Social media pressure can make friendships a full-time job

Friendship is an important part of our lives. Staying in touch with friends online is extremely important, especially for teenagers. However, promoting friendship online can take time and require almost constant availability. This can cause digital stress that can occur when expectations on social media are not met. This can lead to conflicts between friends.

A study published by Italian scientists in Digital Health’s Frontiers highlights the expectations of social media within friends groups and how digital stress shapes adolescent friendships and conflict over time.

“Youth perceptions of social media norms and perceptions of the unique characteristics of social media contribute to digital stress, which shows that it increases conflicts of friendship,” says Federica Angelini, a researcher at Padua University and the first author of the study.

“Disappointment from unmet expectations on social media is a stronger predictor of friendship conflict than always available pressure, such as when friends don’t respond or engage as expected.”

Over 1,100 young people between the ages of 13 and 18 participated in the study and collected friendship and social media usage data at two time points six months apart. In particular, the researchers focused on the need to be able to constantly take advantage of (confinement) the sadness, anger, or frustration that can arise when teens can’t use their friends on social media (disappointment) and teens can lead to digital stress and conflicts of friendship.

Disappointment manifested as the action most likely to lead to conflict six months after initial data collection.

“Individuals feel disappointed with their friends’ online availability and responsiveness. This disappointment arises from unmet expectations and leads to negative emotions that ripple into conflicts of friendship,” Angelini said.

Confinement, on the other hand, has less impact on the frequency of conflicts. This may be because certain availability is a normalized aspect of peer relationships.

Images and videos posted on social platforms may play a particularly important role in the way social media use causes conflicts of friendship, researchers further found.

“Visual content makes it easy for teens to see what their friends are doing at any time. Teens may feel excluded, jealous or rejected if they notice their friends are active online or spending time with others while ignoring the message,” explained Angelini. “This growing awareness can reinforce negative emotions and contribute to friendship tensions.”

Building healthy friendships

This study highlights how social media expectations and digital stress form adolescent friendships.

“Understanding the dynamics of visual content, availability expectations, and online interaction between friends, for example, can help educators, parents and teens develop healthier online habits,” Angeni said.

One such habit for teenagers is setting boundaries. For example, scheduling or managing notifications for “offline” times. If it was done in discussions with friends, this can also help reduce misunderstandings. “Learning to accept that every message doesn’t have to respond immediately can help relieve digital stress while maintaining healthy friendships.”

The study provides valuable insight into the internal mechanisms of teen friendship, but there are some limitations, the researchers noted. For example, they rely on self-reported assessments of social media use among teens. This may not fully reflect the reality of social media behavior. Furthermore, the six-month period does not allow further long-term effects to be examined.

“Future research can use objective measures of social media activity and expand the timeline to better understand how digital stress and friendship conflicts evolve over time,” recommended Angelini.