Theory of mind predicts emoji comprehension in a sample of early adolescents: The moderating effect of social media use

Despite the widespread use of social media and communication apps among early adolescents, little is known about which psychological variables affect their comprehension of emojis, i.e., pictograms delivering emotional cues in digital messages. To fill this gap, the present study explores the role of Theory of Mind (ToM) in emoji comprehension at the boundary condition of low vs high Social Media Use (SMU), in a sample of 303 Italian early adolescents (134 females) aged between 10 and 14 years old. Participants completed an SMU scale, two ToM measures, namely the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test and Real/apparent Emotions task, and an emoji comprehension task. Results showed that both ToM measures positively predicted emoji comprehension. Moreover, there was a significant interaction between the Real/apparent Emotions task and SMU, with stronger relationships between ToM and emoji comprehension for low SMU. Separate analyses with easy- and difficult-to-classify emojis as dependent variables showed the same interaction effect only on easy emojis, while we found no significant interaction effect on difficult emojis. Taken together, these results suggest that youngsters less familiar with social media rely on ToM to encode and decode emojis and interpret digital messages. Conversely, the more they use social media, the more automated this task becomes. In this sense, ToM training could be relevant to promote preparatory skills among early adolescents starting to approach digital communication.