JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Digital wellbeing provides a useful conceptual framework for fostering awareness of the need to maintain a healthy balance between the benefits and drawbacks of mobile connectivity. The Perceived Digital Well-Being in Adolescence Scale (PDWBA) was developed to assess digital wellbeing; however, it was originally designed for adolescent populations and validated within a Slovenian sample, leaving its applicability to other age groups and cultural contexts unknown.

Objective:

This study had three primary objectives: (1) to confirm the three-factor structure of an English version of the PDWBA—renamed the Perceived Digital Wellbeing Scale (PDWS)—in samples of young adults from the United States and the United Kingdom; (2) to examine the associations between PDWS dimensions and participants’ sociodemographic characteristics; and (3) to explore the relationships between PDWS scores and patterns of smartphone use.

Methods:

A total of 1,854 young adults from the United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK) (ages 18–25; M = 22.4, SD = 2.1; 892(48.1 %) female, 872(47.0 %) male, 90(4.9 %) non-binary participated in an online survey including the PDWS, digital flourishing and digital stress measures. Data analyses included descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), Pearson correlations, independent samples t-tests, and chi-squared tests of independence.

Results:

CFA supported the adequacy of the three-factor model, indicating strong model fit. Evidence of convergent validity was established through significant associations between PDWS scores and measures of digital flourishing and digital stress. Measurement invariance testing confirmed the scale’s equivalence across USA and UK samples; however, strict invariance across gender (male vs. female) was not supported. Additionally, PDWS dimensions showed significant relationships with several sociodemographic variables and smartphone usage behaviors.

Conclusions:

Findings suggest that the PDWS is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing digital wellbeing among young adults in the USA and UK. The scale offers a promising tool for identifying individuals at risk of adverse outcomes associated with digital connectivity. Future research should explore the PDWS’s psychometric properties across broader age ranges and diverse cultural contexts, including both adolescent and general adult populations.