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Adolescence is considered to be the transitional period between childhood and adulthood, spanning roughly the ages 10-24 years. It embodies a broad set of challenges and is typically characterized by physical, cognitive, and social changes (Crone & Dahl, 2012; Spear, 2000; Steinberg, 2007). Adolescence is especially important for self-development (Pfeifer & Peake, 2012) and adapting to one’s social environment (Blakemore & Mills, 2014). With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic adolescents are dealing with challenging situations, such as a fully transition to online education, limited to no physical contact at all with peers or friends, and being constrained to stay at home. These adaptations of their social environment and the unpredictable challenges that come along with this pandemic result in a unique set of experiences. Currently, very little is known about the emotional and social consequences of this pandemic and how this may influence the wellbeing of adolescents and young adults. While for some adolescents this period of time might be a window of opportunity for prosocial development, others may be prone to more self-oriented behaviour (Crone & Dahl, 2012). We aim to test how individual daily variations in experiences, emotions, and identity goals/commitment influence prosocial and self-oriented behaviour, and how these relations are moderated by environmental and personality factors.

The COVID-19 pandemic has a big impact on the lives of children. For example, schools have been closed for a while in the Netherlands, children's (grand)parents might have been in the hospital or even died, they have parents working in health care or parents who lost their jobs due to COVID-19. Producers of children’s news noticed a huge increase in audience ratings in the beginning of the pandemic and received countless questions from children who experienced negative emotions or were unable to deal with this situation. Therefore, we initiated a longitudinal study on children and news during the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand what children go through, it is important to know what the impact of this situation (and particularly of the role of news in this regard) is on children, so that parents, teachers, news organizations and others involved in children’s daily lives can respond accurately. News consumption in childhood is an important predictor of news consumption later in life (Huang, 2009), and is part of the socialization process of children into active and critical citizens in society (Alon-Tirosh & Lemish, 2014; Van Deth, Abendschön, & Vollmar, 2011). Following the news is thus important, but we know from previous research that negative news can have a negative influence on children's emotional responses (e.g., Walma van der Molen, Valkenburg & Peeters, 2002). Scholars suggest that it may, eventually, lead to news avoidance as well. However, we do not know how children react to such crucial news, which probably highly impacts children's lives. This gives rise to concerns about children's coping abilities with news during the COVID-19 pandemic and whether they might avoid the news. Therefore, the aim of this longitudinal survey-research is to investigate how news during the COVID-19 pandemic influences children in grades 4, 5 and 6 (aged 8-13) of primary school (cohort 2019-2020 and 2020-2021). Children who participate in this study will be followed for a longer period of time, by filling out a questionnaire every two months. Depending on the developments regarding COVID-19, this longitudinal survey will continue between half a year and 3 years. We (ideally) want to keep following the children a little longer once the pandemic is (almost) over, in order to look at the long-term influences. By following children for a longer period of time, we can investigate what the short- and long-term influences of COVID-19 are on children's news use and general media use, their emotions and coping strategies, social-emotional influences, prosocial behavior, fear responses toward the news and news avoidance. The longitudinal study addresses three main topics. The first topic focuses on emotions and emotional responses, coping strategies and news avoidance related to COVID-19 news consumption. The second topic focuses on the relation between news consumption and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. The third topic has a more methodological aim, by investigating whether parasocial interaction with the researcher (by adding vlogs, GIFS etc.) and liking of a study (by adding short clips and GIFs) influences whether children will keep participating in a longitudinal survey. The project will be split into various sub-projects/studies, which will be preregistered separately. New preregistrations will be added to the overall project. This is the preregistration for Study 4 in which we use the longitudinal data of the project to explore all (cross-lagged, autoregressive and synchronous) relations between news consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic, negative emotions elicited by COVID-19 news, anxiety-related behaviors elicited by COVID-19 news, COVID-19 news avoidance, parental mediation and reactive coping strategies at each measurement (time).

This subproject focuses on how young people’s engagement with content made by (local) social media influencers impacts their pandemic behavior. By looking at the role of urban identity – a sense of identifying and belonging to the city and its citizens – stimulated by parasocial interaction and wishful identification with their favorite (local) influencers, we aim to investigate to what extent these influencers play a role in influencing these young people to practice social distancing behaviors. Specifically, we are interested in the role of the city, as previous research found that local influencers were positively related to a strong urban social identity (Van Eldik, Kneer & Jansz, 2019). This sense of belonging to the city and fellow citizens, and thus the found similarity between the viewers and the local social media influencers, might in turn positively impact the effect of these influencers’ messages relating pandemic behaviors.

The COVID-19 pandemic has a big impact on the lives of children. For example, schools have been closed for a while in the Netherlands, children's (grand)parents might have been in the hospital or even died, they have parents working in health care or parents who lost their jobs due to COVID-19. Producers of children’s news noticed a huge increase in audience ratings in the beginning of the pandemic and received countless questions from children who experienced negative emotions or were unable to deal with this situation. Therefore, we initiated a longitudinal study on children and news during the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand what children go through, it is important to know what the impact of this situation (and particularly of the role of news in this regard) is on children, so that parents, teachers, news organizations and others involved in children’s daily lives can respond accurately. News consumption in childhood is an important predictor of news consumption later in life (Huang, 2009), and is part of the socialization process of children into active and critical citizens in society (Alon-Tirosh & Lemish, 2014; Van Deth, Abendschön, & Vollmar, 2011). Following the news is thus important, but we know from previous research that negative news can have a negative influence on children's emotional responses (e.g., Walma van der Molen, Valkenburg & Peeters, 2002). Scholars suggest that it may, eventually, lead to news avoidance as well. However, we do not know how children react to such crucial news, which probably highly impacts children's lives. This gives rise to concerns about children's coping abilities with news during the COVID-19 pandemic and whether they might avoid the news. Therefore, the aim of this longitudinal survey-research is to investigate how news during the COVID-19 pandemic influences children in grades 4, 5 and 6 (aged 8-13) of primary school (cohort 2019-2020 and 2020-2021). Children who participate in this study will be followed for a longer period of time, by filling out a questionnaire every two months. Depending on the developments regarding COVID-19, this longitudinal survey will continue between half a year and 3 years. We (ideally) want to keep following the children a little longer once the pandemic is (almost) over, in order to look at the long-term influences. By following children for a longer period of time, we can investigate what the short- and long-term influences of COVID-19 are on children's news use and general media use, their emotions and coping strategies, social-emotional influences, prosocial behavior, fear responses toward the news and news avoidance. The longitudinal study addresses three main topics. The first topic focuses on emotions and emotional responses, coping strategies and news avoidance related to COVID-19 news consumption. The second topic focuses on the relation between news consumption and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. The third topic has a more methodological aim, by investigating whether parasocial interaction with the researcher (by adding vlogs, GIFS etc.) and liking of a study (by adding short clips and GIFs) influences whether children will keep participating in a longitudinal survey. The project will be split into various sub-projects/studies, which will be preregistered separately. New preregistrations will be added to the overall project. This is the preregistration for Study 3 in which we use the longitudinal data of the project to explore cross-lagged, autoregressive and synchronous relations between parasocial interaction with the researcher, liking of the questionnaire and participation in the study.

This study will use data of the MyMovez project to investigate the spurious relationship of physical activity on happiness in adolescents.

This OSF page is dedicated to a research project on wellbeing, self-oriented and prosocial behaviour among adolescents and students in Rotterdam during the pandemic COVID-19 crisis. This project consists of two major components: 1) a sub-project focusing on EUR (Erasmus University Rotterdam) students and 2) a sub-project focusing on adolescents living in the Rotterdam area. For both projects, participants were asked to report on their wellbeing, experiences and behaviors during the pandemic COVID-19 crisis on Mondays - Fridays, for two consecutive weeks (i.e., in the form of daily diaries). After completion of the first measurement wave in May 2020 (T1), participants were invited for the second measurement wave in November 2020 (T2). The larger project is expected to result in several research articles, that all answer different research questions. In these articles, research questions will be answered for the students and adolescents separately. On this OSF page, you can find the following documents: 1) the raw questionnaires as presented to the participants at T1 and T2. Note that questionnaires were presented in Dutch to all adolescents, and that students could fill questionnaires in either Dutch or English (see files). 2) A detailed description of the questionnaires at T1 and T2, including translations to English and references (see files). 3) Pre-registrations for the articles (see linked components).

This is the registration of the replication project on Communication and COVID-19 Physical Distancing Behaviors Among Dutch Youth (https://osf.io/aez5h).