Bullying is a persistent yet overlooked problem facing Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) youth in California. In this report, we pinpoint, for the first time, AAPI groups at highest risk of bullying. Further, we identify which regions have the highest rates of anti-AAPI bullying. Finally, we examine ways to combat anti-AAPI bullying, focusing on what schools can do to improve their school climates and ways districts can strengthen their anti-bullying resources geared toward AAPI students and families. Our findings are based on statewide data from the California Healthy Kids Survey that includes over 300,000 AAPI youth in 9th and 11th grades who were surveyed between the 2015 and 2021 school years.

Longitudinal studies across the globe documented significant increases in psychological stress and mental health problems among adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Health concerns, school disruptions, and social disconnection were major sources of stress. High levels of perceived stress predicted worse mental health outcomes, with girls, older adolescents, and socio-economically marginalized youth experiencing more pronounced mental health deteriorations. However, social support from family and peers was a protective factor against increased stress and accompanying mental health problems. We urge policymakers and other key decision-makers to improve the availability and financing of mental health services and support programs for adolescents to address the wave of mental health challenges following the pandemic.

Loneliness becomes more prevalent as youth transition from childhood into adolescence. A key underlying process may be the puberty-related increase in biological stress reactivity, which can alter social behavior and elicit conflict or social withdrawal (fight-or-flight behaviors) in some youth, but increased prosocial (tend-and-befriend) responses in others. We propose an integrative theoretical model that identifies the social, personality, and biological characteristics underlying individual differences in social-behavioral responses to stress. This model posits a vicious cycle whereby youth who respond to stress with fight-or-flight tendencies develop increasing and chronic levels of loneliness across adolescence, whereas youth who display tend-and-befriend behaviors may be buffered from these consequences. Based on research supporting this model, we propose multiple intervention avenues for curtailing the prevalence of loneliness in adolescence by targeting key factors involved in its development: social relationships, personality, and stress-induced behavioral and biological changes.

Loneliness is a pressing public health concern, particularly among adolescents and young adults. This preregistered study examined changes in time spent alone from 7th to 12th grade, as well as relationship and personality predictors of time spent alone in adolescence and loneliness in early adulthood, using data from a longitudinal study of 674 Mexican-origin youth in the United States, a rapidly growing yet understudied demographic. Time spent alone showed linear increases from 7th to 12th grade, with greater increases in time spent alone in high school for youth who spent a high proportion of time alone at the start of high school (9th grade). Greater time spent alone in 9th grade was significantly predicted by gender, lower peer relationship quality, parent-child support, parental warmth, higher parent-child conflict, parental hostility, and youth neuroticism. However, there were no significant predictors of change in time spent alone throughout the course of high school (from 9th to 12th grade). Lastly, loneliness in young adulthood was predicted by spending a high proportion of time alone, higher neuroticism, and lower extraversion in the 9th grade. Thus, time spent alone in adolescence may be a crucial early indicator of later loneliness.

The concept of "social homeostasis", introduced by Matthews and Tye in 2019, has provided a framework with which to consider our changing individual needs for social interaction, and the neurobiology underlying this system. This model was conceived as including detector systems, a control center with a setpoint, and effectors which allow us to seek out or avoid additional social contact. In this article, we review and theorize about the many different factors that might contribute to the setpoint of a person or animal, including individual, social, cultural, and other environmental factors. We conclude with a consideration of the empirical challenges of this exciting new model.