ABSTRACT Concerns about widening inequality have increased attention on the topic of equality of opportunities and intergenerational mobility. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to analyse how educational and income mobility have evolved in the United States of America. We show that since the 1980s the probability of moving from the bottom to the top of the education and income distribution (upward mobility) has increased. On the other hand, for children whose parents graduated from college, downward educational and income mobility has decreased. High parental income enables parents to insure against intergenerational income falling, generating a correlation between parents’ and children’s income. We conclude that American society, by increasing the number of university places, has created opportunities for students from low-income families to achieve higher educational attainments, which have pushed them out of the immobility trap. However, society has also developed an elite, characterized by inherited financial assets and social networks, which is wealthy and well educated. For those born to this elite, their family’s status has a strong impact on their welfare and that of future generations.

This study explores the relationships between ICT uses for various purposes and mental health and the moderating effect of technology learning among Chinese and Korean older Americans. The survey data were collected from 513 Chinese and Korean older Americans in New York City. Negative binomial regression was used to examine the relationships between ICT uses for social, instrumental, and health purposes, and depressive symptoms. Interaction terms between ICT use variables and technology learning styles were created for the moderation test. We found that ICT uses for social contact and health purposes were significantly associated with lower depressive symptoms among the Chinese and Korean older Americans, and the benefits were more pronounced for those who learned ICT independently. This study highlighted the importance of supporting ICT uses for social contact and health purposes and technology learning process to improve mental health of older Asian Americans.

Using Reinforcement Learning to Boost Grey Wolf Optimizer for Influence Maximization in Social Networks

Multi-modal fake news detection is a technique designed to identify and classify fake news by integrating information from multiple modalities. However, existing multi-modal fake news detection models have significant limitations in capturing structural information when processing social context. The core issue stems from the reliance on simple linear aggregation or static attention mechanisms in existing graph detection methods, which are inadequate for effectively capturing complex long-distance propagation relationships and multi-layered social network structures. Furthermore, existing multi-modal detection approaches are limited by the feature representations within the respective semantic spaces of each modality. The semantic gaps between modalities lead to misalignment during information fusion, making it difficult to fully achieve modality complementarity. To address these issues, we propose GINMCL, a graph isomorphism network-driven modality enhancement and cross-modal consistency learning method for multi-modal fake news detection. This method builds on the extraction of text and image features by incorporating graph isomorphism networks (GIN) based on the Weisfeiler-Lehman (WL) injective aggregation mechanism to effectively capture both local dependencies and global relationships within social graphs. Modality consistency learning aligns text, image, and social graph information into a shared latent semantic space, enhancing modality correlations. Additionally, to overcome the limitations of traditional methods in modality fusion strategies, we leverage a hard negative contrastive learning mechanism, which softens the penalty on negative samples and optimizes contrastive loss, further improving the accuracy and robustness of the model. We conducted systematic evaluations of GINMCL on the Pheme and Weibo datasets, and experimental results demonstrate that GINMCL outperforms existing methods across all metrics, achieving state-of-the-art performance.

Introduction Internalized stigma adversely impacts childhood cancer survivors, limiting their ability to reintegrate with their communities and maintain social networks. However, the impact of internalized stigma on children undergoing cancer treatment is unknown, and no interventions exist to mitigate it. The Activating Events-Beliefs-Consequences (ABC) model from Cognitive Behavioral Theory (CBT) has been used to analyze internalized stigma and inform interventional work. This study employs the ABC model as a conceptual framework to explore how internalized stigma manifests for children recently diagnosed with osteosarcoma and retinoblastoma in Guatemala, Jordan, and Zimbabwe. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with nine adolescent patients (aged 12-18), 28 caregivers, and 19 clinicians at tertiary cancer centers in Guatemala, Jordan, and Zimbabwe. Interviews occurred in Spanish, Arabic, Shona, and English and were transcribed and translated into English for analysis. Two coders independently coded transcripts, resolving disagreements through consensus and third-party adjudication. A framework analysis used the ABC model to understand manifestations of internalized stigma, defined a priori as “a patient’s own adoption of negative societal beliefs or feelings, including changes in self-identification.” Results Patients, caregivers, and clinicians all described internalized stigma in pediatric cancer patients. Cancer-related physical changes and community stigma activated internalized stigma. Patients responded to these events by forming beliefs about their appearance, abilities, normalcy, and future, which shaped their behaviors and emotions. While some patients internalized stigmatizing beliefs about themselves and experienced negative consequences, others maintained resilient self-beliefs that fostered adaptive behaviors and emotions. Knowledge about the disease, supportive interactions with survivors and other patients, and caregiver support promoted stigma resilience. Discussion Our results demonstrate that internalized stigma impacts pediatric cancer patients from the time of diagnosis, highlighting the relevance of the ABC model in understanding this complex phenomenon. Our findings suggest CBT-based interventions that target patient beliefs, address identified activating events, and enhance multilevel support could help mitigate internalized stigma in pediatric cancer patients. Additional research should explore the efficacy of such interventions, the transferability of our findings to children with other cancer diagnoses and to various geographies, as well as how internalized stigma evolves across the cancer continuum.

ABSTRACT Around the world, there are growing concerns about the harms youth experience on social networking platforms. However, the question of whether to restrict young people’s access to social media through legislative or policy mechanisms is widely contested. Understanding how the media portrays this debate is critical because the framing of policies, problems, supporters, and opponents can be powerful in shaping public opinion of youth and youth issues. This study aimed to examine how debate around Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age law was framed in Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand media coverage. Applying reflexive thematic analysis to 58 media texts located through a systematic search showed coverage was framed around four key themes: Protecting wellbeing; Protection from harmful content and actions; Protection for parents; and Protection of privacy. Together, these themes position youth as passive, vulnerable, and in need of protections, reinforcing dominant social constructions of youth and raising questions about how young people’s agency is framed and empowered in public discourse. Discussion argues efforts to improve youth wellbeing require moving beyond ‘moral panics’ and ‘quick fixes’ to co-creating policy solutions with youth, in ways that account for the broader social, economic, and political dimensions that shape young people’s lived experiences.

The convoy model posits that continuity and lack of turnover in ties is key for good mental health in older adulthood. However, this proposition is rarely tested with data on the addition and loss of specific people from a person's social life. We undertake that analysis using a nationally representative, longitudinal survey of older adults, and examine the correlates of turnover (especially race). We draw on three rounds of the National Social Life Health and Aging Project (3,005 cases in 2005/2006, 3,363 in 2010/2011, and 4,602 in 2015/2016) and model addition/loss of confidants based on their closeness to the respondent using population-averaged models. We model changes in mental health using lagged dependent variable models, predicting those changes using the loss/addition of people somewhat close, very close, or extremely close to the respondent. Black respondents, compared to White respondents, were less likely to have 'somewhat' close people in their network, and were less likely to add 'somewhat close' people over time. Total losses were associated with greater levels of depression but not with changes. Loss of 'somewhat close' confidants was associated with greater levels of depression (but not changes). We found evidence for disparities in social network turnover by race, but no evidence that these disparities impact changes in depression. We conclude with implications for the convoy model and syntheses between convoy perspectives and theories of network advantage.

Introduction Poverty Alleviation through Relocation (PAR) aims to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty by improving living environments. Understanding its impact on the psychological well-being of older adults, particularly loneliness, holds significant value for refining post-relocation support policies, enhancing the welfare of older populations, and promoting active aging. Methods This study utilizes 2025 field survey data from Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou provinces. The analysis employs an instrumental variable approach to address endogeneity, a mediation effect model to test the role of social exchange intensity, and a moderation effect model to examine the buffering effect of support policies. Results Findings indicate that PAR significantly associated with higher overall levels of loneliness among older adults. ( β = 0.568, p < 0.01). However, PAR exerts differential effects on distinct dimensions of loneliness: it significantly aggravates emotional loneliness ( β = 3.592, p < 0.01) while alleviating social loneliness ( β = −1.486, p < 0.01). Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that the vulnerability to loneliness is more prominent among older adults in centralized resettlement communities and those in the older-old age group. Mechanism analysis suggests that social exchange intensity mediates the effect of PAR on loneliness. Support policies effectively mitigate the negative impact of PAR on emotional loneliness. Discussion This study reveals that while PAR improves material conditions, it may simultaneously create structural risks for the psychological well-being of older adults by disrupting social networks and weakening emotional support. The study recommends building differentiated psychological support systems, strengthening mechanisms for social network reconstruction, improving targeted support for vulnerable groups, and integrating mental health services into community governance. These measures can systematically enhance the psychological well-being of older adults in PAR communities.

This study aimed to identify what young adults with type 1 diabetes (T1D) do to make diabetes care fit in their lives and the impact of diabetes and diabetes care on living. Dutch young adults with T1D (18-30 years old) submitted photographed real-life situations of efforts to make care fit and of the impact of care on their lives. Participants organised their photos in themes, which guided the focus group discussions. We added a reflective questionnaire, semi-structured interview and iterative validation to identify participant-defined themes and summarise the data. Participants (N = 18) submitted 240 photographs in total, showing a broad range of situations and emotions. Participants identified 16 themes, grouped into four overarching categories describing their experiences with diabetes: (1) My diabetes: glucose levels, workload, 24/7 present; (2) My life: flow of (daily) life, special and irregular circumstances, life changes, body and health; (3) Support: devices and technology, social network, clinical (diabetes) care; (4) Mental aspects: emotional processes, perspective, being a patient. In the overlap of My diabetes and My life, they identified eating and counting carbohydrates, activity and exercise, recreational substances. Young adults with T1D face the complex challenge of fitting their care into their ever-changing lives. While support systems, such as devices, healthcare professionals and social networks can help, they can also create burdens. Participants emphasised the importance of mental health in their lives with T1D. This study highlights the need for diabetes care that acknowledges the emotional, social and practical realities of young adults' lives.

ABSTRACT This qualitative study explored the lived experiences and perceptions of successful aging through in-depth interviews with older adults. The study identified four themes: (1) interpersonal bonds encompassing family interaction, friendships, and community participation;(2) autonomy, including both physical and economic autonomy;(3)residential continuity involving a sense of belonging and in-home care needs; and (4)spiritual well-being. Policies and care practices should prioritize strengthening social networks, supporting independent living, promoting residential continuity , and integrating spiritual well-being into care modalities. A holistic approach that integrates personal, social, and spiritual aspects of successful aging is essential for fostering well-being in later life.

ABSTRACT Community space renovation is a core topic in community social work; however, the mainstream top-down construction model often suffers from insufficient local characteristics, limited resident participation, and neglect of its social and political aspects. Taking a social work team’s renovation practice as an example, this study proposes an alternative path: practitioners leverage their top-down identities to promote bottom-up practices. It further analyses three action strategies: community orientation, social network utilisation, and participatory empowerment. The study argues that despite China’s persistent strong state/weak society structure, government-supported practitioners still have room to adopt bottom-up approaches in community development through their own choices and actions.

This study examines how virtual social capital on short video platforms drives Generation Z’s online disposal of idle clothing in China. Based on social capital theory and social network analysis, we focus on three dimensions: network structural embeddedness, emotional connection, and value consensus. Using mixed methods—interviews (N = 26) and a survey (N = 1,474) analyzed via PLS-SEM and logistic regression—we find that value consensus is the key driver, mediated by peer influence and perceived information value. Value-driven behaviors reflect internalized norms, while donations rely on information credibility. The study advances HCI research and offers practical strategies for platform design to promote sustainable consumption.

ABSTRACT Social media is considered a powerful tool to spread information about sustainable food, with both positive and negative impacts on sustainable food behavior. Thus, this exploratory study aimed to investigate the topics related to the hashtag #sustainablefood and their sources on “X.” Posts in English containing the hashtag #sustainablefood, between June 1st, 2021 and May 30th, 2022, were retrieved using a combination of the Twitter API and the social networking scraper SNS in Python. Characteristics of users generating the posts were retrieved from their profiles and analyzed using content analysis. Results indicated that companies and media organizations led the communications related to #sustainablefood, whereas regular consumers were a minority of the users posting content on the topic. In addition, associations between hashtags were analyzed with network analysis and using hierarchical cluster analysis, nine main topics were identified: agriculture, climateaction, climatechange, environmental, farm, plantbased, vegan, innovation, and foodtech. Hashtags on each topic varied by source, producing different messages. Plantbased and climatechange were identified as key bridging hashtags via betweenness centrality. This study contributes to understanding how sources use hashtags differently regarding sustainable food on social media and highlights the importance of analyzing post sources to avoid misattributing content to regular users.

Purpose This study provides a comprehensive review of Türksen's Fuzzy Functions (FF) approach, examining its methodological evolution and research landscape over nearly 2 decades to identify theoretical advances, application patterns and future research directions. Design/methodology/approach A comprehensive systematic literature review with bibliometric and social network analysis is conducted. The methodological review synthesizes 76 publications. The developments are categorized into seven evolutionary pathways: early developments, clustering enhancements, evolutionary computation integration, higher-order uncertainty modeling, recurrent architectures, robustness considerations and ensemble learning. Bibliometric analysis examines productivity patterns, citation structures, author collaboration networks, institutional distributions and thematic organization. Findings The FF approach has evolved from basic FF-LSE models to sophisticated architectures incorporating advanced clustering algorithms, evolutionary optimization, type-2/intuitionistic/picture fuzzy sets, recurrent structures and robust estimation. Bibliometric analysis reveals cyclical productivity with peaks in 2020 and 2022, strong geographic concentration in Turkish institutions, fragmented collaboration networks with minimal cross-institutional bridges and application focus on financial forecasting. Critical gaps include incomplete theoretical formalization of higher-order variants, limited international diffusion and insufficient attention to model interpretability. Originality/value This study presents the most comprehensive bibliometric analysis of FF research, systematic categorization of methodological innovations, quantitative mapping of application domains and integrated identification of theoretical gaps and methodological challenges, establishing a structured research agenda for future efforts.

Understanding social relationships is critical to succeeding in primate societies. In species with complex social networks (including humans), correctly predicting the strength of one's social relationships or bonds helps individuals better navigate future interactions. Social contingency-behaviour that depends on and directly responds to another's actions-is a key feature of interaction that provides opportunities to learn about these relationships. We propose that playful teasing in great apes represents a specialized form of social contingency that enables relationship assessment in a relatively safe context. Playful teasing involves one individual pestering, harassing or provoking another in a playful manner. An ape can learn about their bond by observing how a social partner responds to mild provocation-seeing how far they can push the other before receiving an explicitly negative response. Since responses range from mild aversion to benign tolerance to reciprocal play, the teaser can gain valuable information about relationship quality through monitoring the socially contingent responses to teasing actions. This form of learning through contingency may have evolved as a relatively low-risk method to assess social relationships through direct feedback, though several alternative explanations exist. We examine multiple evolutionary hypotheses for playful teasing and offer suggestions for future empirical testing. This article is part of the theme issue 'Mechanisms of learning from social interaction'.

Abstract This study examined social networks and self-regulation in two different co-creation environments (2D digital and 3D VR co-creation) through SNA and ANCOVA. The study utilized a quasi-experimental research design with 44 tenth-grade students, 24 males (55%) and 20 females (45%), from an English class at a public senior high school in northern Taiwan. To assess the effects of the environment, the classes were divided into a control group and an experimental group, with a valid sample of 22 in each group. As the results showed, 3D VR co-creation manifested more restricted social networks with fewer cliques but higher cohesiveness, reciprocity and betweenness. This suggests not only greater community solidarity and stability in 3D VR co-creation but also greater needs of 3D VR co-creators for interconnection when facing the novelty effect. Such dependence on interaction corroborated the dominance of lower-level cognitive strategies in 3D VR communities and echoed the ANCOVA results showing that strategy use was the most prominent self-regulatory skill in 3D VR co-creation. The limitation on gender composition was specified. Further implications are discussed, and suggestions for increased co-creation time, coworking strategies, and the development of a predictive model as scaffolding are offered.

In recent years, the postponement of the age at first marriage has emerged as a prominent social trend, reflecting shifting marital attitudes among individuals of marriageable age. This shift is closely linked to the educational attainment of parents. Using data from the 2021 China General Social Survey (CGSS), this study employs empirical methods to investigate the influence of parental education on the age at their offspring’s first marriage. The findings reveal that higher parental educational attainment is associated with a later age at first marriage for their children, with gender role perceptions, fertility intentions, and social networks identified as significant mediators in this process. Furthermore, the effect of parental education on the age at first marriage is more pronounced in urban areas than in rural areas. Against the backdrop of rising parental education levels with societal progress, this study underscores the importance of promoting urban-rural integration, enhancing social networks for the youth, refining fertility policies, and advocating for gender equality to rationalize the timing of first marriage.

Abstract Alaska Native (AN) communities in remote Alaska experience disproportionately high rates of youth suicide, and have an abundance of social resources, which are often more plentiful and preferred than clinical care. This cross-sectional study of AN community members (ages 15 to 93) describes actions that AN people report doing to reduce suicide risk and promote mental wellness, and uses logistic regressions to assess differences in number and types of actions by age and gender. Results suggest that overall, community members engage in a variety of preventative actions (mean 6.28 out of 11 in the past few months). Notably, there were minor differences in actions related to suicide prevention (e.g., lethal means restriction), health promotion (e.g., sharing with others about wellness), and postvention (i.e., actions to reduce risk following a suicide) based on gender or age. Younger AN people (ages 15 to 29) reported more suicide prevention actions with friends, whereas older people reported doing more with family. Women of all ages reported engaging in more suicide prevention actions than men, particularly offering interpersonal supports. This study highlights the preventative actions already happening in AN social support networks, underscoring the untapped potential of engaging with families and community members to strengthen intergenerational support networks for suicide prevention.

Abstract Empathy, the ability to share and understand others’ emotional and mental states, is essential for socioemotional functioning. In adolescence, its development is significantly affected by the social environment. Despite a growing body of research on the effects of increasing social networking site use in adolescence on mental health, relatively little is known about its effects on social skills such as empathy. This systematic review examines the existing literature on the influence of social networking site use on empathy skills in adolescents. The search across eight databases yielded 2,413 results, of which 33 studies were found eligible and included in the analysis. Findings indicate that specific types of use, particularly those classified as problematic or excessive, rather than the mere duration or frequency of use are associated with lower levels of empathy. Assumed moderating effects of personality, media richness, and gender were only examined in a few studies and could not be confirmed based on the results. Overall, the results were relatively heterogeneous and, due to mostly cross-sectional designs, do not allow for causal conclusions. The review further highlights the current limitations of the field, such as a lack of integrative theoretical models, longitudinal and experimental designs, and objective measurement methods.

Down Syndrome Regression Disorder (DSRD) is an acute neurocognitive regression in individuals with Down syndrome (DS), causing a profound loss of acquired skills. DSRD increases demands on caregivers, to sleep disturbances, financial distress, and negative impacts on caregiver-reported social connections and perceived social support. The goal of this study was to characterize the caregiver-reported impacts of DSRD on social relationships by comparing their experiences to those of caregivers of individuals with DS and other neurological disorders (DSN). This is a narrative burden-of-care study, not a network study. Using cross-sectional study design, caregivers of individuals with DSRD (n = 228) and DSN (n = 137) were recruited from a neurology clinic and a DSRD Facebook support group. Participants completed the DSRD Caregiver Distress Survey (CDS), which included four qualitative, open-ended questions focused on self-perception of adult friendships, social relationship impact, spouse/partner impact, and perceived shrinkage of social world. Responses were analyzed using thematic coding; resulting theme frequencies summarize caregiver-reported perceptions and narratives and do not represent objectively measured social network structure. In the DSRD cohort, a high-level overview revealed that 65.66% of responses reported a negative impact on adult friendships, while 71.21% reported a negative impact on social relationships. A negative impact on spouse/partner relationships was reported in 51.53% of responses, and a perceived shrinkage of social world was found in 52.82%. Caregivers in the DSRD group were significantly more likely to report "Social Withdrawal and Isolation" (43.2% vs. 17.9%, p = 0.006), "Loss of Community Participation and/or Support" (16.7% vs 4.5%, p = 0.043) and a "Perceived Enduring Loss of Social Connections" (35.3% vs. 8.7%, p = 0.002) compared to the DSN group. This study's findings reveal a significant and complex process of perceived social disengagement among caregivers describing social withdrawal and loss of social connections that they experienced as enduring. The results emphasize the need for early interventions that address the individual's needs but also address the caregiver's social and mental health to prevent perceived long-term social isolation.