Adolescent Friendships as Academic Resources: The Intersection of Friendship, Race, and School Disadvantage

Research on adolescent friendships has typically treated these social ties differently from friendships at other stages of life or from other relationships during adolescence. To draw parallels among these literatures, this study focuses on two largely neglected aspects of adolescent friendships: their role in positive adjustment and the way in which this role varies by social structural and institutional context. In an analysis of data from 9,223 adolescents in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we found that those who had friends who liked school or did well in school had fewer academic problems than did those whose friends were less academically oriented. This potential protective role of friends did not differ by race, but it did differ by level of school disadvantage. Moreover, this moderating role of school disadvantage differed by race. These results suggest that adolescent friendships serve as social capital, the value of which is context-specific.