ABSTRACT
This chapter considers multiple aspects of adolescents' Internet activity and its overall meaning at specific times of development. The relation between the Internet and adolescents' wellbeing, in fact, is not simplistically reducible to the polarities of displacement or augmentation, nor to the amount of time spent online. The relationship and mutual reinforcement between experiences of rejection and social isolation from peers, cognitive-affective evaluations such as loneliness and low self-esteem and depressed feelings, can be explained by the vulnerability-stress depression model. The integration of information technology with everyday social life has created a complex phenomenon whereby social contexts, information channels and network properties interact. The chapter summarizes the possibilities and risks implied in the interaction between offline and online socialization processes, two different perspectives have been outlined: the displacement hypothesis, and the rich-get richer or augmentation hypothesis. The research evidence discussed in this chapter regarding Italian adolescent Information and communication technologies (ICT) use presents a puzzling picture.
