Adolescents’ emotional support to friends and family – A resiliency-promoting factor amidst and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic

Helping others may serve as a resiliency-promoting factor for adolescents during challenging times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study examined short- and long-term within-person associations between providing emotional support and feelings of vigor among adolescents. We used data from an 8-wave longitudinal study with 6 months in-between timepoints (May 2020 to December 2023) among 2430 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 25. We performed random intercept cross lagged panel models to examine daily and half-yearly lagged effects of emotional support on vigor and tested moderating effects of perceived impact and age. Results revealed bidirectional lagged effects. Higher levels in emotional support to family were followed by subsequent higher levels in vigor a day later, while higher levels of vigor were followed by higher levels of emotional support to friends a day later. However, at the half-year level, higher levels of vigor were associated with lower levels of emotional support to friends. Moderation analyses revealed that the relationship between daily emotional support to family and vigor was moderated by levels of perceived impact. Preliminary evidence also suggested age-related differences in these associations. Our study highlights the potential of prosocial behavior to buffer against the negative effects of societal challenges (i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic) for today’s generation of youth, as providing emotional support to others may lead to feelings of purpose and impact among adolescents.