M.13. The Implications of Smartphones and Digital Environments for Learning and Psychophysical Well-Being

This research panel examines how smartphone and digital environments shape adolescents’ and students’ daily lives, with particular attention to learning processes, inequalities, and psychophysical well-being. The debate on digital technologies is often polarized between alarmist narratives about cognitive decline and digital addictions and optimistic views that attribute emancipatory potential to devices. The panel seeks to move beyond these positions by focusing on empirical evidence supported by solid theoretical and methodological frameworks.

Recent studies show that the effects of smartphone use on attention, study habits, and academic performance are neither uniform nor linear. They vary according to the intensity and purposes of use, family and school contexts, the timing of first exposure, and students’ self-regulation capacities. Contributions investigating how young people use digital devices (for communication, information, entertainment or study) and the consequences for learning and engagement are particularly welcome.

A second focus concerns inequalities. Access to technology, digital skills, and usage patterns differ by socioeconomic background, territory, migration background, and gender. Digital environments may reflect, amplify, or reconfigure these disparities. Understanding how smartphones intersect with educational trajectories is crucial to clarifying their role in the reproduction or mitigation of inequalities.

A third axis involves psychophysical well-being, including sleep quality, stress, emotional regulation, and peer relations. Here too, mechanisms are complex and require robust empirical approaches.

The panel invites contributions adopting diverse disciplinary perspectives and sources - administrative data, surveys, mixed methods, causal inference, qualitative inquiry - to build an empirically grounded and nuanced understanding of digital practices among young people.