Positive mental health is the desired outcome of health promotion interventions [1]. Preventive and promotive mental health interventions have been shown to be feasible and effective in many age groups and settings [2]. Promoting adolescent mental health is the most effective and proactive technique to prevent mental illness and disability now and in the future [3]. Mental health problems with varying symptoms are characterized by abnormal thoughts, perceptions, emotions, behaviors, and relationships with others [4].

Adolescents are vulnerable to mental health problems due to puberty, body, and hormonal changes; changes in their social environment; and changes in the brain and mind. Mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and psychosis appear for the first time before the age of 24 years [5]. Global databases show that the prevalence of adolescent mental health problems is as much as 13.5% for those aged 10-14 years and 14.65% for those aged 15-19 years [6]. Adolescent mental health problems emerge due to many factors, including social determinants such as parent or family condition, peer group, socioeconomic status, and community and local services [7].

Being able to deal with problems depends on the associated risks and protections. The interaction between risk and protection affects resilience [8]. Resilience is an individual’s ability to function in adversity or stress. Adolescents with high resilience can face life difficulties more easily as they become adults [9], and high adolescent resilience has been shown to be related to fewer mental health problems [10]. Resilience refers to successfully adapting to stress and an individual’s ability to maintain or regain homeostasis despite experiencing adverse life events [11].

The use of media to build adolescents’ health literacy is one method used to increase youth resilience, and activities online can contribute to youths’ resilience. Thus, social work interventions can harness online media to help promote resilience [12]. Digital interventions have been shown to improve resilience [13,14], maintain emotional regulation [15,16], and help users self-monitor [17]. Adolescents can build resilience by practicing making safe decisions when faced with risks, helping them construct supportive connections [18]. Additionally, adolescents who are more resilient offline are also more resilient online [12]. Bad mental health events may have an impact on the future of children and teenagers younger than 18 years. The mental health of children and adolescents is the foundation for their mental health as adults [10].

Digital technology has been linked to many positive outcomes related to information, peer support, professional online support, and more informal benefits, such as distraction and social connection [12]. Digital mental health interventions electronically deliver information, support, and therapy to treat, alleviate, or manage symptoms of mental health conditions [19]. Digital mental health interventions have been proven to be beneficial for addressing mental health problems [20].

With digital interventions, technological barriers, cost-effectiveness, and technical challenges exist, including fragmented and unsustainable systems, lack of clear standards, unreliable available data, and infrastructure and capacity gaps [21]. Challenges specific to digital health interventions include user involvement, user suitability, and the accuracy of the digital intervention [22]. Despite these challenges, media can still contribute to the treatment and prevention of mental health problems, including by helping build resilience to improve adolescents’ abilities to prevent mental health issues. This systematic review will address the following:

This protocol will use evidence-based methods for the mapping of the types of digital mental health interventions.

A protocol describes details, provides a clear understanding of the authors’ research questions, and ensures transparency and reproducibility. Protocols allow systematic reviewers to plan carefully and thereby anticipate potential problems; allow reviewers to explicitly document what is planned before they start their review, enabling others to compare the protocol and the completed review, replicate review methods if desired, and judge the validity of the planned methods; and prevent arbitrary decision-making about study selection and data extraction [23]. A protocol for a scoping review makes the research objectives, methods, reporting, and process more transparent. Protocols help researchers set clear goals for reflection, predict possible obstacles and anticipate them, evaluate the success of the process and the results of the review, and prevent duplication of other research [24]. Protocols provide transparency to the process, help manage the review, minimize bias (a risk of bias assessment will not be performed in this scoping review), and list references to digital health interventions for other researchers to review. This protocol aims to guide and manage a scoping review (research objectives, methods, study selection, extraction, and reporting) for identifying the types, effectiveness, and benefits of digital communication media used to intervene in youth resilience.

This review will follow the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) guidelines for scoping reviews [25,26]. Additionally, Arksey and O’Malley [27] have outlined the following six steps for scoping reviews: (1) defining the research questions; (2) identifying relevant studies; (3) study selection; (4) charting the data; (5) collating, summarizing, and reporting the results; and (6) consultation. The PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews) checklist will also be used. Searching the literature, refining the search strategy, assessing articles for inclusion, and collecting pertinent data will be done iteratively.

A PRISMA checklist is provided in Multimedia Appendix 1. The checklist is an effective tool for guiding the reporting of scoping studies [28,29]. This protocol was registered on the Open Science Framework (3CNRT) [30] on July 7, 2023.

The following research questions were proposed:

The research questions previously mentioned and the eligibility criteria were developed using the Population, Intervention, Comparator, Outcomes (PICO) framework (Multimedia Appendix 2). Researchers use PICO to identify the key concepts of a scoping review, develop appropriate search terms to describe the problem, and determine inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Stage 2 of the review includes two steps. The first step is to identify all scoping reviews that are relevant and were published by August 2023. The search was conducted on the Cochrane and Scopus databases with an unlimited time period. A total of 6 scoping reviews were found related to digital mental health and adolescents [39-44]. However, these 6 reviews were more focused on anxiety in adults, implementing digital health interventions for people experiencing homelessness or youths who dropped out of school, and developing digital health interventions for native aboriginal people. No scoping review focused on the effectiveness of digital mental health for increasing resilience in adolescents. The second step is to identify randomized controlled trials on digital mental health interventions used to boost resilience and prevent adolescent mental health problems.

Studies will be identified by conducting a literature review, establishing a search strategy, and searching for peer-reviewed articles and gray literature. The screening will start with the title, followed by the abstract and full text of selected studies. Studies published between 2000 and 2023 will be included. The search strategy and inclusion and exclusion criteria have been established and approved.

A search for relevant studies will be done in a structured manner using four databases: ProQuest, Scopus, Cochrane Library (CENTRAL), and JMIR Mental Health. Gray literature will be searched for through GreyNet International. We will also hand search for articles by selecting appropriate references from the articles eligible for analysis and other relevant publications. All search results and the screening process will be exported to Rayyan’s free online systematic review management software. Articles that match the inclusion criteria will be included (Multimedia Appendix 3). The authors will use Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to search databases using keywords related to mental health, resilience, youth, digital, communication, and media (Multimedia Appendix 4). The PRESS (Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies) guideline developed in 2015 has six steps: translation; Boolean and proximity operators; subject headings; text word searching; spelling, syntax, and line number; and limits and filters [45]. In addition, the PICO elements will be used as a guide for screening and identifying studies.

The study search results obtained in stage 2 will be exported to Rayyan for data management (removing duplicates and referencing) [46,47]. The screening of titles, abstracts, and full texts will be conducted by three independent reviewers based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Studies that meet the inclusion criteria will be included in the full-text screening. Otherwise, they will be excluded, with the reasons for exclusion presented in the final report. Three independent reviewers will conduct the data extraction. The final results will be presented in the form of a PRISMA diagram [28]. Disagreements or discrepancies that arise will be resolved by discussion or consensus.

The eligible references from the scoping review will be exported into Mendeley (the list of databases will be exported in RIS format with full-text references). A PRISMA flowchart will be used to visualize the sequence of the literature screening process for eligible articles for analysis. A literature map will then be used to match and categorize the relevant references. Later, a descriptive analysis and tabulation will be used to make a narrative summarization.

Discussion between consultants and the research team will review and refine preliminary findings, aiming to reach a consensus. A psychiatrist will be consulted when additional data or information is needed. Follow-up discussions will be done for further clarifications. Additionally, consultations will be done to improve the results’ accuracy and provide additional information and meaning [28].

There will be no involvement of humans, animals, patients, or the public in this review. This review will synthesize data from peer-reviewed studies that have been published. Thus, no ethical approval was required.