Daily Relationships Between Adolescents’ Perceived Digital Well-Being, State Self-Esteem, and Affective Well-Being

Perceived digital well-being occurs when adolescents believe that they manage their smartphone use in a way that ensures that the benefits of using a smartphone outweigh the drawbacks in the social, emotional, and cognitive domains. Perceived digital benefits may also extend to offline benefits, such as adolescents’ self-esteem and affective well-being. As self-esteem and affective well-being are known to fluctuate daily, this 14-day daily diary study among 303 Slovenian adolescents (M(SD)age = 16.39(1.84), 51.33% boys) examined the short-term relationships between perceived digital well-being and adolescents’ state self-esteem and affective well-being. Perceived smartphone addiction and gender were considered moderators. Significant positive within-person associations were observed between all three domains of daily perceived digital well-being and both state self-esteem and affective well-being. At the between-level, perceived digital well-being in the emotional domain was positively associated with self-esteem and affective well-being, the cognitive domain was positively associated only with self-esteem, and the social domain was positively associated only with affective well-being. Gender moderated the relationships. Girls had a stronger positive within-person relationship between perceived digital well-being in the emotional domain and state self-esteem/affective well-being than boys. Daily perceptions of digital well-being thus matter for adolescents’ daily changes in identity and offline well-being.