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

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 pic…