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A
dvancing
S
ocial
I
ntegration
and
I
ntergenerational
S
olidarity
Overall, the findings from the Youth Connectedness Project
illustrate that adolescents who reported experiencing a sense
of belonging, feeling valued and being included in the impor-
tant social contexts of family, school and peer groups also
reported increases to their well-being two years later. On the
basis of these findings we can argue that social connectedness,
particularly to one’s family and school, leads to and predicts
greater reported well-being in adolescents over time. Feeling
connected to other people and being part of something greater
than one’s self effectively fulfilled a fundamental psychological
need in these adolescents, which then served as a base for a
growing sense of confidence, successful interpersonal rela-
tions and an optimistic view of the future.
It is important to note that we found families and school to have
the greatest predictive effects on well-being two years later. These
areas of connectedness seem to be particularly important for youth
psychologically, having a more powerful influence on feelings of
well-being than either peer or community connectedness. This
result is congruent with theory and observations that families are
fundamental to child and adolescent development and that schools
are also a very important context for development to occur.
Given that adolescents increasingly spend more time with
peers and less with family members as they mature, it is often
thought that peer connectedness becomes more important
than family connectedness. Our results, however, support the
view that families continue to have a strong influence over
adolescent development even if teenagers spend less time and
feel less connected to the family over time.
The weak pattern for community involvement suggests
that young people’s investment in the community does not
lead to significant increases in well-being. This result does
not negate the important role of belonging to a community,
but rather indicates that proximal rather than distal connec-
tions are more central to well-being.
There are strong theoretical and empirical indications that
youth need to feel that they belong, that they have people to rely
on and places where they feel included. Moreover, both theory
and research suggest greater benefits for youth from feeling
connected across multiple domains. Our findings suggest that
feeling connected in only one area of one’s life is not enough to
maintain healthy levels of psychological well-being. Furthermore,
it has been found that the protective influences from one context
can be diminished by lack of connection in another context.
The crucial task facing researchers and practitioners is to
determine what leads young people to become connected
and what helps to sustain the feelings of belonging to multi-
ple contexts throughout adolescence. Furthermore, research
should be conducted that investigates what can be done to
increase the supportiveness of interpersonal relationships for
youth and how to encourage connectedness within and across
the multiple domains of social functioning. We suggest that in
order to facilitate this process, examining the protective influ-
ence of families and schools is a good place to start.
Family policy often focuses on mitigating the negative effects
of family breakdown and conflict, rather than on emphasiz-
ing the family’s strengths and promoting quality relationships.
Encouraging parents to listen to and support their children, to
include them in matters relating to the family and to actively
champion the positive influence of connectedness, may promote
well-being for all family members. Since educational policy is
very outcome-oriented, it can miss the importance of connect-
edness for youth well-being, although there is much empirical
evidence showing that young people perform better academi-
cally when they feel good about themselves and are confident
in their own abilities. For schools, training teachers to engage
constructively with their students, clearly communicating and
promoting values of inclusion and offering students opportu-
nities to participate in decision-making at the school level, can
promote connectedness and shared goals. A challenge for poli-
cymakers is to promote and support the efforts of families and
schools to build social connectedness and to help integrate them
into a larger, reciprocally supportive system.
Feeling connected to other people helps adolescents to develop confidence,
successful interpersonal relations and an optimistic view of the future
Image: Youth Connectedness Project
Social connectedness predicting well-being
at time 3 of the study
Youth Connectedness Project
Step 1 Step 2
Well-being at time 1
0.44** 0.26**
Gender
-0.04
-0.06
Age
-0.09* -0.04*
Ethnic group
-0.04
-0.02
Family connectedness
0.14**
School connectedness
0.19*
Peer connectedness
0.07*
Community connectedness
-0.02
** p <0.01 * p <0.05 Note: Standardized regression coefficients are reported