JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Adaptive coping behaviors can improve well-being for young people experiencing life stressors, while maladaptive coping can increase vulnerability to mental health problems in youth and into adulthood. Young people could potentially benefit from the use of digital technology tools to enhance their coping skills and overcome barriers in help-seeking behaviors. However, little is known about the desired digital technology use for self-management of well-being among young people in the general population.

Objective:

This is a small, qualitative study aimed at exploring what young people desire from digital technology tools for the self-management of their well-being.

Methods:

Young people aged 12-18 years were recruited from the general community to take part in semistructured interviews. Recorded data from the interviews were transcribed and analyzed using inductive thematic analysis.

Results:

In total, 14 participants were recruited and completed the study, with a mean age of 14.6 years (female n=3). None of the participants reported using any digital tools specifically designed to manage well-being. However, as indicated through the emerged themes, young people used digital technology to reduce their stress levels and manage their mood, mainly through games, music, and videos. Overall, identified themes showed that young people were keen on using such tools and desired certain facets and features of an ideal tool for self-management of well-being. Themes related to these facets indicated what young people felt a tool should do to improve well-being, including being immersed in a stress-free environment, being uplifting, and that such a tool would direct them to resources based on their needs. The feature-based themes suggested that young people wanted the tool to be flexible and enable engagement with others while also being sensitive to privacy.

Conclusions:

The young people interviewed in this study did not report engaging with digital technology specialized to improving well-being but instead used media already accessed in their daily lives in order to self-manage their psychological states. As a result, the variety of coping strategies reported and digital tools used was limited to the resources that were already being used for recreational and social purposes. These findings contribute to the scarce research into young people’s preferred use of digital technology tools for the self-management of their well-being. However, this was a small-scale study and the current participant sample is not representative of the general youth population. Therefore, the results are only tentative and warrant further investigation.