Let's Get Digital: Understanding Adolescent Romantic Relationships Using Naturalistic Assessments of Digital Communication

Adolescent romantic relationships involve complex patterns of interaction. Innovative technological advances offer opportunities to capture features and dynamics of these relationships that traditional research methods have not addressed. With the explosion of digital communication platforms (e.g., mobile texting, direct messaging, social media applications), researchers can now observe and understand adolescent relationships in vivo, offering for the first time a naturalistic lens into adolescent worlds. Recognizing this scientific opportunity, in this article, we (a) discuss the potential theoretical and methodological benefits of collecting and coding digital communication data to understand adolescent romantic relationships, (b) suggest ways to use these data to develop innovative prevention tools, and (c) address potential challenges in collecting digital communication data from adolescents.