Technology Anxiety as a Mediator: Domain-Specific Associations Between Facilitating Conditions and Digital Competence

This study investigated whether Technology Anxiety mediates the relationship between Facilitating Conditions and five digital competence domains: Information and Data Literacy, Communication and Collaboration, Digital Content Creation, Safety, and Problem Solving. Using structural equation modeling with self-reported data from 331 university students, results revealed that Technology Anxiety mediated the relationship only for Digital Content Creation, functioning as a suppression effect. For Information and Data Literacy, Communication and Collaboration, Safety, and Problem Solving, no mediation was observed. Facilitating Conditions were negatively associated with Technology Anxiety (β = −0.407, p < 0.001), while the effect of Technology Anxiety on competence varied substantially by domain. These findings challenge assumptions that anxiety uniformly undermines digital skill development and suggest that for content creation, higher anxiety may motivate learning. Given the correlational design, future longitudinal or experimental research is needed to examine whether building Facilitating Conditions is more effective than anxiety reduction.