Credit score: Unsplash/CC0 Public Area
Most of us know what it is wish to be a teen in school—and the way it feels to suit into (or fall exterior of) a college’s social hierarchy. This sometimes contains some model of the favored children, the loners and the in-betweeners, who’ve friendships that span throughout totally different teams.
Nevertheless, teen hierarchies are greater than a passing social order. Analysis means that these social networks and positions can form psychological well being too. In a not too long ago printed examine, my colleagues and I discovered that in addition they relate to one of the crucial severe well being challenges amongst younger folks right this moment: self-harm.
Self-harm—hurting your self on function—is frequent in adolescence. Whereas it’s doubtless that some self-harm goes unreported, round 16%-22% of adolescents report having harmed themselves at the very least as soon as. The habits seems to be rising, notably amongst adolescent women. Worryingly, adolescents who self-harm have an elevated danger of worsening well being and psychological well being, together with deadly outcomes like suicide.
There could also be many causes somebody engages in self-harm. For instance, it may be a coping mechanism to alleviate emotional misery (intra-personal) by specializing in a bodily sensation. Or it may be formed by social components (inter-personal) akin to peer relationships.
For instance, youngsters could also be being influenced by the habits of others or use it as a method of speaking misery. Certainly, analysis has discovered that peer relationships are deeply essential in adolescence and matter for self-harm.
Nevertheless, little analysis has targeted on how the school-based friendship networks of teenagers relate to self-harm. We addressed this hole by analyzing information on teen friendship networks and self-harm from a cohort examine of adolescent psychological well being within the UK known as the Resilience Ethnicity and Adolescent Psychological Well being (Attain) examine, which follows a big group of individuals over time.
Attain has collected information from round 4,000 adolescents from 12 mainstream secondary faculties in inner-city south London. Pupils on the faculties accomplished questionnaires on their psychological well being and social networks (amongst different measures) over time. Up to now, Attain is the most important and most up-to-date cohort examine of adolescent psychological well being amongst younger folks from numerous inner-city areas within the UK.
On this examine, we targeted on the primary yr of Attain information assortment, when adolescents had been aged 11 to 14 years previous. Adolescents had been requested to report if that they had “ever tried to harm or hurt themselves”, with 14% reporting sure. They had been additionally requested to call buddies inside their faculty yr. That is the primary time a cohort examine within the UK has collected information on each faculty friendship networks and self-harm.
We used social community evaluation to “map” out teenagers’ friendship networks and to calculate a number of measures reflecting younger folks’s social positions inside their networks.
This included: “popularity” (how many individuals named you as a buddy), “bridging” (being an in-betweener and connecting in any other case disconnected friendship teams) and social isolation (having zero or one buddy solely), amongst different measures. We additionally checked out what number of of their buddies had reported self-harm, after which explored if and the way these totally different community measures associated to self-harm.
Social networks and self-harm
We discovered that each who adolescents are buddies with at school and the way they’re related to their buddies had been linked in numerous methods with self-harm. Strikingly, almost half of adolescents had at the very least one buddy who reported self-harm. This was linked to adolescents being extra more likely to report participating in self-harm themselves, which could recommend peer-influence.
Varied social positions in teen networks had been additionally linked to self-harm. Some positions had been protecting, which means adolescents had been much less more likely to self-harm, whereas different positions had been dangerous, which means they had been extra more likely to self-harm. Dangerous positions included social isolation, but additionally to some extent reputation and bridging (in-betweener).
Whereas reputation is usually seen as a fascinating social standing, it may additionally convey with it social pressures which can not directly result in self-harm. Bridging could mirror adolescents who’re “between” totally different friendship teams, which can be socially taxing and hyperlink to self-harm.
Protecting positions included “sociality” (nominating plenty of folks as buddies) and being a part of a tight-knit friendship group with buddies who’re buddies with one another. Nevertheless, the strongest hyperlinks had been for social isolation and having buddies who report self-harm.
We additionally examined if there have been any variations by gender. We anticipated the consequences to be stronger amongst women in contrast with boys. Nevertheless, we discovered little proof of this—which means that social networks relate to self-harm the identical throughout girls and boys from our numerous, inner-city London pattern.
You will need to notice that these findings come from information that was collected at a single time limit. This implies our findings are associations, and we can’t indicate causation, or set up which route the associations is perhaps in. For instance, do social networks predict self-harm, or does self-harm predict social networks? This must be additional studied.
Our examine highlights that self-harm is a crucial well being problem to sort out in adolescence—and contemplating teenagers’ social networks at school could also be an essential a part of tackling that problem. Particularly, self-harm is just not one thing to be understood in isolation—however there could also be social components to the habits for some, and it could be formed by teenagers’ social networks.
It additionally means that if each connection (akin to having buddies who self-harm) and disconnection (social isolation) from friends are related, then there’s a want for multiple method to self-harm prevention in faculties. Whereas it could be tempting to concentrate on those that are socially remoted, it’s also essential to contemplate friendship group dynamics, and the way adolescent’s self-harm could have an effect on the broader peer-network.
In the end, peer relationships in adolescence deeply have an effect on us and may proceed to form psychological well being for many years. The extra we perceive teen social networks, the higher we will assist younger folks’s psychological well being.
Offered by
The Dialog
This text is republished from The Dialog beneath a Inventive Commons license. Learn the unique article.
Quotation:
How teen friendships could predict self hurt (2025, November 3)
retrieved 3 November 2025
from https://medicalxpress.com/information/2025-11-teen-friendships.html
This doc is topic to copyright. Other than any honest dealing for the aim of personal examine or analysis, no
half could also be reproduced with out the written permission. The content material is supplied for data functions solely.
