The aim of this work is to obtain new inequalities for the variable symmetric division deg index $ SDD_\alpha(G) = \sum_{uv \in E(G)} (d_u^\alpha/d_v^\alpha+d_v^\alpha/d_u^\alpha) $, and to characterize graphs extremal with respect to them. Here, by $ uv $ we mean the edge of a graph $ G $ joining the vertices $ u $ and $ v $, and $ d_u $ denotes the degree of $ u $, and $ \alpha \in \mathbb{R} $. Some of these inequalities generalize and improve previous results for the symmetric division deg index. In addition, we computationally apply the $ SDD_\alpha(G) $ index on random graphs and we demonstrate that the ratio $ \langle SDD_\alpha(G) \rangle/n $ ($ n $ is the order of the graph) depends only on the average degree $ \langle d \rangle $.
Keywords: degree-based topological index; random graphs; symmetric division deg index.