Review: Digital experiences and their impact on the lives of adolescents with pre-existing anxiety, depression, eating and nonsuicidal self-injury conditions - a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Published systematic reviews provide evidence linking positive and negative digital experiences to adolescent mental health. However, these reviews focus on the general public rather than the digital experiences of adolescents with different pre-existing mental health conditions and so may be limited in their clinical relevance. We review publications relating to anxiety, depression, eating disorders and nonsuicidal self-injury to identify common and condition-specific digital experiences and how these may be implicated in the origins and maintenance of these mental health conditions. METHODS: A systematic literature search using a combination of mental health, digital experience (including social media use), and age of the target population terms was conducted on four databases. Detailed findings from the included studies were summarised using a combination of thematic and narrative methods. RESULTS: Five qualitative and 21 quantitative studies met the eligibility criteria for inclusion (n = 5021). Nine studies included adolescents with depression, one with eating problems, two with nonsuicidal self-injury and 14 with multiple emotional health conditions. The review identified six themes related to the target populations' digital experiences: (a) social connectivity and peer support; (b) escape and/or distraction; (c) social validation and social comparison; (d) accessing/creation of potentially harmful content; (e) cyberbullying; and (f) difficulties with self-regulation during engagement with digital media. CONCLUSIONS: Digital practices of adolescents with pre-existing clinical vulnerabilities are complex and encompass a range of positive and negative experiences, which appear to have common elements across different clinical populations. The literature is currently too limited to identify disorder-specific practices, with too few direct or indirect comparisons between conditions.

Social media and adolescent well-being in the Global South.

Despite the rapid proliferation of digital technologies in the Global South, most academic research on social media and adolescent well-being has primarily focused on the Global North. This review investigates how social media impacts adolescent well-being in the Global South. We first review five regions (Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East & North Africa, Latin America, China and South & South-East Asia) to highlight the complex ways social media interacts with well-being around the world. We then outline research gaps in the current understanding of the impacts of social media use on adolescent populations in diverse cultural contexts. We finally highlight potential lines of inquiry that future researchers could explore to build a nuanced, contextual perspective of the risks and opportunities of social media use.

Constructions, reconstructions and deconstructions of 'family' amongst people who live apart together (LATs).

This article explores how people who live apart from their partners in Britain describe and understand 'family'. It investigates whether, and how far, non-cohabiting partners, friends, 'blood' and legal ties are seen as 'family', and how practices of care and support, and feelings of closeness are related to these constructions. It suggests that people in LAT relationships creatively draw and re-draw the boundaries of family belonging in ways that involve emotionally subjective understandings of family life, and that also refer to normative constructions of what 'family' ought to be, as well as to practical recognitions of lived family 'realities'. This often involves handling uncertainties about what constitutes 'family'.