Browsing by Subject "ystävyyssuhteet"

Objectives. Online communication has become central for adolescents’ everyday lives during the last two decades. Because friendships are vital for psychosocial development in adolescence, it is important to know how online communication affects adolescents’ friendships. The topic has been researched via four hypotheses. The Displacement hypothesis suggests that online communication is harmful for real-life friendships, whereas the Stimulation hypothesis claims that the internet is a useful environment to maintain real-life friendships. The Rich Get Richer hypothesis suggests that people who already have good existing friendships, will benefit most from online communication. The Social Compensation hypothesis suggests that internet gives possibility for socially inhibited people to make friends. Methods. Articles were searched with terms adolescent + online communication + friendship and adolescent + online communication + well-being. The topic narrowed down to 10-20-year-old adolescents and their friendships. Online communication was defined primarily as instant messaging but also some research that included other ways of online communication in addition to instant messaging were included. Results and Conclusions. The research so far has shown support mostly to the Stimulation and the Rich Get Richer hypothesis, but also some support to the Social Compensation hypothesis. Online communication increased the quality of existing friendships and these effects were stronger among social adolescents compared to socially inhibited adolescents. Socially anxious and lonely adolescents seem to find online communication easier to approach than face-to-face communication. Moreover, the online communication might increase self-esteem for lonely adolescents, which in part can make it easier to form real-life friendships. These results are important to be considered when attempting to help socially inhibited adolescents, but research should also consider the findings that these adolescents might also compensate face-to-face communication with online communication. The research overall has limitations, since most of the studies are cross-sectional and measurements rely on self-evaluation. Also, the trends of online communication devices are changing constantly, and the research has not had a unified measure for online communication. In future studies, it would be important to pay more attention to the definition of online communication, and to consider the effects of communication via mobile phone and the emerging popularity of more visually oriented online communication devices.