Chen Jian, a 90s “slash youth,” balances delivery riding with art direction—a living example of the resilience, agency, and self-directed growth that define youth social mentality today. Photo: IC PHOTO

Social mentality captures the macro-level psychological relationship between individuals and society. Today, digital-intelligent technologies have become deeply embedded in the systems through which society operates, bringing together rapid renewal, high complexity, high connectivity, and high mobility in an intertwined dynamism. These developments are reshaping both the allocation of resources and the pathways available for individual development. For young people living in this environment, it is no longer enough simply to develop the capacities and strategies needed to adapt to complexity. They also need a clear sense of self and reliable sources of emotional support. Through their ongoing engagement with digital-intelligent society, contemporary youth are gradually forming a mindset organized around competence, subjectivity construction, and emotional connection. These three dimensions help relieve developmental pressure, ease crises of subjectivity, and fulfill emotional needs, together outlining an ideal model describing youth social mentality in the digital-intelligent era.

Resilient mindset

The defining feature of digital-intelligent society is its constant state of renewal, together with the uncertainty that such renewal brings. New technologies, industries, and occupations continue to emerge, while traditional knowledge structures and skill systems are repeatedly updated, shortening the “half-life” of knowledge, referring to the period before half of what is known in a given field becomes obsolete. In response to this reality, contemporary youth have widely developed a “resilient mindset”—a positive cognitive framework grounded in the belief that abilities can be enhanced, development is sustainable, and actions can be adjusted.

This resilient mindset is first reflected in a belief in the malleability of ability. Faced with the anxiety produced by technological change, young people generally believe that continuous learning and practice can enable self-upgrading. Learning has become a lifelong survival strategy—young people actively pursue interdisciplinary learning according to their own needs, whether by taking online courses to strengthen their abilities or by adopting “slash youth” identities to accumulate a variety of social experiences. In doing so, they attempt to build the composite knowledge base needed to navigate digital-intelligent society.

Resilience is also reflected in a turn toward long-term developmental perspectives. In an environment saturated with the instant gratification fueled by algorithmic recommendations, resilient young people are more inclined to choose delayed gratification. They focus more on their growth potential and transferable skills, viewing short-term career fluctuations as necessary stages of development and technological change as an opportunity for new possibilities.

Resilience further appears in the rational strategies young people use to navigate uncertainty. Rather than attempting to eliminate uncertainty, they actively adapt to it through multiple plans and dynamic adjustment. Their goal-setting in career planning, education, and daily life has become more pragmatic: they balance personal well-being with alignment to social contexts, emphasizing feasibility and sustainability. Faced with information overload and an expanding range of choices, young people are becoming more rational in their decision-making. They weigh risks, costs, and benefits in an effort to move forward with a sense of “control amid uncertainty.”

The resilient mindset addresses the problem of insufficient motivation for upward mobility among young people. It grows out of their “need for competence”—their desire to keep improving their abilities, respond effectively to environmental challenges, and gain a sense of domain mastery. When young people learn new skills, master novel tools, and adapt to evolving roles, the experience of “I can do this” continually activates their intrinsic motivation.

Agency mindset

Another major change brought by digital-intelligent society lies in the nature of social connection. Social media, algorithmic recommendations, digital twins, and other technologies have placed young people in an unprecedented environment of hyper-connectivity. Constantly “fed” by algorithms, they now face a new set of challenges: how to avoid becoming appendages of data, how to preserve an independent self, how to clarify the direction of their own growth, and how to form an inner order that maintains subjective stability. Consequently, more and more young people are cultivating an agency mindset—a cognitive mode that sustains inner coherence and a sense of agency through self-awareness, boundary-setting, need prioritization, and autonomous choice.

The agency mindset first appears as a return to subjectivity—a conscious resistance to technological alienation. Confronting algorithmically constructed “information cocoons” and intense collisions among different value systems online, young people are beginning to ask themselves: “What do I truly want?” “What is worth investing myself in?” and “What values do I endorse?” Starting from their own interests, they seek through continuous exploration to form a stable and clear understanding of the self. By actively filtering information, cutting away ineffective social interactions, and returning to real, offline experience, they try to reclaim control over their attention and the rhythm of their lives, rebuilding internal order amid the digital torrent.

The agency mindset is also reflected in an awakened sense of boundaries. Young people are increasingly examining human-technology relations, delineating the boundaries of technological tools, and distinguishing between tool and subject, connection and dependence. They resist being engulfed by excessive connectivity or dominated by technological logic, refusing to let algorithms define their aesthetics, viewpoints, or lifestyles. This boundary-setting suggests that young people are, to some extent, emancipating themselves from the sway of digital traffic and anchoring the self in a world where the virtual and the real are intertwined.

Agency is further reflected in the effort to maintain continuity of the self amid diverse virtual identities. Digital platforms and virtual reality offer young people space to express fragments of the “true self” and to present their personalities more freely. They use digital platforms to create and experience “second selves” distinct from their real-world identities, actively bridging the gap between virtual and actual personas and pushing the two toward greater unity. In this way, they seek to preserve the coherence and continuity of the self.

The agency mindset addresses the question of directionality in young people’s growth and action, providing a value compass for resilience. It originates from their need for autonomy: the desire for their actions to arise from genuine will rather than external coercion, and the feeling that “I am the initiator of my actions, not a passive object propelled by outside forces.” This marks young people’s insistence on a human-centered stance within technological environments.

Connectedness mindset

A further significant shift in digital-intelligent society concerns the way emotion is experienced. Platform-based interaction has improved the efficiency of communication, but it has also made relationships more fragmented and superficial. While young people now enjoy unprecedented opportunities for social connection, they are also increasingly prone to emotional drift, relational estrangement, and loneliness. In response to this reality, a “connectedness mindset” has emerged among young people. Centered on relationship-building and emotional support, this psychological orientation enables young people to gain emotional stability, social support, and a sense of meaning in life through warm interpersonal connections.

The connectedness mindset first appears in the value young people place on genuine relationships. Faced with the proliferation of shallow online interaction, young people have become increasingly aware of the importance of offline companionship, deep communication, and stable relationship networks. They actively distinguish between “noisy connections” and “meaningful bonds,” shifting their focus from the quantity of interaction to the quality of relationships. This yearning for depth has spurred new offline social trends such as “gathering around the hearth for night talk.” Such a return to more authentic social practice reflects young people’s effort to counter virtual alienation with genuine presence and actively build relationship networks that can offer emotional anchorage.

Connectedness is also reflected in a stronger awareness of emotional mutual aid. The popularity of online content related to emotional expression, psychological healing, and peer support shows that young people are developing a more open and rational attitude toward emotions. They openly discuss stress and vulnerability, exchange coping strategies, explore mental health issues, and share life challenges. In group interaction, individual loneliness dissipates through collective resonance, while anxiety and pressure are alleviated within an atmosphere of mutual support.

At a deeper level, the connectedness mindset reflects the resurgence of communal consciousness. Through volunteer service, interest-based organizations, online communities, public welfare participation, cultural communication, and other practices, young people are actively exploring and building new forms of community based on value alignment and emotional resonance. In the face of major public events and social issues, digital-intelligent technologies have become powerful tools for forging consensus. Young people use technology to quickly build mutual-aid networks, practicing responsibility through collaboration and deepening the spirit of community through solidarity, allowing communal consciousness to take root and flourish through practice.

The connectedness mindset underscores that young people are not isolated, atomized individuals, but relational beings who regulate emotion and derive meaning through interpersonal interaction. It grows out of their “need for relatedness”—the psychological imperative to establish stable, mutually recognized, and supportive ties with others. Through their own practices, young people demonstrate that even the most advanced technology cannot replace genuine human trust, recognition, and care.

Chen Manqi is a research fellow from the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.