About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 22. Social Relationships

Abstract

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Initiating romantic development is a salient task during adolescence. By mid-teenage years, many American youths have had some dating experience (e.g., Beckmeyer et al., 2020). Nonetheless, not all young people begin their romantic exploration by this point in development (Connolly et al., 2013). Adolescents who have never dated are an under-investigated group, despite evidence that lack of dating can have both positive (e.g., Douglas & Orpina, 2019; Orpinas et al., 2013) and negative (e.g., Beckmeyer & Malacane, 2018) implications for development.
To fill this gap in the literature, we conducted a short-term longitudinal study on 566 high school students (T1 Mage=15.06, 58% girls; 49% Latinx, 51% Asian American) and followed them for a year. Each year, we obtained self-reported dating experience ("have never dated"=0 vs. any dating experience=1), friendship nominations, peer-nominated popularity and social acceptance, and GPA from the school records. To assess friends' adjustments, we calculated the mean levels of each assessed construct among adolescents' reciprocated friends. We also computed the proportions of cross-ethnic and cross-gender friendships to measure friendship compositions.
Our analyses showed that adolescents' dating experience was stable across a year. Compared to Latinx youths, greater proportions of Asian American adolescents have never dated at both times (T1: z=-5.95, p<.001, T2: z=-5.92, p<.001). Adolescents without dating experience were low in popularity, academically successful, and likely to befriend peers with similar social and academic functioning (Table 1). We also found tentative evidence that non-daters' and their friends' educational attainment differ by gender. Girls without dating experience had more successful academic outcomes and were more likely to befriend high-accomplishing peers, compared to boys who have never dated (Table 2). Friends' ethnicity was essential for understanding Asian American non-dating adolescents. Asian Americans, particularly boys, with low proportions of cross-ethnic friends were likely to forgo dating (Table 2). Further analyses will extend these cross-sectional models to examine social, academic, and friendship correlates associated with changes in non-dating youths' romantic experiences across a year.
Our findings demonstrate that non-dating youths differ from their peers who have started dating not only in terms of their functioning but also regarding the characteristics of their friends. Furthermore, results showed that the functioning and friendships of non-daters are shaped by their gender and ethnicity. Consistent with the extant literature (Connolly & McIsaac, 2011; Regan et al., 2004), we found that girls (compared to boys), and Asian Americans (compared to Latinx) were more likely to abstain from dating. Furthermore, we expanded the current state of knowledge by pinpointing adolescents' and their friends' academic achievement, and friendship ethnic diversity as developmental correlates explaining systematic differences among non-daters. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first known study conducted exclusively on youths without dating experience with special interests in friendships and ethnic-racial differences.

Author information

Author	Role
Jinsol Chung, University of Southern California	Presenting author
David Schwartz, University of Southern California	Non-presenting author

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