PhD Scientific Days 2026

Mental Health Sciences 1.

Youth Mental Health in Digital Environments: Toward a Pedagogy of Presence

Name of the presenter

Fontanini, Walter

Institute/workplace of the presenter

Semmelweis University, Doctoral School of mental health Sciences

Authors

Fontanini Walter¹
1: Semmelweis University

Text of the abstract

Introduction
The mental health of children and adolescents in digitally saturated environments has become a major public health and educational concern across Europe. Current policy and scientific discussions increasingly suggest that the effects of digital technologies cannot be understood in linear terms, as either harmful or beneficial, but must be interpreted within broader relational, developmental, and socio-educational contexts.

Aims
This abstract aims to develop an interdisciplinary conceptual framework for examining youth mental health in digital environments, with particular attention to the relational conditions that shape psychological development and educational formation.

Methods
The contribution is based on a theoretical and integrative review of perspectives drawn from neuroscience, developmental psychology, and pedagogy. It analyses key concepts including attachment, co-regulation, recognition, trust, attention, and presence, and brings them into dialogue with current debates on digital environments and adolescent well-being.

Result
The analysis indicates that emotional regulation, resilience, belonging, and vulnerability are significantly influenced by embodied and relational processes. Digital environments may expand opportunities for communication, support, and access to knowledge, but they may also intensify social comparison, attentional fragmentation, loneliness, and disembodied forms of interaction. The findings of this conceptual analysis suggest that the decisive variable is not digital exposure alone, but the quality of the relational ecologies in which young people are embedded.

Conclusion
A complexity-oriented approach supports the view that youth mental health should be studied as a relational phenomenon rather than only as an individual or behavioural one. From this perspective, education should be understood not only as knowledge transmission or digital skills training, but also as the cultivation of meaningful presence, reciprocity, and care.