Socioemotional development has become a priority for education, showing its relevance for academic, wellbeing, and mental health indicators (Cipriano et al., 2023) and identifying key aspects that promote it (Taylor et al., 2017). During childhood and adolescence, socioemotional experiences are strongly determined by peer relations (Rose et al., 2022; Scholte and Van Aken, 2020), which play a key role in boosting positive experiences or creating negative experiences (Williams and Anthony, 2015).

The work by Santo highlights the role of friends and their support in buffering the negative effect of victimization on depressive symptoms. Featuring a large sample of Brazilian adolescents, his findings show that having friends constitutes a protective factor against peer victimization, and that perceived peer social support buffers the effect of victimization on depressive symptoms. Santo stresses that is not only having friends but the quality of peer relations that protects adolescents against the pervasive effects of bullying (see Cuadros and Berger, 2016; Turanovic et al., 2023).

Peer relations during childhood and adolescence also translate into developmental trajectories that can be traced into adult's wellbeing and social adaptation (Kim et al., 2024). However, the effects of specific peer relational features and the age frame in which these are experienced remains unclear. Shah et al. addressed this gap by distinguishing friendship quality from a broader experience of peer social acceptance and likeability. Building on an extended longitudinal study, results showed that the effect of adolescent relational experiences on adult wellbeing is qualified by the context of peer relationships and the developmental timing of these relationships. Overall, being widely accepted by the peer group had a stronger effect than friendships. However, friendship quality predicted some adult wellbeing indicators, suggesting a specific role of close relationships. Social acceptance was more relevant during early adolescence, whereas close friendship quality became more relevant during late adolescence.

In the same line, Gazelle et al. focused on children's and adolescents' social withdrawal as a predictor of adult psychosocial adjustment. The authors carried out a systematic review of literature and five meta-analyses. Including several adult outcomes, results showed that child social withdrawal predicted delayed adult developmental milestones, internalizing tendencies and intergenerational difficulties. The robust findings presented by Gazelle et al. underscore relational experiences as a significant factor for sustaining positive developmental trajectories into adulthood, broadening our understanding of adult adjustment based on earlier relational patterns (McDougall and Vaillancourt, 2015).

Peer relations during childhood and adolescence constitute rehearsing scenarios for how individuals participate in broader communities and establish social relationships over their life course (Scholte and Van Aken, 2020). Among peers, children and adolescents learn and practice how to relate to diversity, constructively face interpersonal and intergroup conflicts, and to become involved in their communities and societies.

Individuals' active and genuine interest toward others can foster positive interactions, since individuals feel recognized and valued (Kashdan et al., 2011). He and Liu focus specifically on interpersonal curiosity (i.e., the desire for new information about people driven by internal motivation), and potential processes that could devolve into peer rejection among Chinese adolescents. They found that peer rejection can be enhanced by interpersonal curiosity when considering the mediating role of relative deprivation (experience negative emotions in an upward comparison) and malicious envy (intending to bring the envied person down), proposing a sequential pathway from relative deprivation to malicious envy.

Social status becomes particularly relevant during adolescence (Cillessen et al., 2011), and so do status-motivated behaviors: aggression and prosocial behavior (Li and Wright, 2014; Palacios et al., 2022). Findley-Van Nostrand and Campbell extend this into emerging adulthood and distinguish social goals for popularity and for preference, showing that popularity goals are associated positively with aggression and public prosociality (both visible behaviors) and negatively with altruistic prosociality, with the exact opposite pattern for preference goals.

Acknowledging the relevance of friendships for children and adolescents and earlier evidence showing that children and adolescents with ADHD have less and lower quality friendships compared to their peers (Gardiner and Gerdes, 2015), Neprily et al. carry out a narrative review aimed at mapping friendship experiences among this population. This work confirms that children and adolescents with ADHD have fewer friendships and the provisions that these friends offer them are of lesser quality for their wellbeing. The literature suggests that the main factors that limit these students for making and keeping friends refer to specific characteristics of ADHD, namely executive functioning, social cognition, and emotion regulation.

Within the context of Dutch inclusive education, Douma et al. focus on peer acceptance and its predictors, comparing groups of adolescents with and without disabilities, in particular students with intellectual disorder and with social, emotional and behavioral difficulties. Contrary to the common assumption that the obstacles for peer acceptance of children and adolescents with special needs relate to their individual difficulties (in particular their lack of social skills), this study found that peer acceptance is mainly dependent on peer level attributes. Across groups, aggression and popularity were the most significant predictors of peer acceptance, suggesting that peer processes might be similar across groups of students with disregard to their special educational needs.

Social experiences for children and adolescents are under significant and continuous transformations, the most obvious being the hybridization of peer relations with the emergence of online environments and social platforms (Livingstone, 2024). Al-Jbouri et al. compare Canadian adolescents' online and offline peer social networks, and the role of social media for peer closeness. Their findings confirm that in-person and online friendship networks largely overlap. However, in online settings friendship closeness is associated with the importance that adolescents attribute to technology for connecting to their peers, which in turn is associated with the time they spend using their phones and navigating social media.

Research has also focused on friendships' establishment, maintenance and dissolution (Santucci et al., 2025). Bowker et al. examined reactions to hypothetical friendship complete dissolutions (ceasing all friendly interaction) and downgraded dissolutions (ceasing best friendship but keeping friendly interactions) and assessed their impact on real-life friendship experiences. When facing hypothetical friendships dissolution, early adolescents reported anger and sadness and emotional coping responses to complete dissolutions, but active coping responses and happiness to downgraded dissolutions. Aggressogenic attributions and coping strategies were associated with later real-life complete dissolutions, while depressogenic emotional responses and coping strategies were related to an increase in number of friendships reported.

Few individuals in the lives of children and adolescents matter more than peers. With whom children interact—and the frequency, nature, and quality of those interactions—shape children's developmental experiences. Peer relations are foundational for societies and adult relationships. In a changing world with new challenges that require effective interaction and collaboration among many individuals and groups, research should inform and contribute to support young people in developing the social skills they will need to meet these challenges (Berger et al., 2016), in line with UN 2030 Sustainable Developmental Goals as guidelines.

The articles included in this Research Topic, far from being an exhaustive coverage of peer relations during childhood and adolescence, aim at identifying relevant and novel topics, approaches, and methodologies to contribute to this aim. Peers constitute developmental niches for children and adolescents, but also for communities and societies. The knowledge and understanding provided by these articles constitute another step to foster constructive, inclusive and nurturing societies. Within the current evolving world, we need to provide the conditions so that children and adolescents can make the most of their peers, for their peers, and with their peers, both concurrently and into the future.