Part of “growing up” is our development of conflict resolution skills and researchers have been studying how they are learned over time.

A comprehensive review of 31 research reports on child (ages 2–10), adolescent (ages 11–18), and young adult (ages 19–25) studied strategies for ending disagreements with peers. For the most part, the researchers worked with middle-class North Americans of European ancestry. Peers were defined as siblings, friends, romantic partners, or acquaintances, including dormitory roommates and classmates.

Children end disagreements with coercion more often than with negotiation or disengagement. They are also more likely to end with negotiation than with disengagement.

Adolescents tend to end disagreements with negotiation rather than with either coercion or disengagement, with no difference with the use of either.

Young adults end disagreements with negotiation more often than with coercion or disengagement and with disengagement more often than with coercion. As experience may tell us as age increases from childhood to young adulthood, the use of negotiation increases. Coercion does not fall below disengagement until young adulthood.

When the peer relationship is considered separately, negotiation is prevalent in all peer relationships, except those with siblings. Friends, romantic partners and acquaintances resolve conflicts more often with negotiation than with coercion or disengagement. And more so with coercion than with disengagement. The studies go on to show how young adults end disagreements with siblings by typically using negotiation instead of coercion or disengagement. But compared to adolescents, who end arguments with siblings using disengagement over negotiation, they prefer coercion to end conflict instead of disengagement.

At what age, then, can children learn negotiation as a conflict resolution skill? Recently a new childrens book came to my attention called, “The Elephant that Blows Rainbows,” and it’s a fairy tale about mediation. The author, Dimitra Mousiolo, believes that even as children we can learn the tools to find solutions to most problems.

Popular media have been reporting on various online alternatives to face-to-face interaction whether talking about classroom teaching, yoga instruction, healthcare visits and more. As a result, a number of people have asked me about how well this “new” form of communication works for mediation.

Actually, online mediation has been around for quite some time, with its origins starting with the necessity to build trust within the world of e-commerce. In 1995, eBay was launched, and in 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary. As the number of sellers, buyers and transactions increased at these sites, so did the number of disputes. In 1999, eBay sponsored a pilot program to mediate disputes between buyers and sellers. With the success of the pilot, eBay initially contracted with an Internet startup, SquareTrade, to handle the program. All communication was by e-mail. The complaining party explained the issue and possible solutions. The defending party would also use e-mail to counter. If no settlement was reached, a mediator wound intervene. eBay later took over the program itself and in 2010 claimed to have handled over 60 million disputes with an 80% settlement rate for its automatic processes.

Several other Internet startups offered online dispute resolution. Cybersettle was founded in 1996 and claims to have settled $1.9 billion in disputes for medical billing, insurance claims and municipalities.

With various online video platforms, many mediators are offering online versions of traditional face-to-face mediation. One early study of online mediation using simulation disputes showed that mediators who used a hybrid of the facilitative and evaluative styles reported being able to utilize them online. However, mediators who used a more facilitative style of mediation online reported the need to become more directive and evaluative in order to maintain momentum in the session. Supporting that conclusion were the role-playing disputants who preferred when the mediators were more proactive and directive.

The study raises the question whether there is something in the online environment conducive to mediators becoming more directive in problem solving and disputants becoming more accepting of that approach. The authors of the study concluded that the nature of online mediations encouraged the mediators to focus on the conflict itself rather than giving attention to interaction styles.

Whether this changes as mediators become more comfortable dealing with online sessions is yet to be seen. But the message is online mediation works well and is here to stay.