Introduction There are potential long‐term psychosocial effects of experiencing peer victimization during adolescence, including: internalizing symptoms, externalizing behaviors, and risks behaviors such as substance use. While social‐emotional theories of development note associations between deficits in emotion competencies and peer victimization in childhood, these associations are less established among adolescent samples. Identifying which inadequacies in emotional competence place particular adolescents at risk for peer victimization may provide insight into the developmental pathways leading to unfavorable outcomes. Methods The current study examined the relation between emotional competence and overt peer victimization among adolescents. Adolescents living in a mid‐sized urban city in the southeastern region of the United States (N = 357; Mage = 12.14 years, 92% African American) reported their emotional awareness and reluctance to express emotion at baseline. Two years later, adolescents reported their regulation of anger and caregivers reported on adolescents' global emotion regulation. Adolescents also reported on occurrences of overt peer victimization during the previous 30 days at baseline and during the two‐year follow up. Results Our hypothesized model fit the data adequately. Greater emotion awareness was associated with higher scores on caregiver‐rated emotion regulation and adolescent‐rated anger regulation two years later, and in turn, lower frequencies of overt victimization by peers. Further, greater expressive reluctance was associated with greater anger regulation, and in turn, lower frequencies of overt victimization by peers. Patterns of associations did not vary by sex or age. Conclusions The present study extends models of social‐emotional development and peer interactions into the development age stage of adolescence.

Black US Americans’ emotions are subject to stereotypes about the anger and aggression of Black people. These stereotypes are readily applied to Black adolescents’ emotions. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to operationalize racial oppression in the emotional lives of Black adolescents through an application of García Coll et al.'s (1996) ecological model for minority youth development. We specify emotionally inhibitive features of Black adolescents’ schools, the adaptive culture of Black Americans in the United States that responds to emotional inhibition, Black families’ emotion socialization processes, and Black adolescents’ emotional flexibility behaviors. Throughout, we integrate findings from research on Black adolescents’ emotional adjustment with research on cultural values, emotion and racial socialization, school‐based racial experiences, and theory on emotion and cultural navigation.

Background Most American adolescents have access to smartphones, and recent estimates suggest that they spend considerable time on social media compared with other physical and leisure activities. A large body of literature has established that social media use is related to poor mental health, but the complicated relationship between social media and symptoms of depression and anxiety in adolescents is yet to be fully understood. Objective We aim to investigate the relationship between social media use and depression and anxiety symptoms in adolescents by exploring physical activity as a mediator. Methods A Qualtrics survey manager recruited adult panel participants between February and March 2019, who indicated that they had adolescent children who spoke English. A total of 4592 adolescent-parent dyads completed the survey that took approximately 39 minutes. The survey entailed completing web-based questionnaires assessing various aspects of social media use, psychological symptoms, and psychosocial factors. The average age of the adolescent participants was 14.62 (SD 1.68; range 12-17) years, and the majority of the adolescent sample was male (2392/4592, 52.09%). Results Total social media use was associated with more depressive symptoms (multiple R2=0.12; F3,4480=207.1; P<.001), anxiety (multiple R2=0.09; F3,4477=145.6; P<.001), and loneliness (multiple R2=0.06; F3,4512=98.06; P<.001), controlling for age and gender. Physical activity was associated with decreased depression and anxiety symptoms after controlling for other extracurricular activities and social media use (multiple R2=0.24; F5,4290=266.0; P<.001). There were significant differences in symptoms based on gender: female adolescents reported higher rates of social media use and males reported higher rates of depression. Nonbinary and transgender adolescents had higher rates of depression, anxiety, and loneliness than the female and male adolescents in the sample. Conclusions In a nationally representative sample of adolescents, more social media use was associated with more severe symptoms of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Increased physical activity was associated with decreased depression and anxiety symptoms. Physical activity partially mediated the relationship between social media use and depression and anxiety. As this was a cross-sectional study, we cannot conclude that social media use causes internalizing symptoms or that physical activity leads to decreased internalizing symptoms—there may be additional confounding variables producing the relationships we observed. Physical activity may protect against the potentially harmful effect of social media on some adolescents. The effect sizes were small to medium, and the results should be interpreted with caution. Other limitations of this study include our reliance on self-reporting. Future work should examine social media use beyond how much time adolescents spend using social media and instead focus on the nature of social media activity.

Anticipatory cortisol is associated with risk for substance use in adolescents. The present study extended prior literature by testing a model linking family emotional climate, emotion dysregulation, anticipatory cortisol, and substance use. Participants were 229 adolescents (M = 11.94 years, SD = 1.55; 41% male; 92% African American) enrolled in a 4-wave study of stressors, physiological stress responses, and substance use. Caregivers completed measures of family emotional climate at baseline and adolescents' emotion dysregulation one and two years later; adolescents reported on their substance use at baseline and three years later at Wave 4. Adolescents completed a stress task at Wave 4; saliva samples taken immediately prior to the task were analyzed for cortisol. Longitudinal path models revealed that a negative emotional climate at home was associated with elevated emotion dysregulation at subsequent waves for all youth. Emotional dysregulation was prospectively associated with blunted anticipatory cortisol, which in turn was associated with elevated substance use, controlling for baseline substance use and age. However, these associations only were observed for females. This study suggests that helping girls in particular manage their emotional responses to stress more effectively may impact their physiological responses and reduce risk for substance use.

Aims While the comorbidity between adolescent depression and smoking has been well documented, less is known about why smoking is disproportionately higher among depressed adolescents. Emerging research suggests that reward-related mechanisms may be important to consider. This study sought to determine whether adolescents with higher depression symptoms have greater smoking reward expectations, which in turn, influence smoking progression. Participants The sample was composed of 1,393 adolescents participating in a longitudinal survey study of adolescent health behaviors. Design and Measurements In this prospective cohort study, variables were measured via self-report every six months from age 14 to age 17 resulting in six waves of data. Findings Parallel processes latent growth curve modeling indicated that higher depression symptoms across mid to late adolescence predicted a 17% increase in smoking reward expectations (β = 3.50, z=2.85, p=.004), which in turn predicted a 23% increase in the odds of smoking progression (β= .206, z=3.29, p=.001). The indirect effect was significant with delta method (βindirect = .72, z= 3.09, p=.002; 95% CI= .26, 1.18) and bootstrap (βindirect = .72, z= 2.10, p=.03; 95% CI= .05, 1.39) standard errors. Conclusions The study provides novel evidence that expectations of smoking reward facilitate smoking uptake among depressed adolescents. Smoking reward expectations may identify depressed adolescents at risk of smoking. Addressing alternative ways to meet the reward expectations rather than smoking may be an important component to consider in the preventing smoking and promoting smoking cessation among adolescents with elevated depression symptoms.