Young people's digital lives
Subtitle: the impact of interpersonal relationships and digital media use on adolescents' sense of identity
By: Katharine Elizabeth Davis
Contributors: Harvard University. Graduate School of Education
Published: 2011
Language: eng
Number of pages: 171
Subjects: Digital media; Interpersonal relations; Identity (Philosophical concept); Self-perception
Description: In this thesis, I use quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate adolescents' sense of identity and the role that parents, friends, and digital media technologies play in the construction of the self. For the quantitative portion of the study, 1 administered a questionnaire to a sample of 2,079 adolescents (57% female) between the ages of 11 and 19 years ( M = 15.4 years) attending grades 8-12 in public and private schools in Bermuda. The qualitative portion of the study consisted of in-depth interviews with a purposefully selected sub-sample of 32 of these respondents. Both portions of my study support earlier research showing that positive relationships with one's parents and friends contribute to a positive sense of self among adolescents. The results of my quantitative analyses add insight to this body of research by showing how parent and peer relationships work together to impact adolescent identity. Using structural equation modeling, I found that high-quality mother relationships contributed to high self-concept clarity, both directly and indirectly, through the positive impact they had on adolescents' friendship quality.

My analyses of adolescents' digital media use suggest that, depending on the uses to which adolescents put them, digital media may either enhance or diminish their interpersonal and intrapersonal experiences. I found that going online to express and explore different aspects of one's identity had a negative impact on self-concept clarity, partly as a result of the negative impact of online identity exploration on friendship quality, In contrast, going online to communicate with one's friends enhanced self-concept clarity through its positive effect on friendship quality. My final structural equation model fitted equally well for boys and girls, as well as for early, middle, and late adolescents. However, even though the pattern of interconnections remained the same, the levels of critical constructs differed. For instance, when I included age and gender in the statistical model as covariates, I found that, on average, boys and older adolescents tended to report higher levels of self-concept clarity than did girls and younger adolescents. Moreover, girls were more likely than boys to report high quality friendships.
Notes: Vita.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2011.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-170).