PSYCHOTECHNOLOGY – FROM SCREEN TO ANXIOLYTIC: DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES, MENTAL ILLNESS, AND THE MEDICALIZATION OF UNIVERSITY LIFE

Abstract

The advancement of digital technologies has profoundly reconfigured the ways of being, learning, and living in contemporary society, especially within the university context, where time and productivity have become commodities of high symbolic and material value. This article situates itself within this scenario to problematize the subjective and psychosocial effects of hyperconnectivity and techno-mediation of academic life. The focus lies on the growing processes of psychological distress among university students, their correlations with the intensive use of digital technologies, and the consequent medicalization of the produced suffering. The central object of investigation is the articulation between the daily use of digital technologies – particularly educational platforms, social networks, and communication devices – and the intensification of symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion among students. The aim is to understand how these devices operate not merely as technical tools but as “psychotechnologies,” that is, elements that directly affect subjectivity, regulating affects, rhythms, and modes of existence. The objectives of this article are: (1) to critically contextualize the use of digital technologies in the university environment; (2) to analyze the forms of mental illness that emerge in this context; (3) to discuss the role of medicalization as a social and institutional response to students’ psychological suffering; and (4) to propose reflections that challenge the boundaries between care and control in the management of university mental health. The guiding research question is: In what ways do digital technologies, as devices of psychosocial control, contribute to the mental illness and medicalization of university students’ lives in contemporary society? By pursuing this inquiry, the article seeks to build a critique of technocratic rationality which, while promising autonomy and connectivity, ends up capturing subjects within networks of surveillance, performance, and self-correction, displacing the meanings of care and university life. The study draws upon the works of Aguilar (2022), Bauman (2003; 2004; 2007; 2008; 2009; 2013), bell hooks (2003; 2013), Byung-Chul Han (2015; 2017), Castells (2003; 2009; 2010), Foucault (1976; 2008), Giddens (1991), Illich (1976), Kabat-Zinn (2013), Maslach; Jackson; Leiter (2001), McEwen (2007), Freire (1996), Rosa (2019), Rosen; Carrier; Cheever (2015), Sennett (1998; 2006; 2012), Shochat; Cohen-Zion; Tzischinsky (2014), Sibilia (2008; 2012), Small (2019), Turkle (2015), Walker (2018), among others. The research follows a qualitative approach (Minayo, 2007), bibliographic and descriptive (Gil, 2008), with a comprehensive analytical bias (Weber, 1949). The study demonstrated that while digital technologies facilitate access to knowledge, they have also established new forms of surveillance and regulation of academic life. It was identified that hyperconnectivity intensifies cases of anxiety, depression, and burnout, making disconnection almost impossible. It became evident that medicalization has functioned as a recurring, yet limited, institutional response to this distress. Instead of addressing structural causes, the dominant logic shifts responsibility onto the student. Finally, it was understood that rethinking care requires challenging the boundaries between emancipation and control in the management of university mental health.