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In emerging adulthood, when many young people are away from their families for the first time, mobile phones become an important conduit for maintaining relationships with parents. Yet, objective assessment of the content and frequency of text messaging between emerging adults and their parents is lacking in much of the research to date. We collected two weeks of text messages exchanged between U.S. college students (N = 238) and their parents, which yielded nearly 30,000 parent-emerging adult text messages. We coded these text message exchanges for traditional features of parent-emerging adult communication indexing positive connection, monitoring and disclosures. Emerging adults texted more with mothers than with fathers and many messages constitute parental check-ins and emerging adult sharing regarding youth behavior and well-being. Findings highlight that both the frequency and content of parent-emerging adult text messages can be linked with positive (perceived text message support) and negative (perceived digital pressure) aspects of the parent-emerging adult relationship. The content of parent-emerging adult text messages offers a valuable, objective window into the nature of the parent-emerging adult relationships in the digital age of the 21st century.

Our goal is to identify integrative themes in this special issue on "Parenting Adolescents in an Increasingly Diverse World". Specifically, we identify themes that may generalize largely from studies of marginalized families to guide American families more broadly as youth navigate an increasingly diverse world. We describe three broad diversity socialization goals that may foster greater intercultural maturity in youth. These include helping youth find their place and value in a multicultural world, increase the value that they place on others and decrease their fears of difference, and prepare to respond to biased or perceived rejection. And we offer five directions for future research to help build a path forward in this important area of study.

In a sample of 562 college student peer dyads ( M age = 20.47, SD = 1.26; 65.7% female; 68.8% White), this study investigates how college student engagement (both their own and their peer's) in online alcohol-facilitative communication is associated with frequency of past year drinking. Data were drawn from a study conducted in 2016–2018 in the Southeastern United States. Actor-partner interdependence models suggest that college students who engaged in more alcohol-facilitative communication, and whose peer engaged in more alcohol-facilitative communication, drank more frequently and more heavily than those students who engaged in less alcohol-facilitative communication (even when controlling for their peer's offline drinking). Moreover, college student engagement in online alcohol-facilitative communication was a stronger predictor of their own drinking than their peer's engagement. The hypothesized interaction between self- and peer-reported alcohol-facilitative communication did not emerge overall, though exploratory analyses of specific subdimensions of alcohol-facilitative communication suggested a potential ceiling effect.

First-generation college students are less likely to complete their degrees than continuing-generation students, in part due to experiences of educational and socioeconomic adversity. Accounting for adversity and its downstream implications is likely to suggest new interventions that promote resilience and retention of these students. We propose a novel model in which the influence of adversity on long term academic outcomes acts through indicators of stress responding, then through academic avoidance behaviors. The strength of this pathway depends upon both a cognitive processing characteristic that affects stress responding—trait rumination—and levels of enacted family support during college. This perspective suggests specific targets for intervention that include decreasing levels of rumination, increasing levels of family support, and decreasing academic avoidance behaviors for all students, but might be particularly relevant to first-generation students.

AbstractSocial interaction, particularly in older adolescents, increasingly involves computer‐mediated communication. Although studies of public computer‐mediated communication are increasingly common, studies of private text messaging remain rare. As approaches for obtaining such data evolve with technological advances, developmental scientists need designs in which to use such approaches that reduce sampling biases in both participants and text messages. In this study (n = 854; 46% male; 22% African American, 60% European American), we examined selection biases in the participant sample (i.e., factors associated with actual participation), procedural biases in the participant sample (i.e., factors related to failed data capture due to technological or procedural issues), and selection biases in the sample of text messages (i.e., based on self‐reported reasons for texting). Findings from our study suggest that studying human interaction directly through analysis of text message data is not only feasible, but also may be successfully undertaken with minimal biases regarding sample selection and text message selection among those who are engaged in research and engaged in text messaging outside of the study context. However, biases may occur depending on the type of platform (iPhone vs. Android) used by participants for texting.

A population‐representative sample of young adolescents (N = 2,104, mean age 12.4) reported on digital technology use and relationships in 2015. A subsample (N = 388) completed a 14‐day ecological momentary assessment in 2016–2017 via mobile phone. Across the 2,104 adolescents, those who reported more social networking site engagement were more likely to live in families characterized by more family chaos and to report that their online experiences resulted in problems with their parents. However, when the subsample of adolescents was followed daily, there was little consistent evidence that adolescents' quantity of daily digital technology use detracted from the amount of time they spend interacting with close others (including parents) nor that adolescent daily technology use was associated with more negative or less positive parent–adolescent interactions.

This paper tested whether shift‐&‐persist coping, or coping involving the combination of cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, and optimism (Chen & Miller, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2012, 7, 135), attenuates the risks presented by economic hardship and ethnic discrimination for change in depressive symptoms from 9th to 12th grade, in a sample of 674 Mexican American youth (Mage W1 = 10.86; 50% female; 72% US born) and whether this effect depends on ethnic pride. Structural equation modeling indicated that, when accounting for economic hardship, shift‐&‐persist was associated with fewer concurrent depression symptoms. Youth with lower ethnic pride who endorsed high levels of shift‐&‐persist were protected against the negative impacts of peer ethnic discrimination on depressive symptoms. Future research on ethnic discrimination should examine patterns of coping and identity that can mitigate risk.