Adolescents’ real-time social and affective experiences of online and face-to-face interactions

Much disagreement exists surrounding the relationship between digital communication and adolescent well-being. Micro-level insight into the direct effect of online interaction on affective experiences in daily life is crucial to advancing this discussion. In this registered study, we used experience sampling in 1705 general-population adolescents (n = 43.226 total observations) to examine different emotional and social experiences, at the moment they engage in online and face-to-face social interactions. Adolescents reported significantly less positive affect when alone compared to when interacting online (B(SE) = -0.15 (0.04), p = .001), but significantly more positive affect (B(SE) = 0.12 (0.04), p