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Digital Youth pp 27–39Cite as

Connecting Online Behavior to Adolescent Development: A Theoretical Framework

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Part of the book series: Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development ((ARAD))

Abstract

Adolescence is a period of tremendous change and many view it as a period of “storm and stress.” Although we now know that adolescence is not always a turbulent period, the storm and stress view, has come to frame questions about the role of interactive technologies in adolescent development, the focus of this book. In this chapter, we present the developmental approach that we use throughout the book to examine the role of digital media in adolescent development. The first part of the chapter reviews some of the lessons learnt from developmental psychology. We briefly describe three core adolescent developmental issues – sexuality, identity, and intimacy – around which the first part of this book is organized. Then we argue that we must treat digital worlds as another social context for adolescent development along the lines of familiar ones such as families, peers, and schools. The second part of the chapter examines the role of digital media during adolescence and presents our co-construction model of adolescents’ online behavior, which suggests that adolescents’ online and offline worlds are psychologically connected. Consequently, adolescents may bring the issues and people from their offline worlds to their online ones. We discuss the implications of our co-construction model for understanding the role of digital media in young people’s development.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, California State University, Los Angeles, CA, 90032-8227, USA

    Kaveri Subrahmanyam

  2. Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, 602 00, Czech Republic

    David Šmahel

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  1. Kaveri Subrahmanyam
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  2. David Šmahel
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Correspondence to Kaveri Subrahmanyam .

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Subrahmanyam, K., Šmahel, D. (2011). Connecting Online Behavior to Adolescent Development: A Theoretical Framework. In: Digital Youth. Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6278-2_2

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