title: Connecting with friends online: Young adults' social well-being and the role of social vulnerabilities in contemporary contexts
Creators: name: Scott, Riley A
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: young adults
subject: digital age
subject: social vulnerabilities
subject: online contexts
subject: friendships
subject: social well-being
subject: social anxiety
subject: COVID-19 pandemic
subject: loneliness

description: Humans are inherently social creatures, and the internet has provided an abundance of novel opportunities for social interaction with both friends and strangers. This is particularly true for young adults (those aged 18 to 25) as they are the most pervasive users of the internet and social media. Recent estimates suggest that over 90% of Australian young adults use the internet multiple times per day (Australian Communications and Media Authority, ACMA, 2019), and between 88% and 94% of young adults report using some form of social media regularly (ACMA, 2019; Smith &amp; Anderson, 2018). A growing literature has explored the opportunities provided by online contexts for social interaction and has demonstrated that the internet has the potential to change the ways that individuals perceive and behave within their friendships and relationships online. Despite this, research into friendships as they take place across online and offline (i.e., face-to-face) contexts, and the impacts of the internet on young adults’ friendships and social connectedness remains in its infancy. This PhD was designed to examine how young adults connect with their friends in the digital age, as well as to investigate the interplay between social vulnerabilities and online contexts in young adults’ friendships and social well-being. Particular attention was given to social anxiety and loneliness, interaction tendencies across contexts, and perceived affordances of the internet in influencing social well-being. Furthermore, this thesis sheds light on changes to young adults’ friendships during the COVID-19 pandemic and provides insight into the implications of major changes in the ability to interact with others face-to-face. Four studies are included in this thesis with two distinct samples. Studies 1, 2, and 3 employ a large sample of young adult university students (N = 687) who were recruited to complete an online survey (of approximately 30 minutes duration) about their friendships, social well-being, and online engagement. In Study 1, four types of friendships were derived that illustrate the distinctions between relationships across online and offline settings. Following the identification of these friendship types, differences in interaction frequency and friendship quality were examined. Further, a serial mediation model tested the effects of social anxiety on perceptions of friendship quality, through loneliness and frequency of interacting with friends, as moderated by young adults’ self-reported primary context of interaction with friends (online, offline, or equally online and offline). The findings of this study suggest that among those who primarily interact with friends online, social vulnerabilities are not significantly associated with friendship quality. Study 2 extended the research by examining whether perceptions of digital environments as offering safe spaces to interact with others can act to increase online disinhibition (reductions in restraint in online as compared to offline settings). To study perceptions of the internet, Study 2 developed new measures examining perceptions of feeling protected and being in control online. Further, whether the associations between perceptions of the internet and online disinhibition were exacerbated for more socially anxious young adults was tested. Results demonstrated that perceptions of protection, but not control, were significantly associated with online disinhibition in young adults. Further, this relationship was moderated by social anxiety such that young adults high in both social anxiety and perceptions of protection reported the highest online disinhibition. In Study 3, a multigroup mediation was conducted to determine whether perceptions of protection and control online were associated with social internet use and, in turn, social connectedness among young adults. Further, similar to Study 2, whether these effects were conditional on levels of social anxiety was investigated. For all young adults, social internet use was positively associated with social connectedness, but the results highlight key differences in the associations between internet perceptions and social connectedness among young adults with and without social anxiety. Specifically, perceptions of control online were associated with lower social connectedness for socially anxious youth, whereas perceptions of protection online were significantly associated with lower levels of social connectedness among youth who were not socially anxious. Finally, the fourth study of this thesis included a distinct sample of 404 young adults from whom data were collected via a 30-minute online survey during the first widespread, nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in Australia. The key aim of this research was to examine whether social relationships had changed as a result of the pandemic and the impact this had on social well-being. Findings indicated that for young adults who primarily interacted offline with friends prior to COVID-19 (as compared to those who interacted predominantly online or equally across online and offline contexts before the pandemic), the shift away from face-to-face interactions was associated with a greater reduction in satisfaction with friendships, which, in turn, was associated with higher loneliness and lower social connectedness. Taken together, the studies within this thesis demonstrate that social vulnerabilities, perceptions of online contexts, and social internet use (or social interaction tendencies across contexts) each play an important role in explaining young adults’ friendship experiences and social well-being. Further, in each study, novel interactions between person and context shed light on the nuanced ways in which the internet and social interaction online (or lack thereof) may have beneficial or detrimental outcomes for young adults. The findings are discussed with regard to important theoretical contributions and future research applications.