Title: A Method for Helping Children and Adolescents Start Friendships
Legend: Left – There was a main effect of condition, such that participants in the Fast Friends condition (M = 5.75) reported greater interest in future contact with their interaction partner than participants in the control condition (M = 5.39), F(1, 121.64) = 11.07, p = .001, d = .41. Right – There was a main effect of condition, such that participants in the Fast Friends condition (M = 4.18) reported feeling closer to their interaction partner than participants in the control condition (M = 3.32), F(1, 121.66) = 28.93, p < .001, d = .67.
Citation: Swerbenski, K. L., Barnett, K. C., Devine, P. G., & Shutts, K. (2024). Making “fast friends” online in middle childhood and early adolescence. Social Development, 33, e12708. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12708
Abstract: Close peer relationships are critical to children’s and adolescents’ healthy development and well-being, yet youth sometimes struggle to make friends. The present work tested whether an online version of the Fast Friends procedure could engender closeness among 9- to 13-year-old youth. Participant dyads (N = 131), matched in age and gender, were randomly assigned to answer personal questions that encourage self-disclosure and play a collaborative game (Fast Friends condition) or to engage in similar activities without self-disclosure or collaboration (control condition). Fast Friends dyads reported feeling closer and expressed more interest in future contact than control dyads. The discussion addresses potential future uses and implications of an online Fast Friends procedure.
Investigator: Kristin Shutts, PhD
About the Lab: The Shutts’ lab interests lie in the origins of object cognition and social cognition. It has a long-standing interest in how infants and children perceive and categorize objects, as well as a more recent, and now primary, interest in how infants and children apprehend their social world. They are particularly interested in the development of social categories and preferences in infancy and early childhood. When do children come to see themselves and others as belonging to different social categories (e.g., gender, ethnicity, social class), which distinctions matter most to children, and how does this change over development and a result of immersion in a particular culture? What mechanisms support the development of social categories and preferences, and what are the cognitive and affective consequences of children’s earliest social category formation?