South Australian Digital Youth Survey research report: Year 3 results

The South Australian Digital Youth Survey (DYS) is a world-first longitudinal project exploring how adolescents use digital technology, and how this use changes over the course of adolescence. The project examines the links between how adolescents use technology and pathways into cyber risk-taking. In studying these links, this project seeks to identify the technical, social, and individual circumstances by which adolescents get drawn into cyber risk-taking. Understanding more about these circumstances will inform the development of prevention measures to mitigate such risk.
To accomplish this task, the DYS involves a longitudinal paper-based survey of a cohort of South Australian Year 8 students commencing in 2018. A total of 18 government schools from the Adelaide Metropolitan Region (i.e. located within 100 kilometres of the CBD) have participated in the project, with 1,887 participants completing Wave 1 in 2018, 1,251 participants completing Wave 2 in 2019, and 1,193 participants completing Wave 3 in 2020. This research report presents results from the Wave 3 survey when participants were in Year 10. For a valid comparison of changes in technology use and risk-taking across the years, we report on only those participants who completed all three waves of the survey (N= 8821).