Belonging Transformed: How Digital Technologies Reshape Social Connection and Exclusion

Belonging and exclusion are two sides of the same social coin: people strive to form and maintain meaningful relationships and are deeply affected when these bonds are threatened or severed. In recent decades, the ways in which connection is expressed, fulfilled, and thwarted have transformed profoundly as digital technologies have become integral to everyday interaction. Social media, smartphones, and artificial intelligence now mediate much of social life, expanding opportunities for connection while also introducing new forms of disconnection. These transformations challenge three long-standing assumptions of belonging, namely, physical co-presence, mutuality, and humanness, and create new ways to ignore or reject others, with distinct psychological consequences. The first research line focuses on ghosting, a widespread form of relationship dissolution in which communication unilaterally ceases without explanation. A conceptual analysis identifies ghosting as a form of ostracism typical of the digital era, used to definitively end relationships. Three experimental studies show that, compared with explicit rejection, ghosting is evaluated more negatively and marked by greater ambiguity, reduced closure, and moral disapproval from observers, targets, and sources. Two additional studies using a new daily-diary experimental paradigm reveal that reactions to ghosting follow a distinct temporal pattern, with delayed and prolonged effects compared with rejection. These findings position ghosting as a digitally mediated form of exclusion that extends classical models by highlighting the role of uncertainty in asynchronous communication. The second research line examines phubbing, the act of ignoring someone in face-to-face interaction to attend to one's phone, and introduces resisting phubbing, the active avoidance of phone use to preserve connection. Two experimental studies show that phubbing triggers the same response as classical ostracism, while resisting phubbing protects recipients and relationships from negative effects and enhances connectedness. These results show that even minimal acts of inclusion and responsiveness can protect belonging, revealing how connection can be sustained even when technology is present. The final research line explores the relational use of AI chatbots. Two studies on AI-mediated communication show that while AI support can reduce the effort of relational communication, it can also undermine perceived authenticity and closeness in close relationships. Two further studies on human-AI interaction highlight that users can experience connection with chatbots, particularly when AI displays empathic and responsive behavior. These findings extend belonging beyond humanness, showing that artificial agents can fulfill social needs, either as mediators or partners, under conditions of cognitive and emotional attunement. Taken together, this dissertation confirms the enduring importance of belonging and its threats while showing that, in contemporary societies, they are increasingly shaped by digital technologies. These technologies are not neutral mediators but transformative forces that redefine the conditions under which belonging is pursued and experienced, expand the boundaries of who or what can serve as a source, and can both hinder and foster connection. Building on these insights, the dissertation advances an original conceptual model of belonging in the digital age, situating experiences of social connection and disconnection along three key dimensions, co-presence, partner humanness, and acknowledgment, and delineating how different configurations produce specific strengths and vulnerabilities. This framework extends existing theories of social connection and exclusion, offering a novel lens to understand how technologies transform relational life and highlighting the need to design and use them in ways that foster, rather than hinder, social connection.