type of post (emotionally evocative versus personal information), the nature of the post (public versus private), the gender of the participant (boy, girl), the type of app received (PostFire versus GhostFire), as well as the interaction of these variables. Results showed that while boys and girls were more likely to report that they would post or send content privately than publicly, girls were even more likely than males to report that they would send all types of information privately. Findings indicate that adolescents, particularly girls, are unlikely to discriminate between types of content online when privately messaging with others.

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As the Internet has evolved over the past decade, adolescents now tend to communicate with existing offline friends instead of strangers. However, a particular profile of shy and introverted users seems to prefer communicating with online-exclusive friends. This qualitative study aimed to explore how self-identified shy adolescents constructed their identities through their narratives of close friendships in online and offline settings. With a focus on “contextual identities”, I examined how the context may influence identity construction and social processes, as well as how continuity and change across the online-offline divide surfaced in the narratives.Six female adolescents aged 14 to 18 years were recruited, where online interviews were carried out using an adaptation of Arvay’s (2003) reflexive collaborative narrative method. The narratives were analyzed with a holistic-content approach by Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, and Zilber (1998) to preserve the unique voice of each participant. This was followed by a cross-case analysis (Stake, 2006) that yielded the following six findings: (1) Adolescents constructed a reticent identity through enacting a generalized worldview of an untrustworthy social environment, due to experiences of broken trust or perceived rejection. (2) Adolescents presented a self-concept of diffidence and insecurity through recounting childhood experiences that undermined their development of competence and autonomy. (3) Adolescents constructed a shy self-concept through identifying personal deficits in relation to societal referential standards, and concurrently constructed role identities that put themselves in positions of strength. (4) Trust, as a main factor in overcoming the fear of self-disclosure, was more easily established in online autonomous dyadic interactions than in offline settings where group structures and norms limited the freedom to be themselves. (5) Online affordances built social competence by providing a scaffold for overcoming the fear of self-disclosure and replicating offline social practices which accelerated intimacy development. (6) Shy identities seemed contextualized to the general offline interactional experience, but these could change over time with new positive experiences in offline settings via increased self-confidence or self-acceptance. These findings, together with educational implications and future research, are discussed.

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The Online Social Information Processing scale (OSIP) is a measure with 116 items that was developed based on the Social Information Processing model (SIP). The OSIP measures six social information processing skills, with a focus on how these skills are used in the face of online aggression. This goal of this study was to examine the validity of the OSIP for measuring how adolescents processed social information in online settings. After developing the items, to collect validity evidence, experts’ evaluation, as well as adolescents’ assessment through a think aloud protocol methods, was used. Evidence for validity from the item development emerged through content definition, test specification, and item editing. Evidence from expert evaluation is related to the construct of the test items in terms of alignment with the content domain and language appropriateness. Finally, evidence from student assessment came from using a think aloud protocol, which helped evaluate the language of the test items, as well as helped me understand how engaging adolescents found the measure.

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No abstract available.

To investigate play with electronic toys (battery-operated or digital), 25 mother-toddler (16-24 months old) dyads were videotaped in their homes playing with sets of age-appropriate electronic and non-electronic toys for approximately 10 minutes each. Parent-child interactions were coded from recorded segments of both of the play conditions using the PICCOLO checklist. Mean scores for each play session were compared and the result showed significantly lower means in the electronic toys condition for three of the four sub-scales of the PICCOLO. Family demographic and play pattern data were collected via self-report questionnaire. Results indicated that the play experiences of toddlers were compromised by the lower quality of parent-child interaction during joint play with electronic toys. The potential impact on early child development and suggestions for future research are discussed.

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The aim of this study was to investigate whether social and emotional learning and school climate have an impact on teacher stress, job satisfaction, and sense of efficacy. The sample included 664 public schoolteachers from suburban, rural, and remote areas of British Columbia and Ontario in Canada. Participants completed an online questionnaire about teacher outcomes, school climate, and social and emotional learning. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that positive school climates significantly predicted lower teacher stress, increased teacher job satisfaction, and increased teacher sense of efficacy. Of the school climate variables, student relations played the most significant role in predicting better teacher outcomes. Other significant variables were collaboration among staff, school resources, and input in decision making. For social and emotional learning, the findings demonstrated that stronger beliefs and integration of social and emotional learning predicted greater job satisfaction and increased teacher sense of efficacy; however, certain social and emotional learning variables also predicted increased stress. Of the social and emotional learning variables, comfort with and regular implementation of social and emotional learning in the classroom, the support and promotion of social and emotional learning , and the integration of social and emotional learning across the school predicted better outcomes for teachers, whereas commitment to improving social and emotional learning provided mixed results. Implications for practice and research are discussed.

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