The impact of the use of digital tools outside school and for communication on educational outcomes and mental health

Projects funded under this destination should contribute to the following expected impacts in the Horizon Europe Strategic Plan 2025-2027^[1]:

• Strengthening social and economic resilience and sustainability
• Boosting inclusive growth and reducing vulnerabilities effectively

The expected impacts reflect the two-pronged nature of the destination. On the one hand, research funded by this destination will improve the understanding of how the macro drivers of change (technological change, climate change, new global trade patterns, along with migration, human mobility, and other demographic changes) impact society and inform policy makers on how to mitigate negative consequences and harness newly created opportunities. The results obtained should improve the understanding of the interplay between different drivers of change and their social, ethical, political, and economic implications. The improved understanding of these challenges and their economic, social, and distributional impacts will fill in the research gaps while also inform the design and assessment of policies addressing existing and emerging challenges, including in the areas of education, well-being and mental health.

On the other hand, research and innovation investment should be geared towards deepening the understanding of how ongoing changes impact society, with a specific emphasis on the key objectives of boosting inclusive and sustainable growth and effectively reducing vulnerabilities, poverty and inequalities. This knowledge should provide valuable insights to policymakers to design and assess policies that effectively address vulnerabilities while capitalizing on emerging opportunities.

Overall, the destination’s activities will help promote the EU’s inclusive growth, resilience, and fair transition towards climate neutrality, by providing solid analytical evidence to implementing actions related to:

• The European Pillar of Social Rights, and its Action Plan with its three ambitious targets (78% employment rate, 60% of population with yearly training, and reduction of the number of people at risk of poverty and social exclusion by at least 15 million by 2030)
• the European Education Area and its EU-level 2030 targets
• The Union of Skills (including envisaged initiatives on skills portability and the European Strategy for Vocational Education and Training, the Pact for Skills and the Skills Agenda)
• the first-ever EU Anti-Poverty Strategy and the European Affordable Housing Plan
• The Union of Equality policies and strategies, including:
  • the Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021-2030^[2] (in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities^[3]); the European Accessibility Act (Directive 2019/882), and the European Disability Card
  • The Gender Equality Strategy 2020 – 2025 and the Directive combating violence against women and domestic violence
  • EU Anti-racism Action Plan 2020-2025
  • The Strategic EU Framework for Roma Equality, Inclusion and Participation 2020-2030
  • The LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025
• The Communication on Demographic change in Europe: a toolbox for action
• The EU’s just transition policy framework, in line with the 2040 Climate Target Plan, including the Just Transition Mechanism, the Social Climate Fund, and the Council Recommendation on ensuring a fair transition towards climate neutrality
• The new Pact for European Social Dialogue and the Council Recommendation on strengthening social dialogue in the EU.
• The European Child Guarantee
• The Council Recommendation on adequate minimum income
• The Commission Communication on a comprehensive approach to mental health
• The new Pact on Asylum and Migration and its accompanying actions, initiatives and legislation.

A new European Partnership on Social Transformations and Resilience^[4], focused on the social sciences and humanities (SSH), will be launched to make use of their potential to foster resilience, fairness and inclusiveness, and social cohesion in the light of changes in climate and environment, technology, demography, and unexpected shocks. The Partnership will fund research and innovation activities in the areas of the future of work, modernisation of social protection and essential services, education and skills development and a fair transition towards climate neutrality.

Applicants are encouraged to consider, where relevant, the services offered by the current and future EU-funded European Research Infrastructures, particularly those in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) domain^[5].

Where applicable, proposals should leverage the data and services available through European Research Infrastructures federated under the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), as well as data from relevant Data Spaces. Particular efforts should be made to ensure that the data produced in the context of this research is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable).

To maximise the impacts of R&I under this Destination in line with EU priorities, international cooperation is encouraged whenever relevant in the proposed topics.

Research on social and economic transformations funded by topics in the present Work Programme will build upon its predecessors in Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe and further push the boundaries of state-of-the-art knowledge. It will do so by further engaging with a vast array of stakeholders, not limited to universities and research centres, but also extending to social partners (trade unions and business organizations), civil society organizations, practitioners, VET providers, and SMEs.

The destination will rely on a carefully balanced mix of actions, to bring together a balanced and appropriate set of stakeholders to achieve research of the highest quality, while aiming at providing recommendations to policymakers at European, national, regional and local level that could have a beneficial societal and economic impact. In order to facilitate the latter, it will maximise the feedback to policy and the dissemination and exploitation of research and innovation results and practices in the domain of social and economic transformations.

[1] https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/6abcc8e7-e685-11ee-8b2b-01aa75ed71a1/language-en

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A52021DC0101

[3] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-persons-disabilities

[4] see topic HORIZON-CL2-2026-02-TRANSFO-01 in this Work Programme

[5] https://ri-portfolio.esfri.eu/ for example CESSDA - Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives

Expected Outcome:

Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Provide policymakers, education practitioners and citizens with a solid understanding of how social media, video gaming and other leisure uses of digital tools relate to the educational outcomes of young people, including through their impact on well-being and mental health.
• Generate rigorous, policy-relevant evidence about policies and practices aiming to inform and regulate young people’s use of digital tools for non-educational purposes, such as smartphones, at school.
• Develop actionable advice for policymakers and citizens about how to promote young people’s healthy use of digital tools for leisure, both at school and outside school.
• Describe and quantify the relationships of using digital tools for leisure and communication with students’ motivation, study habits, attention span and concentration, time management, engagement, social integration and overall well-being.

Scope:

The increasing prevalence of digital devices in young people’s life has raised concerns about the potential impacts of the use of digital tools for leisure and communication on primary-, secondary- and higher education students’ well-being and educational outcomes^[1]. “Digital distraction” is emerging inter alia as a potential threat to academic performance and several countries have started to regulate the use of smartphones at school.

There is still limited evidence on the interrelation between the use of digital tools for leisure in-school or out-of-school and educational performance, in both primary and secondary education, because most of the existing literature is purely correlational, or only focuses on effects on well-being. Moreover, most existing research is from extra-EU contexts, which may limit the transferability of findings to EU education and training systems.

Several interrelated research questions remain to be addressed, such as:

• Which types of digital device use do pupils perform during school and do their digital activities differ depending on different contexts (i.e., during class, during breaks or between classes)?
• How do different activities (e.g. playing games vs. chatting with a parent), on different devices, with different time durations of use, relate to students’ attention span and concentration as well as general school motivation?
• How does frequent smartphone, social media use and other online leisure activities (such as video games) impact students’ attention span, concentration, memory and relational capacities?
• How can schools, educators and parents balance the use of those tools to enhance, rather than hinder, educational performance and students’ well-being?
• What is the potential for addiction when using digital tools and what are the decisive factors for this on the part of the design of tools on the one hand and on the part of the users on the other?
• How can digital leisure activities contribute to skills development, such as problem-solving and digital literacy and what is the transferability of these skills into education? How do these benefits compare with potential harm?
• What is the role of parents and educators in guiding digital leisure activities? Explore parental digital literacy and its impact on the use of digital devices by the youth.

Proposals should explore the complex, context-dependent ways in which different forms of digital leisure affect attention, motivation, creativity, learning habits, critical thinking, and socio-emotional skills. They should consider variations across age groups, socio-economic backgrounds, cultural contexts, and types of digital engagement and include students with disabilities.

Proposals should apply rigorous experimental and/or quasi-experimental methods for their analysis and could complement them with experience sampling research, survey research methods and qualitative research methods. Close cooperation with educational authorities, educational institutions and educators in analysing existing policies and practices is essential. Proposals should also include the opinions of young people and other relevant stakeholders, such as media literacy organisations, for example, in the form surveys, interviews, consultations, as part of the data collection. Proposals could apply interdisciplinary approaches (including from SSH disciplines), combining insights from economics, sociology, neurosciences, communication science (media psychology) and pedagogy. Clustering and cooperation with other selected projects under this call and other relevant projects are strongly encouraged.

[1] Cf. European Commission initiative on ‘A comprehensive approach to mental health’ or the call for evidence for an EU Action Plan Against Cyberbullying’.