Developmental structure of digital maturity

Abstract

The last decades have seen growing attention for the positive and negative effects of digital technology on adolescent's wellbeing. Large individual variability in these effects is likely caused by individual differences in the way people interact with digital devices. Digital maturity aims to capture the extent to which young individuals use digital technology in a healthy and adaptive way. The recently developed Digital Maturity Inventory (DIMI) uses self-report to measure ten domains, from digital literacy to emotion regulation, that constitute digital maturity of adolescents. To better understand the relative contribution and interplay of the different domains in the development of digital maturity, we employed a moderated psychometric network model. We measured digital maturity scores of 378 participants, aged 9–43 years. The results revealed that support-seeking and the regulation of aggressive impulses are central domains within the network, indicating important starting points for intervention studies. Although age did not moderate the connections within the network, we did find that older participants were more digitally literate and asked less often for support regarding digital issues. These results suggest that digital maturity is a relatively robust concept across adolescence and into adulthood and provide important footholds for interventions.