children, mental health, socioemotional development

‘Engaging with real-life friends with good goals makes teens more socially connected’

EU-funded DIGYMATEX project researchers found that more digitally mature teens are generally also more socially connected, and that the two factors in their online behaviour explaining the positive correlation are engaging with real-life friends and approaching online interactions with compassionate intentions and goals.

The findings – gleaned from two surveys of 257 parent-adolescent dyads in Spain and 316 dyads in Germany and Austria – are published in a paper titled “Socially (dis)connected in a connected world: The role of young people’s digital maturity”, by Teresa Koch, Franziska Laaber and Arnd Florack of the University of Vienna’s Department of Occupational, Economic and Social Psychology and Alvaro Arenas of Spain’s IE University Business School, in the February 2025 issue of Computers in Human Behavior.

“We investigated whether adolescents with higher digital maturity are better able to use social media to enhance social connectedness, and tested three mechanisms of how, who and why individuals engage with others online. The results of a longitudinal and cross-sectional study with adolescent-parent dyads from three European countries (573 participating dyads in total) showed that with higher digital maturity, adolescents report higher social connectedness,” the researchers said.

“The relation was not explained by higher active use, but engaging with real-life rather than virtual friends online and holding compassionate goals for others mediated the positive relationship between digital maturity and social connectedness,” they added.


While the correlation between digital maturity and social connectedness is postulated theoretically within the concept of digital maturity itself, the study provides evidence that this is indeed the case, and is the first study to provide two specific mechanisms explaining the positive correlation, the researchers stressed.

The findings “provide important insights into how social media can be used to benefit adolescents’ social relations” and help further develop theory related to digital maturity and deepen understanding of the complex relationship between digital maturity and actual outcomes of digital technology use, they said.

“The findings support the high relevance of the digital context for adolescents’ social relations, which is an important topic considering the omnipresence of social media in society,” the researchers commented.

That the study showed that active use of social media (as opposed to passive use) is not necessarily a relevant factor in how digital maturity enables social connectedness is interesting, the team noted, “as active vs. passive use has often been focused on in discussions of positive social media use.”

Equally surprising was the finding that self-image goals positively interact with compassionate goals online and thus also contributed to teens’ social connectedness, contrary to researchers’ expectations. “Potentially, idealized self-portrayal might be more accepted online than offline, and thus hinder social connectedness less in the digital context,” the researchers posited.

“Social media offer constant social interactions, but young people do not necessarily benefit from these regarding social connectedness,” the researchers commented.

“The findings support digital maturity as an important ability when using digital technologies, as it relates to beneficial social interactions, and suggest potential mechanisms to be strengthened to help adolescents experience positive interactions online,” they said. “This study takes a novel approach by investigating digital maturity as a fundamental general ability of young people enabling them to form positive social connections in the digital world.”

As comprised and quantified in the DIGYMATEX Digital Maturity Index (DIMI), the ten dimensions of digital maturity are defined as: autonomous choice to use mobile devices, autonomy within digital contexts, digital literacy, individual growth, digital risk awareness, support-seeking regarding digital problems, regulation of negative emotions, regulation of impulses, respect towards others in digital contexts and digital citizenship.

“Digital maturity captures the use of digital technology for social integration and personal development,” the researchers said.

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