Connecting Online Behavior to Adolescent Development: A Theoretical Framework

Abstract

Wedged between childhood and emerging adulthood, adolescence is a period of tremendous change – biological, psychological, and social. In fact, Stanley Hall (1904) characterized it as a period of " storm and stress " and this belief remains strong in popular culture and in the minds of many parents. Although researchers have come to recognize that adolescence is not always a turbulent period (Steinberg, 2008), the storm and stress view, for better or worse, has come to frame much of the discourse about the role of interactive technologies in adolescent life. Digital worlds have become a part of adolescent life, and some see it as a threat or obstacle to an already difficult transition. Our goal in this book is to examine the role of dig-ital media in adolescent development and this chapter presents the developmental approach that we will use to frame our discussion. The first part of the chapter will briefly review what developmental psychology has already taught us about ado-lescence – the challenges and the factors, particularly contextual ones that affect adolescent development. The second part of the chapter examines the role of digi-tal media during adolescence and presents our theoretical position that adolescents' online and offline worlds are psychologically connected. The psychologist John P. Hill in his now classic 1983 paper laid out a very influential research agenda for adolescence. In it, he argued that in order to understand ado-lescent development, researchers had to use a three-pronged approach, one which emphasized the fundamental changes, contexts, and psychosocial tasks of adoles-cence (Hill, 1983; Steinberg, 2008). We draw on his model of adolescence as we try to understand adolescents' digital lives.