Current Ph.D. Students

Caroline is a PhD student in the ADP program working in Dr. Olga Kornienko’s Peer Networks & Development Lab. She completed her Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology with a minor in Data Sciences at The College of William and Mary in 2021.

My research focuses on understanding how social relationships in face-to-face and digital settings shape adolescent health and well-being using social network analysis methods. Adolescents navigate friendships in both face-to-face and online spaces, yet we only have a limited understanding of how these environments jointly shape peer dynamics, transmission and amelioration of stress, and psychological adjustment. This is the focus of my research, and I have been developing conceptual and technical skills to advance these questions using social network analysis (SNA) methods. Specifically, I examine how digital behaviors and experiences (i.e., addiction-like social media behavior, digital status seeking, and digital distress) contribute to network selection processes and how these behaviors and experiences interact with the quality and structure of personal networks to contribute to the psychological adjustment of late adolescents. This work seeks to generate knowledge about how adolescent well-being is embedded in and shaped by social networks that cross the boundaries between the in-person and digital contexts that are becoming increasingly fused.