Adolescents are growing up in a highly digital environment in which online technologies play a central role in shaping education, social interaction, and personal development. Although digital tools offer significant opportunities, they also expose young people to online risks such as harmful content, unsafe interactions, cyberbullying, and technology-related stress. These challenges highlight the need to foster digital resilience among adolescents, understood as the ability to navigate, manage, recover from, and adapt positively to adverse online experiences. This systematic review, conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines, synthesizes findings from 15 peer-reviewed studies published between 2021 and 2025 and retrieved from major academic databases, including Google Scholar, ERIC, EBSCO, and SpringerLink. The included studies represented qualitative (40%), quantitative (46.7%), and mixed-method (13.3%) designs and were conducted across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The review aimed to examine how digital resilience is defined, which theories and models are used to explain it, and how these frameworks are applied in adolescent-focused research. The findings indicate that digital resilience is conceptualized as a psychological, behavioural, and socio-contextual process shaped by individual capacities, technological conditions, and social support systems. Frequently used theoretical perspectives include Psychological Resilience Theory, Bronfenbrenner’s Socio-Ecological Theory, and socio-technological models. The review highlights the need for stronger theoretical integration and more context-sensitive research to support healthy adolescent development in an increasingly digital world.
Teresa et al. (Tue,) studied this question.