Beyond screen time: Multidimensionality of socio-digital participation and relations to academic well-being in three educational phases

Abstract

This study contributes to the research on the differences in young peoples' approaches to socio-digital participation (SDP). We first investigated the differences in SDP between three samples of Finnish students (i.e., elementary school 6th grade, n = 741; high school 1st year, n = 1317; higher education 1st year, n = 1232) and then looked at how these differences are associated with academic well-being. We used exploratory structural equation modeling to investigate the factor structure of SDP and further structural relations to study engagement and study burnout. Despite some differences between the three student cohorts regarding the factor structure of SDP, the same five dimensions of participation were identified in all of them: social networking oriented participation, knowledge-oriented participation, media-oriented participation, action gaming, and social gaming. In the high school sample also a sixth factor, blogging-oriented participation, differentiated from the knowledge oriented dimension. Taken together, using digital technologies to communicate and maintain social networks (social networking), was consistently either related to lower study engagement or to higher study burnout. Playing of action and sports games (action gaming) was related in all samples either to lower engagement or higher cynicism. Using digital tools to gain and share knowledge (knowledge-oriented) was, in contrast, related to higher study engagement. The results demonstrate that students' digital activities reflect multiple dimensions that are differently related to academic well-being. This study sheds light on the complexity of young peoples' SDP orientations and their related outcomes such as socio-emotional and motivational functioning.