With a Little Help from My Friends

Positive peer relationships make critical contributions to healthy social emotional development.

The Issue

Successfully navigating the social world of peers can be challenging. Children and teenagers benefit from the social and emotional support that friends offer, but they can also experience occasional social stressors and peer conflicts.

Key Findings

• Peer relationships provide a unique context in which children learn a range of critical social emotional skills, such as empathy, cooperation, and problem-solving strategies.
  

   

• Peer relationships can also contribute negatively to social emotional development through bullying, exclusion, and deviant peer processes.
  

   

• Universal, school-based, social emotional learning programs provide a strong foundation for promoting healthy social emotional development and creating positive peer cultures.

   

• Children experiencing peer difficulties often need additional, systematic, and intensive social skill coaching.
  

   

• Peers can be powerful forces that facilitate or alternatively undermine group programs.

   

Conclusion

Research points to the need to not only promote the development of critical social-emotional capacities, but also attend to and create positive peer processes to ensure that every child is able to engage in and benefit from healthy relationships at home, school, peer group, and community.

About Pennsylvania State University

Founded in 1855, the Pennsylvania State University is a renowned public research university that educates students from around the world and collaborates with partners to share valuable knowledge that improves the health and well-being of individuals, families and communities. For more information, visit www.psu.edu. To learn more about the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center, visit www.prevention.psu.edu.

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