Research on adolescents and social media has grown, yet it overlooks a vital trend: adolescents’ use of mixed-reality applications such as augmented-reality filters and deepfakes. While this development is considered a pressing issue, we know little about adolescents’ use of such applications, potential effects and underlying mechanisms, and their possible change over times. Importantly, it is not well understood whether the modification of visual information in mixed-reality applications affects adolescents’ interpersonal and systemic trust.

This PhD project, under the RPA Youth Digitality initiative, aims to bridge this gap through four research objectives:

1. Investigate how adolescent use and experience mixed-reality applications.
2. Examine the impact of these applications on trust and uncover the underlying mechanisims.
3. Identify social, developmental and individual moderating factors.
4. Adopt a longitudinal approach to assess how adolescents’ use of mixed-reality applications and their effects change over time, including changes within individuals and across different developmental stages.

The research follows an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from the fields of communication, educational sciences and developmental psychology, the methodology involves employing cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys along with experimental designs. The findings hold significance for digital citizenship, benefiting policymakers, parents, and educators.