What Changes During Adolescence?

Find a therapist to support kids and teens

At its core, cyberbullying often communicates a powerful social message: "You are not wanted here."

The need to belong is one of the most fundamental human motivations.

Connection is often built through ordinary interactions rather than extraordinary interventions.

School belonging is associated with greater academic motivation.

By Sheri McVay & Jonathan Santo

Most parents worry about grades. Others worry about screen time, social media, or whether their teenager is spending too much time online. Yet one of the strongest factors that can impact adolescent well-being may be something far more basic:

Does a teenager feel connected to the people and communities around them?

When we recently examined cyberbullying among nearly 29,000 adolescents across nine countries (McVay et al., 2025), we were interested in understanding how online victimization affected young people's well-being. We expected cyberbullying to be associated with school-related distress. It was.

But what caught our attention was the nature of that distress. Adolescents who experienced greater levels of cyberbullying were more likely to report feeling lonely at school, awkward and out of place, and like outsiders who did not fit in. Although these experiences were measured as indicators of school-related distress, they point toward a broader developmental question:

What happens when young people begin to feel disconnected from the communities around them?

A Fundamental Human Need

For decades, psychologists have argued that the need to belong is one of the........

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