TIES FROM THE EDGE: FRIENDSHIPS OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL AND ADOLESCENT SUICIDALITY
Xuewen Yan1
1Cornell University

Despite burgeoning evidence on the impact of friendship networks on adolescent suicide, current research almost exclusively focuses on in-school friendships, rarely attending to friends outsides school. This paper theorizes a positive link between adolescents’ non-school friendship and suicidality, proposing the mechanisms of social disintegration owing to school disconnection, anomie as expressed in delinquency, and psychological challenges rooted in role conflict and marginality. Analysis of multi-wave data from Add Health shows that heavier involvement in non-school friendships is a strong predictor of increased suicidal ideation and a weaker yet consistently positive indicator of suicidal attempting. Further, mediation analyses reveal that adolescents with more non-school close friends are at higher risk largely due to their disproportionate exposure to poor family and school bonds, delinquent behaviors, and suicidal friends. These findings underscore non-school friendships as a signal of bundled disadvantages and have broader implications for theory and research of adolescent suicide and networks.