It takes three: Selection, influence, and de-selection processes of depression in adolescent friendship networks.

Abstract

The authors of this study tested a selection-influence-de-selection model of depression. This model explains friendship influence processes (i.e., friends' depressive symptoms increase adolescents' depressive symptoms) while controlling for two processes: friendship selection (i.e., selection of friends with similar levels of depressive symptoms) and friendship de-selection (i.e., de-selection of friends with dissimilar levels of depressive symptoms). Further, this study is unique in that these processes were studied both inside and outside the school context. The authors used a social network approach to examine 5 annual measurements of data in a large (N =847) community-based network of adolescents and their friends (M = 14.3 years old at first measurement). Results supported the proposed model: adolescents tend to select friends with similar levels of depression, and friends may increase each other's depressive symptoms as relationships endure. These two processes were most salient outside the school context. At the same time, friendships seemed to be ended more frequently if adolescents' level of depressive symptoms was dissimilar to that of their friends.

Peer Attachment and Youth Internalizing Problems: A Meta-Analysis

“…For example, intimacy, closeness, and negative feedback seeking in close friendships were found to be related to adolescents' depressive symptoms (Borelli and Prinstein 2006;Burk and Laursen 2005). Several researchers underline that internalizing problems are more likely to be affected by intimate relations, for example best friends, rather than by a preferred group of peers in the classroom (Giletta et al 2012;Van Zalk et al 2010). Hence, some aspects of adolescents' friendships might be more strongly related to adolescents' healthy affective functioning.…”

Is Depression Contagious? A Test of Alternative Peer Socialization Mechanisms of Depressive Symptoms in Adolescent Peer Networks

“…Adults interacting with depressed individuals in a laboratory setting reported decreases in positive and increases in negative affects [15]. Longitudinal correlational studies (some including adolescents) indicate that partner's initial level of depressive affect is positively associated with changes in peers' subsequent level of depressive affect [4,8,9]. However, correlational studies of adolescent peer socialization do not measure contagion alone.…”

“…Recent studies demonstrating depression socialization between adolescents and their peers have been interpreted as providing support for contagion [4,8,9]. However, these studies have conflated measures of contagion (increases in depressive symptoms on the part of the less depressed adolescent to resemble those of the more depressed peer) with measures of convergence (increases in similarity arising when either the less depressed adolescent increases depressive symptoms to resemble the more depressed peer, or the more depressed adolescent decreases depressive symptoms to resemble the less depressed peer).…”

Socialization of Social Anxiety in Adolescent Crowds

“…Then, through self-perception (Bem 1967), a process in which people infer their own attitudes or characteristics from their behaviors, they might come to see themselves as increasingly socially anxious. In addition, even though crowds in themselves might be abstract phenomena, they do affect adolescents' social relationships (Brown et al 1994), as adolescents are more likely to be friends if they are part of the same crowd (Brown et al 1994;La Greca et al 2001;Urberg et al 2000), and peers influence each other on both delinquency (Burk et al 2007;Dishion et al 1996;Kiesner et al 2002) and depression (Hogue and Steinberg 1995;Prinstein 2007;Rose 2002;Van Zalk et al 2010). As Radical crowds have been shown to comprise fewer individuals than other crowds (Bešić and Kerr 2009), one could assume that these adolescents might have more tight-knit, close peer relationships than adolescents in larger crowds.…”