Teen Cinema and Strong Triadic Closure
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/205979910900400103
The paper referenced above was interesting to me because it discusses the characteristics of social networks for teenagers and how they differ between gender. To be honest, I never thought I would see or read about an instance where triadic closure was relevant to my life but after reading this paper, it became clear to me that triadic closure presents itself in popular forms of media, especially TV shows and movies.
The paper found that teenagers are more likley to have ties with other people of their gender and males generally have more friendships than females do. Female teenagers are more likely to have friends through triadic closure but triadic closure is more likely to occur in a friend group when there is at least one female. That is to say, strong triadic closure is more likely to occur in a situation where there are either two boys and one girl in a group, two girls and one boy, or three girls. In pop media, these scenarios show themselves through love triangles and cliques, which are often the driving forces for the plots of films like Kids, IT, Mean Girls, and Superbad. This shows (to me at least) that there is at least some truth to the portrayal of exclusive girl friend groups and the portrayal of boys getting along with eachother or mostly being indifferent to eachother in movies centered around the social lives of teenagers. This may be something to look out for the next time you start a new show on Netlix or see a movie where the plot is mainly centered around a group of teens.