The editors of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence are very pleased to announce the 2023 recipient of its Emerging Scholar Best Article Award. This award goes to the article’s lead author, who must be an “emerging scholar” (i.e., an untenured researcher, such as a graduate student, post-doctoral scholar, research scientist, or assistant professor) at the time their manuscript was accepted. The recipient of the award is selected by editorial board members who evaluate a volume’s manuscripts based on their innovative and substantive contributions to the empirical understanding of adolescence. In addition to receiving recognition from colleagues, the winner receives a financial award generously supported by Springer Nature, the journal’s publisher.

The 2023 winner is Xiangyu Tao, for her article entitled “Exposure to Social Media Racial Discrimination and Mental Health among Adolescents of Color” (Tao and Fisher, 2022). Tao currently is an advanced doctoral student in the Applied Developmental Psychology program at Fordham University. Her research interests center around understanding developmental risk and resilience in response to racial, sexual, and gender discrimination across different ecological contexts among underrepresented youth, primarily focusing on online experiences. Her co-author was Celia B. Fisher, Fordham University. Professor Fisher is a leader in the study of health disparities among diverse racial and ethnic and sexual and gender minority populations. She directs the Human Development and Social Justice Lab, the Center for Ethics Education, and the NIDA funded HIV/Drug Abuse Prevention Research Ethics Institute at Fordham.

Tao’s article presented what already has become widely recognized as a groundbreaking study examining how offline and online racial discrimination associates with mental health problems among adolescents of color. The study was particularly timely given how pandemic shelter-at-home policies and the reignited racial justice movement increased the use of social media among youth of color, potentially exposing them to social media racial discrimination. She assessed the relationships among social media use (hours, racial intergroup contact, and racial justice civic engagement), individual and vicarious social media discrimination (defined as personally directed versus observing discrimination directed at others), and mental health among 115 black, 112 East/Southeast Asian, 79 Indigenous, and 101 Latinx adolescents. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses indicated that hours of use and racial justice civic engagement were associated with increased social media racial discrimination, depressive symptoms, anxiety, alcohol use disorder, and drug use problems. The findings also revealed that individual social media racial discrimination fully mediated the relationship between racial justice civic publication and depressive and alcohol use disorder. Vicarious social media racial discrimination fully mediated the relationship between racial justice activity coordination with depressive symptoms, anxiety, and alcohol use disorder. SEM models indicated that exposure to individual and vicarious social media racial discrimination increased depressive symptoms and drug use problems among youth of color, further increasing their social media use frequency and racial justice civic activities. The authors concluded that their findings call for strategies to mitigate the effects of social media racial discrimination in ways that support adolescents’ racial justice, civic engagement and mental health.

The journal’s editors view receiving the award as a considerably distinctive accomplishment. The journal publishes well over 150 articles per year, as it has since the award was established. In addition, it is notable that, every year, fewer and fewer first authors are emerging scholars. Although fewer emerging scholars qualify to be considered, this shift in authorship has not reduced the competitiveness of the award. In fact, these developments actually make the process even more competitive for emerging scholars, as they have increased competition to get published in the first place.

As we celebrate this award, it also is important to recognize the other truly outstanding articles selected from each of the journal’s other issues published in 2022. An unusually high number of articles focused on the impact of teachers on a variety of adolescent outcomes (see Allsop and Anderman, 2022; Alscher et al., 2022; Demol et al, 2022; Jelsma et al., 2022). Other manuscripts focused on sexuality (Caba et al., 2022), racial socialization (Atkins and Ahn, 2022), economic hardship (Barnhart et al., 2022), problem behavior (Bone et al., 2022), emotional development (Gao et al., 2022; Olivier et al., 2022) and the experience of immigrants and refugees (Henkens et al., 2022; Spaas et al., 2022).

We also would like to note prior recipients, whose names will be familiar to many who conduct developmental research focusing on the period of adolescence:

2022 Natasha R. Magson, Macquarie University

2021 Josefina Bañales, University of Illinois, Chicago

2020 Anna Vannucii, Columbia University

2019 Adam A. Rogers, Brigham Young University

2018 Stephanie Plenty, Stockholm University

2017 Chia-chen Yang, University of Wisconsin-Madison,

2016 Wendi L. Johnson, Bowling Green State University

2015 Paul A. Chase, Tufts University

2014 Allison B. Brenner, University of Michigan

2013 Brian D. Christens, University of Wisconsin-Madison,

2012 Eeske van Roekel, Radboud University Nijmegen

2011 Lisa Kiang, Wake Forest University

As with the current emerging scholar award recipient, prior recipients also were part of an exceptional cohort (see Levesque, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021a, 2022)

On behalf of the journal’s editorial board, I would like to congratulate this year’s recipient and her colleague. Their recognition comes at a remarkable time in the growth of our journal, as it recently celebrated its 50th anniversary and its move toward a curator model of editing (see Levesque, 2021b), and highlights the need to consider and take seriously the intricacies of youth’s engagement in societal changes and challenges.