Conference Program

Building on the discussion of research findings, the paper examines adolescents’ practices for building interpersonal trust in digital contexts and explores ways to critically reflect on the approaches and skills needed to enhance adolescents’ digital literacy for democratic engagement.

Trust and democratic engagement are deeply connected and mutually reinforcing; trustworthy relationships enhance cooperation and social ties, and social participation fosters citizens’ contacts, mutual understanding, reduces fears of others, creating the conditions for building trust. Trust and public engagement are considered by Putnam (2000) to be essential components of social capital.

Adolescents use social media to maintain relationships with friends and acquaintances and to create opportunities for new interpersonal interactions. Online relationships, especially those involving people who are not part of the offline network, occur in contexts characterized by high uncertainty. In such context, social network’s users create and negotiate new strategies for reducing uncertainty in relation to the material actants (Hepp 2022) that populate situated interaction contexts (Roberts, S., & Ravn, S. 2019). Trust is a form of social action that reduces uncertainty and social complexity, thereby increasing decision-making and sociality (Seligman 1997; Luhman, 1979; Sztompka, 1999; Simmel, 1989).

In the field of adolescents’ use of social media, practices are relevant for observing young people’s agency (Hepp 2022; Costa 2018) and for overcoming the “influence” approach that considers users as passive and shaped by technological infrastructures. We present findings from the action research project informed by the agency approach, promoted by the University of Urbino, entitled “Building trust in adolescents' digital relationships”. The project involved 99 adolescents with an average age of 16.6 (24 males and 75 females). Visual methods were used to explore students’ practices in social networks (Instagram) when contacting peers who are not part of their friends’ network. They were asked to fill a template resembling an Instagram profile they could trust, by highlighting elements (photo, posts, bio description, etc.) they considered relevant.

Findings show that adolescents are active and reflexive actors when engaging in online relationships. Gender is a relevant factor in shaping online practices: both male and female adolescents refer to a female profile when drawing the identikit of the trusted other. Moreover, she is an authentic person, as she discloses her name and basic information about her life and interests. Girls are more willing than boys to start online relationships with the intention to continue them in offline contexts. Such findings show that online environments are not just contexts rife with risks, but highly normed spaces where adolescents exercise their agency and moral judgement.

Policies and digital literacy interventions should be oriented toward fostering digital agency, that is “the capacity to critically and safely navigate the Internet, enabling youths to express themselves, seize opportunities offered by Internet technologies, and safeguard themselves against potential online harm, often negotiating and challenging existing social norms and structures” (Choroszewicz 2024: 3). Our findings suggest that such a perspective could help children and adolescents to develop skills for participation and consultation both in online and offline communities.