JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

In the digital age, there is an emerging area of research focusing on digital well-being (DWB), yet conceptual frameworks of this novel construct are lacking in the field. The current conceptualization of DWB either approaches the concept as the absence of digital ill-being, running the risk of pathologizing individual digital usage, or follows the general subjective well-being framework, failing to highlight the complex digital nature at play.

Objective:

This pre-registered study addressed this gap by employing a network analytical approach, which examined the relationships among affective (digital stress and online hedonic wellbeing), cognitive (online intrinsic needs satisfaction), and social (online social connectedness and state empathy) dimensions of DWB and their associations with protective and risk factors (i.e., emotional regulation, nomophobia, digital literacy, self-control, problematic internet use, coping styles, and online risk exposure).

Methods:

The participants were 578 adults (Mage = 38.3 years; 48% women) recruited from the United States and the United Kingdom who completed a survey assessing the abovementioned variables. Two regularized Gaussian graphical network models were estimated. The first one assesses the relationship between dimensions of DWB, and the second one examines the relationships between DWB dimensions and its related protective and risk factors.

Results:

The first network consisting of the three dimensions of DWB indicated that all DWB variables were positively related, except for digital stress which was negatively correlated with the most central node—online intrinsic needs satisfaction. The second network consisting of all variables revealed two distinct communities: digital competency and digital dependency. Emotional regulation emerged as the most central node with the highest bridge expected influence, exhibiting strong positive links to emotion-focused coping in the digital competency cluster and negative associations with avoidant coping in the digital dependency cluster.

Conclusions:

The findings highlight the complex structure of DWB and the interplay among its dimensions, with the cognitive component being the most central component of digital health. Furthermore, emotional regulation and adaptive coping strategies are essential for distinguishing between digital competency and dependency.