Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

Publication Title

Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy

Keywords

adolescence, daily diary, election exposure, political stress

Abstract

This study explored adolescents' daily political stress during the 2024 US election and how proximal and distal factors shaped stress. Participants completed surveys for 20 consecutive days before, during, and after the election. At baseline, they reported perceptions of peer and family election-related experiences and anticipated election impact. Daily surveys captured their daily political stress and election-related exposure. The final sample included 445 daily observations reported by 36 adolescents (aged 13–18, M = 15.61, SD = 1.23) who were mostly white, female, and Democrats. Participants reported significant daily fluctuations in political stress and greater political stress on days when they experienced more frequent election exposure, regardless of their anticipated election impact. On days with little election exposure, participants reported little to no political stress; however, on days with high exposure, participants who anticipated greater election impacts reported significantly more political stress than those who anticipated low impacts. Daily political stress positively related to participants’ election investment compared to their peers; otherwise, perceptions of family and peer election-related experiences did not shape their political stress. Implications encourage adolescents’ use of anticipatory coping strategies such as limiting their election-related exposure when feeling overwhelmed.

Funding Source

This project was funded by the American Psychological Association's Division 15 Policy Grant. This article was published Open Access thanks to a transformative agreement between Milner Library and Wiley.

Comments

First published in Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy (2026): https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.70073

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.1111/asap.70073

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