Family Relationships and Adolescent Loneliness: An Application of Social Network Analysis in Family Studies

In family contexts, individuals are embedded in networks of relationships. Social network analysis provides a unique framework to investigate family relationships as interrelated networks above and beyond dyadic familial relationships. In the current paper, we used the notion of triadic closure to investigate how various configurations of family networks, classified by their relationship ties, differ in predicting adolescents' experiences of loneliness. We classified different types of network structures based on whether all 3 family members (i.e., child, mother, father) shared high-quality relationships with one another (closed) or whether 1 or more low quality ties existed in the family triad (open). Results indicated that, compared with adolescents in families containing 1 or more poor-quality ties, adolescents in families containing all high-quality relational ties experienced lower levels of loneliness, above and beyond the impact of gender, parents' education and mental health, and family income. Simply put, adolescents' experiences of loneliness is not tied to the number of high-quality relationships they experience within the family but rather is dependent on the presence of high-quality relationships among all family ties. With the introduction of 1 low-quality relationship within a family triad, additional low-quality relationships appear to make little difference. In line with family systems theory, our examination of the family as a whole, rather than as a summative combination of smaller relationships, indicates that a closed family structure is important for protecting adolescents against experiences of loneliness.