Publications by Year: 2025

Adolescence is a period of important neurobiological, social and cognitive changes. Under optimal conditions, adolescents are supported by parents who allow autonomy seeking while maintaining involvement and a strong relationship with their adolescent. Pubertal and neurobiological changes, alterations in adolescents’ sleep cycles, and changes in adolescents’ relationships with parents, peers, and schools (e.g., transitions to middle or high school), as well as increases in risk-taking are but a few of the changes that provide challenges to healthy adolescent development. These are exacerbated for adolescents in foster care who often experience changes in caregivers and transitions between neighborhoods and schools. The foster care system often fails to support navigating developmental challenges successfully. This consensus statement on youth in foster care makes a case for a developmentally informed system of care. Although we avoid making specific policy and practice recommendations, we identify general areas where research can inform change.

Adolescent friendships offer a crucial context for learning to seek social support. Through repeated social support encounters, adolescents take in social information and shape their own development. The current study characterizes adolescents’ support-seeking discussion topics with close friends, how the topics are influenced by adolescent age and gender, and how they are related to interpersonal processes in close friendships. A community sample of 184 adolescents (85 boys, 99 girls; 58% white, 29% Black, 13% other identity groups) participated annually from age 13 to 18. Through these six waves of data collection, participants completed a total of 859 support-seeking interactions, from which 10 thematic codes were identified. Support-seeking about socially oriented topics (e.g., conflicts with peers, romantic interests) appeared consistently across adolescence, while participants increasingly discussed future-oriented topics (e.g., considering college or work plans) with their friends as they aged. Selection of socially-oriented topics was more common among female dyads and was associated with higher friendship quality, self-disclosure, and emotional support in conversations between adolescent close friends.