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AbstractBecause diverse school settings provide students with opportunities to form same‐ and cross‐group relationships with youth of various ethnicities and races, an important question arises: How are these opportunities taken up, and what are the developmental implications of doing so? Accumulating evidence suggests that these connections are beneficial to youth. Yet, we currently have a limited understanding of the specific peer mechanisms that produce these benefits. Addressing this gap requires adopting a relational perspective and using social network analysis (SNA) tools to characterize the theorized developmental mechanisms through which intergroup connections promote adolescent psychological and academic adjustment. To do so, we present an integrative account in which intergroup connections are viewed as developing and influencing adolescent outcomes in the context of broader peer networks. We then discuss the need to disentangle peer network selection from peer influence dynamics to provide an accurate account of multiple processes through which intergroup connections shape development and briefly explore how these goals are achieved by using statistical approaches to modeling of social networks. This review seeks to guide the next generation of research to more thoroughly test and refine the developmental theory and advance knowledge that will inform interventions to promote intergroup connections and their academic and socio‐emotional benefits.

Conventional wisdom holds that friends protect against depression through the social support they provide; however, depression likely has a role in structuring friendship networks. In particular, we investigate friend selection mechanisms responsible for similarity in depression among friends (i.e., homophily). Preference is one explanation, yet several correlates of depression make homophilous selection among depressed individuals unlikely. We propose two alternative mechanisms—avoidance and withdrawal—that can produce depression homophily in the absence of preference. These alternative mechanisms create homophily indirectly by limiting friendship partners available to depressed individuals. We test the preference, avoidance, and withdrawal mechanisms using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and a dynamic network model. Results provide support for the withdrawal mechanism. These findings help explain how depression affects friend selection and have broader implications for understanding selection mechanisms responsible for network patterns such as homophily.

AbstractThis study examined secular trends in Russian adolescent mental health, the specific effects of the COVID‐19 pandemic, and associations with country‐level indicators. A cross‐sectional survey of 12,882 adolescents aged 11–18 years was carried out between 1999 and 2021 using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. The results showed an incline in girls' internalizing problems with a two‐fold increase in the gender gap. There was a decline in girls' prosocial behavior and an incline in peer problems, with decreasing gender differences. Conduct problems showed a reversal of gender differences. Changes during the pandemic were not greater than over‐time changes, with the exception of inclines in hyperactivity‐inattention in both genders. Time trends in adolescent mental health were associated with over‐time changes in national indicators of wealth and gender equality. The findings provide a strong basis for further research into the determinants of gender differences in adolescent mental health and for gender‐specific interventions.