The importance of social support across the entire lifespan cannot be overstated. This is especially true during childhood and adolescence, when young people are navigating rapid social, emotional, and developmental changes. For youth, a lack of supportive relationships means missing out on important opportunities to feel understood, valued, and cared for. It can also help explain why young people’s experiences of being targeted by school peers have been consistently linked to poorer mental health. In a recently published study of Brazilian children and adolescents, we highlight several ways that social support can matter, particularly in the context of peer victimization.

What our research shows

In this work, we used data collected by the Brazilian government in 2019 that focused on young people’s physical and mental health, as well as their experiences in school. Over 165,000 children and adolescents were randomly selected to take part. One of our goals was to better understand why some students reported higher levels of depressive symptoms than others. To do this, students were asked how often in the past month they had felt “sad; irritated, nervous, or moody about anything; or that no one cares,” among other experiences. Encouragingly, most students did not report concerning levels of depressive symptoms. Still, the experiences of the smaller group of youth who did were a source of concern.

Students also reported how often they experienced peer victimization in the past month, such as being bullied or teased to the point of feeling hurt, annoyed, offended, or humiliated. As expected, most students reported few such experiences. However, those who experienced victimization more frequently were also much more likely to report symptoms of depression. In fact, more than a third of the differences in why some youth report more depression symptoms was explained by whether they were also victimized by their peers.

Here is where social support becomes especially important. In addition to reporting on victimization and mental health, students also indicated the extent of their supportive relationships specifically, “how often have your schoolmates treated you well and/or been helpful to you”. Over 80% of youth reported between “sometimes” to “always” on this measure. And not surprisingly, in these data, youth with friends were also more likely to feel supported in school.

Importance of social support

Our findings showed that social support served to explain part of the link between peer victimization and symptoms of depression. Put plainly, sure, being victimized by one’s classmates is directly liked to more reports of depression. However, the relationship is more nuanced than that. Part of the reason why those who are victimized are more depressed is because being victimized predicts less support in school and that lack of support explains a unique proportion of the differences in symptoms of depression. In other words, lack of social support is part of the reason why victimization and depression are linked.

Together, these findings underscore that it is not only the presence of peers in young people’s lives that matters, but the quality of support those relationships provide. Ensuring that children and adolescents have access to supportive relationships, whether through friends but also family members, teachers, or other caring adults, may be a powerful way to reduce the mental health risks associated with peer victimization.

These results, highlighting the role of social support in the lives of children and adolescents, are consistent with a growing body of prior research. Our results extend this work using a large, nationally representative sample of Brazilian youth, offering evidence that is likely relevant across many cultural contexts. It is not surprising that feeling supported plays a crucial role in young people’s well-being. What is especially noteworthy is the multiple, nuanced ways in which social support appears to shape how youth experience and respond to peer victimization.

Where to go from here?

As informative as these findings are, there is still much we do not yet understand. For example, we know that youth who feel supported report fewer symptoms of depression, which speaks to our fundamentally social nature as human beings. What remains less clear is exactly why social support is so powerful during this developmental period.

Perhaps most compelling is the question of how social support influences the relationship between being picked on by peers and experiencing symptoms of depression. Does feeling supported qualify how young people process the emotional consequences of victimization? Previous research offers some insight. Research shows that bullying doesn’t harm young people’s mental health only because of what happens to them directly. It also matters how supported they feel afterward. In one study, adolescents who were bullied were more likely to feel depressed or anxious in part because bullying made them feel less supported by others. Another study found a similar pattern: being bullied was linked to more depressive symptoms, and one reason for this was that bullied youth felt they had less support from their peers. In short, bullying can erode the sense that others care or will help, and that loss of support helps explain why bullying is so damaging to young people’s mental health.

Our goal is to continue drawing attention to the real, measurable benefits that supportive relationships provide for children and adolescents. While many researchers, including ourselves, are working to identify effective ways to prevent bullying and peer victimization in schools, such efforts take time to implement and scale. In the meantime, fostering environments in which young people feel understood, valued, and cared for, by peers, teachers, family members, or other trusted adults, offers a practical and immediate way to support their mental health. Social support does more than ease the challenges of adolescence; it helps young people weather adversity and sets the stage for healthier, more resilient adulthood.