Lessons learned on student engagement from the nature of pervasive socio-digital interests and related network participation of adolescents

Abstract

The rise of modern socio-digital technologies has fundamentally changed the everyday environments in which young people communicate with each other and cultivate interests. To gain a more sophisticated understanding of this phenomenon, this study provides in-depth, qualitative insights into adolescents’ experiences of their socio-digital developmental ecologies. The 15 interview participants were recruited based on a previously conducted questionnaire. The semi-structured theme interview addressed the socio-digital aspects of the participants’ interest-driven behaviours and related networks with the aid of participant-generated egocentric maps. The data not only qualitatively enrich the picture on adolescents’ friendship- and interest-driven socio-digital participation but also provide new perspectives on the phenomena through the added network-layer of analysis. The youth seem to vary in their motivational profiles related to their participation and the potential relevant psychological background factors for this variation are considered. Educational implications of these results are discussed when it comes to effective student engagement and connected learning.