Adolescents who scored higher on a nonverbal Theory of Mind task reported more online conversations and self-disclosure while showing less preference for online interaction, revealing a nuanced link between social understanding and digital communication.
Study: Online social interaction is associated with theory of mind in adolescence. Image credit: Prostock-studio/Shutterstock.com
Stronger Theory of Mind influences online communication behaviors among adolescents, according to a new study published in Scientific Reports.
Social media reshapes how adolescents build relationships
Social media has become a central communication platform for adolescents. Evidence indicates that nearly half of adolescent social media users report being constantly connected online, roughly twice the proportion reported in 2014–2015. This growing popularity may reflect adolescence as a period of social reorientation, when peer relationships become increasingly important.
Several studies have highlighted that frequent online social interactions are associated with greater friendship satisfaction, and that higher social media use is associated with more time spent with friends offline. These observations suggest that online and offline social relationships are related and may be driven by shared underlying mechanisms.
Socio-cognitive abilities, such as interpreting unspoken social signals and understanding others’ emotions, thoughts, and intentions, are key drivers of offline relationships. However, it remains largely unknown whether these abilities also support online social communications.
To address this gap in the literature, researchers at McGill University in Canada and the University of Pavia, Italy, examined the relationship between Theory of Mind and multiple dimensions of online social communication behaviors among adolescents.
Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the cognitive ability to attribute mental states, such as emotions, desires, beliefs, and intentions, to oneself and others. These abilities help recognize that other people’s thoughts and perspectives may differ from one’s own.
Researchers link Theory of Mind with online behavior
The study included 127 Canadian adolescents aged 11–18 years. The association of ToM with three dimensions of adolescents’ online behaviors was assessed, including quality (online self-disclosure), quantity (online conversation frequency and frequency of online social interaction), and attitude (perceived superiority of online interaction and propensity for online social interaction).
Participants provided information about online behaviors through questionnaires. ToM was assessed using the Strange Stories and Silent Films tasks. In the Strange Stories task, participants read six short stories and interpreted the main character’s behavior in an open-response format. In the Silent Films task, participants watched six films and interpreted the main character’s behavior in an open-response format. Responses were rated on a three-point scale, with higher scores indicating stronger ToM. Two Silent Films items were subsequently removed from the factor models because they showed poor, non-significant loadings.
Participants’ verbal reasoning abilities were assessed using a validated method, which measured both abstract verbal reasoning and conceptual thinking.
Nonverbal social understanding tracks distinct online behaviors
In the primary analyses of adolescents aged 15 years or younger, statistical analyses accounting for age and verbal reasoning revealed that higher Silent Films ToM was associated with greater online conversation frequency, greater online self-disclosure, and lower propensity for online social interaction. Silent Films ToM was not significantly associated with perceived superiority of online interaction or the frequency measure of excessive online social interaction.
However, Strange Stories ToM was not associated with adolescents’ online communication behaviors after accounting for age and verbal reasoning and correcting for multiple comparisons.
Social understanding may shape how adolescents communicate online
The findings suggest that differences in adolescents’ social understanding may be associated with differences in their online communication behaviors.
Since ToM enables individuals to interpret others’ feelings, thoughts, and intentions, the authors suggest that adolescents with higher ToM may be better able to anticipate the possible consequences of sharing personal information, potentially helping to explain their greater online self-disclosure behavior observed in the study.
The observed positive association between ToM and online conversation frequency may also be explained by the fact that stronger ToM may help adolescents better predict how their messages will be perceived during conversation, which in turn may enable them to initiate and continue online conversations more readily.
In this context, the authors propose that ToM may relate to conversation frequency not by increasing the motivation to be online, but by lowering the interpretive cost of each exchange.
One notable observation made in the study was the association between higher ToM and lower propensity. Propensity refers to the inclination to use online communication as a preferred mode of interaction, rather than the amount of time spent online.
The observed reduced propensity for online communication suggests that adolescents with stronger ToM may gain less from features that can make online communication easier than face-to-face interaction. These features include asynchrony, the ability to edit messages, and reduced cue load, with fewer signals such as tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, and physical presence. These factors may be most useful to those who find face-to-face interaction demanding.
Overall, these findings suggest that stronger ToM is not associated with the study’s measure of excessive online social interaction, but rather with how adolescents orient themselves toward online communication as a relational context. Adolescents with stronger ToM may use online communication as an extension of their existing social relationships rather than as a substitute for face-to-face interaction. However, the study did not directly measure offline social competence or determine whether participants’ online relationships originated offline.
One vital consideration is that all associations observed in the study were specific to the Silent Films ToM scores and not to Strange Stories ToM scores. In the Strange Stories task, participants need to deduce the character’s thoughts through verbal narratives. In contrast, Silent Films requires participants to infer mental states through visual, nonverbal, and context-dependent cues.
These features of Silent Films may better reflect some of the interpretative demands of digital communication, potentially helping to explain the observed associations between Silent Films scores and online communication behaviors. However, the researchers stress that this interpretation is provisional. Differences in the tasks’ dependence on verbal ability, a possible ceiling effect in Strange Stories, and the substantial correlation between the two ToM factors could also have contributed to the different findings.
The study also has several limitations. Its cross-sectional design means that the findings cannot establish whether stronger ToM causes differences in adolescents’ online communication. The relatively small sample size limits the generalizability of the findings. Because the primary analyses were restricted to participants aged 15 years or younger, the results may be more representative of early-to-middle adolescence than later adolescence. Online behaviors were also self-reported rather than measured objectively.
In addition, online recruitment and assessment may have favored adolescents from more digitally connected and better-resourced households, potentially limiting the representation of socioeconomically disadvantaged or less digitally connected adolescents. The researchers also assessed cognitive ToM rather than including a dedicated measure of affective ToM, and the study did not determine whether participants actually applied their ToM abilities accurately during real-time online interactions.
The study also did not measure offline social competence, so the researchers could not determine whether ToM directly supports online interaction or whether its association with online behavior reflects broader social skills developed and used offline.
Overall, the study highlights the importance of analyzing specific social-cognitive processes in understanding adolescents’ engagement in online contexts.
