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 these effects are likely to reflect individual differences in the way people use digital devices. Here, we focus on a newly introduced concept, digital maturity, to measure to what extent young individuals use digital technology in a healthy, adaptive way. The recently developed Digital Maturity Inventory (DIMI) uses self-report to measure ten domains that constitute digital maturity of adolescents. To explore how these domains are interconnected, and how this changes across adolescence and into adulthood, we employed a moderated network model. Using the newly developed Digital Maturity Inventory (DIMI), 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 core domains within the network, indicating important starting points for intervention studies. Age did not moderate the interactions within the network, suggesting that digital maturity is a relatively robust concept across adolescence and into adulthood.