"I'm Throwing the Red Flag": Online Peer Responses to Teen Descriptions of Abusive Relationship Behaviors Posted on Reddit.

Résumé

Adolescents in the United States experience abusive relationship behaviors at alarming rates; yet formal education on navigating harmful relationship dynamics is lacking. Thus, many teens use the internet to disclose abuse experiences and seek information or advice from their online peers. To better understand the types of responses, advice, and information teens receive from their online peers, we analyzed peer-to-peer discussions about abusive relationship behaviors from teens in the Reddit community r/teenrelationships. Using qualitative content analysis, we analyzed comment responses ( = 154) to Reddit posts ( = 56) in which teen users discussed experiences of interpersonal harm or abuse. We constructed 4 primary themes and 14 associated subcategories. Responses were predominantly supportive in tone, with commenters providing advice for next steps (84%), education in healthy versus unhealthy relationships (70%), and general support (44%). A smaller proportion (21%) of comments were categorized as unsupportive or misleading. These findings emphasize the importance of including psychoeducation on how to respond to disclosures of abuse in prevention programming for teen dating violence and developing online interventions to facilitate and support help-seeking behaviors.