The impact of digital technology use on youth sense of community: a case study from Croatia

The question of how digital technologies, especially the use of the Internet, affect young people's lives is one of the central research topics in contemporary sociology. On the one hand, the positive effects of digital technologies, enabling the emergence of online communities, are highlighted. On the other hand, there are also many negative effects, especially the fear of alienation. Based on the results of research conducted with 552 third and fourth grade high school students in Vukovar-Syrmia County (Croatia), this paper examines how social networking, frequency of digital technologies use, and technologically-mediated socializing influence attitudes towards the local community. It has been shown that the frequency of using digital technology does not have a negative effect on the sense of community, on the contrary – the use of mobile phones is positively correlated to support and emotional connection with peers. However, the tendency to use technology for socializing has a significant effect on two of the three measured dimensions of sense of community, in the way that young people who prefer to establish and maintain online relationships are less close to the local community. The findings support previous studies indicating multiple and varied effects of digital technologies, particularly the Internet use, on local social relationships. It has also been shown that the use of digital technologies had a much stronger effect on the assessment of attitudes towards peers in the community than in other studied dimensions of sense of community – support and emotional connection in the community and satisfaction of needs and opportunities for involvement.