Social Learning in Social (Media) Networks

Adolescence is a key developmental window for navigating expanding and increasingly complex social and digital environments. This talk combines agent-based simulations and empirical studies to examine how adolescents arbitrate between individual exploration and social learning in offline and online networks. Results suggest that heightened adolescent exploration and social learning can arise from increased opportunity and limited prior experience, and that adolescents flexibly integrate their own and others’ certainty. Social learning is further shaped by demonstrators’ expertise, relationships, and network position. Overall, adolescence emerges not as a period of irrationality, but as adaptive exploration and efficient social learning under uncertainty.