On September 12, 2026, the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (EUASU) and Academia Libera Mentis (ALM) held a joint academic symposium devoted to a question that is becoming increasingly important for contemporary education: What challenges do social media and mobile phones pose to the intellectual development of students, and how should academies respond?
Social media and mobile devices are no longer merely supplementary technologies. They have become part of the environment in which students read, search for information, communicate, rest, work, compare themselves with others, and gradually develop their habits of attention. The question of the phone in the classroom therefore quickly becomes more than a matter of discipline. Behind it lies a more difficult set of questions: Who organizes human attention today? How does a person learn to tolerate complexity? Where does intellectual independence come from? And what should an academy do when a substantial part of a student’s life unfolds in an environment governed by very different rules from those of a book, a lecture, or scientific inquiry?
Representing Academia Libera Mentis were Professor Paul Frijters, Professor Gigi Foster, and Professor Tjeerd Andringa. The European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine was represented by Professor Dr. Oleg Maltsev, Dr. Oleksandr Sahaidak, and Iryna Lopatiuk. Students from both academic communities also participated in the symposium. This was significant in itself: the students were not simply the object of an adult discussion about “the younger generation,” but participants who were expected to determine which of the problems identified by the scholars deserved further consideration.
The meeting followed an unusual format. The symposium was divided into three rounds. In the first, the scholars were not asked to provide ready-made solutions, but to identify the problems and their deeper causes. Students from both sides then selected the issues they considered most important for further discussion. Only after that did the experts move on to possible solutions, experiments, and educational models. In other words, the structure of the symposium required the participants to separate diagnosis from treatment before moving forward.
But the first round already revealed something unexpected. Six participants were looking at the same smartphone—and seeing six somewhat different objects.
When the Phone Becomes an Environment
Professor Tjeerd Andringa proposed examining the problem through two different ways of engaging with the world. One is associated with focusing on a closed system; the other with participating in an open system. A closed system can be understood in depth precisely because everything outside it is temporarily excluded. An open system, by contrast, can only be understood locally and partially, but it can expand and include more of the world.
In Andringa’s model, these modes are linked to the functioning of the brain’s two hemispheres. The left hemisphere is associated with focused attention, controlled and sequential action, order, and predictability; the right with exploration, uncertainty, possibility, and engagement with the wider world. Smartphones, in this framework, reinforce the first mode because they demand focused, step-by-step interaction and reduce attention to the surrounding environment.
The problem therefore becomes more serious than the familiar complaint that “students are distracted by their phones.” If a substantial amount of time is continually devoted to one mode of engagement, less time remains for the development of another—one connected with uncertainty, exploration, autonomy, and participation in a world that cannot be organized with a few movements of the finger.
In another part of his contribution, Andringa shifted the same problem from individual attention to social life. In his view, an academy is not merely a place of instruction but also a community. Real communities require people to deal with frustration, conflict, discomfort, and the difficulties of interacting with others instead of escaping them. Phones, social media, the internet, and AI can provide an easy way out of difficult interpersonal situations.
Digital interaction, therefore, may coexist with social atomization. A person remains connected, but the connection may be incomplete because it lacks the physical, emotional, and sensory dimensions of face-to-face interaction. Andringa also suggested that mobile phones can turn people into spectators of their own lives, encouraging them to document experiences instead of fully living them.
This produces one of the peculiarities of contemporary digital culture. Never before has it been so easy to document one’s own life—and perhaps never before has there been such an easy way to step out of it for a few moments.
A World That Becomes Simpler
Professor Gigi Foster approached the issue from another angle. In her contribution, the problem was not only how much time a person spends in front of a screen, but also the form in which intellectual material is presented.
Complex social and scientific questions do not fit easily into short, simplified pieces of content. Nuance disappears. Contradictions disappear. Competing explanations disappear. What remains is a quickly processed structure: right or wrong, left or right, yes or no. Foster argued that repeated exposure to such formats can create a habit of seeking simple explanations and immediate conclusions instead of keeping the mind open and suspending judgment.
She also raised the issue of sources. Online information often appears without a clearly visible original source, making it difficult to establish where it came from or what incentives may have shaped its presentation. This can lead to distrust of all information, uncritical acceptance of online content, or selective acceptance of information that simply feels correct.
For scientific learning, this is especially important. Learning how to think scientifically requires the ability to identify sources, understand their incentives, compare different interpretations of the same phenomenon, and evaluate competing ideas. The contestation of ideas is itself part of scientific progress.
Foster also raised a more fundamental question about attention. Social media does not merely provide information; it continually redirects attention through notifications and new content. Attention is therefore increasingly structured by external sources rather than by the individual. When devices continually provide the structure of attention, there is less need to practice self-discipline, maintain concentration independently, or learn how to deal with boredom.
This is a small change in everyday behavior, almost imperceptible. Yet its consequences may be much larger than they first appear. If a device continually organizes attention, the individual has fewer opportunities to practice organizing it independently.
The Finger That Moves Before the Decision
Iryna Lopatiuk brought the discussion closer to a moment that almost every smartphone user can recognize. A student may genuinely want to study and still find it difficult to begin or continue. Phone use can become an automatic action: the student reaches for the device without making a clear decision to stop working, and the moment of choice becomes almost invisible.
That nearly invisible moment of choice is crucial. Doomscrolling can create a cycle of lost time, anxiety about unfinished work, guilt, and even greater difficulty returning to study.
Boredom also becomes important. Mobile phones offer constant novelty, while lectures, books, and academic texts require the student to remain with material that is slower and less immediately stimulating. The difficulty may therefore lie not only in maintaining concentration for a long time, but also in beginning a demanding task before turning to something easier.
Lopatiuk also drew attention to the fact that digital breaks often have no natural ending. A short break can easily become much longer than planned, leaving the student frustrated rather than refreshed. Fear of missing out and repeated checking can divide attention even when a student is physically present in the classroom. The lecture then has to compete with the entire digital environment.
The problem of attention thus gradually becomes a question of freedom of choice. At what point does a student stop consciously choosing what deserves attention and begin simply following whatever captures it next?
But Is Technology Itself the Problem?
At this point, the discussion introduced a fundamentally different position.
Professor Dr. Oleg Maltsev argued that technological progress itself should not be treated as the problem. Fighting mobile phones, social networks, or artificial intelligence is ineffective, especially in education and training. The more important question is whether a person understands the nature of the technology and how it affects his or her own behavior and development.
The same Facebook platform, according to Maltsev’s example, can be used in several fundamentally different ways: to create an artificially positive image, to display one’s negative sides, to separate online life from personal life, or to function as a tool for personal multiplication and amplification. The key question is not simply whether a person has a social media account, but why it exists and how it is used.
The example of maritime cadets made the point more concrete. Modern phones provide access to satellite navigation, artificial intelligence, and many other benefits of contemporary civilization. But professional competence must remain effective even when technological systems are unavailable. A navigator remains responsible for ensuring that a ship reaches its destination whether satellite navigation is functioning or not.
This leads to a simple, almost experimental question: What is a person capable of when the mobile phone is completely turned off for a day?
In this framing, the phone ceases to be the defendant. The person becomes the subject of the experiment.
A Culture That Can No Longer Be Reversed
Dr. Oleksandr Sahaidak placed the issue in historical perspective. In his view, the central question is not whether cybernetic culture should be supported or slowed down, because it already objectively exists and continues to develop.
He compared resistance to cybernetic culture in the twenty-first century with resistance to print culture in the sixteenth century, industrial culture in the nineteenth century, and radio and television culture in the twentieth century. In each case, a new technological environment gradually ceased to be something external and became part of the larger civilizational reality.
The more useful question, then, is not “How do we stop it?” but rather: What is developing, and how can its further development be influenced?
One possibility raised by Sahaidak is that cybernetic consciousness may become a kind of human exocortex—an external extension of intellectual capability. Another possibility is that cybernetic culture becomes mainly an information space for entertainment and passing time.
This contrast reveals the cultural scale of the issue. The same technology may become an extension of human intelligence or a mechanism for continuous distraction.
Who Chose the Main Problems?
After the experts’ contributions, the second round began. At this point, the students effectively took over the selection process.
The Ukrainian students identified two issues: the role of the mentor and the need to know what works—which solutions actually work in practice.
The ALM students selected two different issues: loss of control over attention and discomfort with boredom.
The resulting configuration was revealing.
On one side stood the individual and the academic environment: mentorship, method, and practical solutions.
On the other stood the student’s internal structure: attention and the ability to remain in situations that do not provide immediate stimulation.
The phone remained somewhere in between.
The Mentor Rather Than the Information Provider
In the third round, Professor Paul Frijters returned to one of academia’s oldest functions: mentorship.
Teachers and mentors, in his view, should not be treated merely as providers of knowledge. Academic mentoring should also support personal and emotional development. Frijters emphasized the value of small, close academic communities where students and mentors live, learn, and interact together rather than meeting only for formal instruction.
Such communities allow people to observe and support one another, strengthening both learning and personal development. Learning should also move in both directions: students and younger academics can contribute to the development of mentors through quicker thinking and greater familiarity with new techniques.
Within this model, understanding what works becomes part of becoming an intellectual. Ideas, theories, and methods that prove effective gradually become part of a person’s worldview and intellectual toolkit.
The image of academia changes accordingly. It is not merely a repository of correct answers. It becomes a community in which people test ideas, challenge one another, and learn how to conduct difficult discussions without anger.
The Right to Direct One’s Own Mind
Gigi Foster continued this line of thought from the perspective of intellectual autonomy.
Passivity and lack of autonomy developed through online interaction, she argued, can carry over into the academy. Students may become more inclined to defer to teachers and other authorities. They therefore need both permission and courage to take responsibility for their own intellectual development and become more proactive.
Intellectual independence includes deciding what is interesting, how to approach a problem, and what method or algorithm should be used to solve it. Many students do not arrive with a strong sense that they have the right, ability, or confidence to conduct independent research and pursue knowledge on their own.
Mentors can support this development by stepping back from constant leadership, showing how they themselves solve real problems, and giving students opportunities to lead themselves. Practical experience solving problems without immediate intervention from teachers or higher authorities is necessary for developing agency and becoming directors of one’s own mind.
One sign that education has worked, Foster suggested, is reduced dependence on phones and social media and a stronger desire to engage with the real world, mentors, and fellow students.
From Learning the Rules to Moving Beyond Them
In his second contribution, Andringa described personal and educational development as movement through several levels.
At the university level, one important stage involves learning the established knowledge, scripts, and working methods of a scientific field—understanding how things are done. The next stage is understanding why those methods are used and being able to justify one’s own actions and ways of working.
Further development requires searching for alternative perspectives and learning how people outside one’s own intellectual group understand the same problem. Moving beyond that familiar group can help students become more independent because they begin to direct their own learning process.
Independent learning can eventually lead to deeper and broader understanding associated with wisdom, but students need mentors capable of guiding development at these higher levels. Excessive proceduralization of education, Andringa warned, can prevent further development and leave students stuck at lower levels. Mobile phones may make the problem worse, while capable mentors and small academic communities can help counteract it.
At this point, the debate about technology becomes a debate about the nature of the university.
Should a university teach students how to use an already existing system correctly?
Or should it eventually teach them how to move beyond it?
Why Boredom Appears
Oleg Maltsev questioned the usual interpretation of boredom.
According to the position he presented, boredom appears when, at a subconscious level, a person already knows how something will end. Predictability therefore becomes an enemy of education and learning. A long process without a clear or meaningful endpoint becomes uninteresting; interest is maintained when the result is not fully predictable and when something new remains in the process.
This shifts part of the responsibility back onto education itself. Teaching, Maltsev argued, is both a science and an art. A teacher should be able to make the material necessary and interesting, and problems with boredom may arise from the way teaching is organized rather than from the students themselves.
The second part of his contribution concerned attention. The struggle for attention is not new. Knowledge about how to capture and control another person’s attention has existed for centuries and has been used for practical purposes. Modern technologies—including artificial intelligence, mobile phones, and social networks—greatly expand the possibilities for capturing and directing human attention.
From this perspective, selective attention becomes important. Attention should be directed toward what strengthens the person—toward learning, development, and acquiring knowledge—and withdrawn from what weakens the person.
Seen in this way, attention stops looking like merely a psychological function.
It becomes a resource.
And once attention becomes a resource, another question inevitably appears: Who is using it?
Human–Machine
Sahaidak moved the discussion into an even broader perspective.
According to his contribution, the scientific community of the twenty-first century is unlikely to suffer from boredom because the science of the future will focus on managing complexity. Cybernetics and semantics, in this framework, become the principal languages of future science.
Different sciences ask different questions about systems. Physics asks what a system consists of. Biology asks how it lives. Computer science asks how it processes information. Cybernetics asks how it changes through feedback.
But the human–machine system introduces another level: How does interaction itself create a new space of possible states?
The central process here is semantic dynamics. Information becomes practically significant when it changes the state of a system. The key question, then, is no longer simply whether a machine can think, but whether a new form of subjectivity can emerge within the semantic circuit of human and machine.
Against this background, the debate over whether phones should be allowed in lectures begins to look like only a small surface disturbance above a much deeper process.
Four Conditions of Attention
Iryna Lopatiuk offered the most practical framework.
Problems with attention, she emphasized, are not limited to students. The same difficulties can remain after graduation and continue into professional life. Sustained concentration is naturally limited, while both study and professional work often require attention for much longer periods.
Her practical approach was described through four elements: reason, environment, timing, and “gun.”
Reason refers to having a clear and personally important purpose for doing something. Environment means adapting conditions to the individual: some people work better with music, others in silence, others with another person nearby. Timing means dividing tasks into shorter intervals—one, five, ten, fifteen, or thirty minutes—and then deliberately switching attention when an interval ends. Finally, the “gun” refers to strong external pressure or strict self-discipline that creates a situation in which the task must be completed.
This framework returned the symposium to the most practical level. It is not enough to talk indefinitely about “poor concentration” as though it were an abstract defect. The mechanism has to be examined: Why is the person acting? Under what conditions? For how long can attention be sustained? What makes completion necessary?
Attention, in other words, can not only be lost.
It can also be structured deliberately.
Academia as an Experiment
In his final remarks, Professor Paul Frijters brought several strands of the symposium together.
Mobile phones and modern information technologies cannot be avoided, and they provide many useful functions. The central question is therefore not whether technology should exist, but how people should live with it and how much exposure is useful.
Frijters noted that historical academies also attempted to reduce distraction by moving away from cities, where temptations made teaching and learning more difficult. The form of distraction changes, but the problem of organizing an environment conducive to development is much older.
The issue, he argued, should be approached experimentally. Different academic communities can test different rules and practices and compare what works best. The goal is to retain the useful functions of technology while reducing its harmful effects.
This may be one of the most important features of the discussion as a whole. The symposium did not end with the slogan “ban phones.” But neither did it end with the claim that technology is neutral and therefore requires no response.
Instead, it arrived at a more demanding conclusion: the problem must be investigated.
Who Is Really Holding the Device?
At first glance, the September 12 symposium was about mobile phones and social media. But as the discussion moved from one speaker to another, the phone became less central.
In its place appeared the person.
A person who finds boredom difficult to tolerate.
A person whose attention can be structured from outside.
A person who may accept a simplified explanation because a more complex one requires more time.
A person who can use a digital system as a means of expanding human capability—or allow that system to use human attention.
And alongside that person appeared the academy. Not simply as a building or a collection of courses, but as a deliberately structured cultural environment in which a person must gradually learn to do what a digital interface will not do on his or her behalf: tolerate uncertainty, remain in difficult discussion rather than immediately withdraw, distinguish a source from a claim, move from instruction to independent method, choose the object of attention, and take responsibility for the direction of one’s own thinking.
This is where the central paradox emerges.
We are accustomed to saying that the smartphone gives a person freedom. And in one sense, it does. It offers unprecedented access to maps, other people, libraries, artificial intelligence, images, archives, calculations, and news.
But freedom of access is not the same as freedom of attention.
A person may have almost the entire world available and still fail to choose what to look at.
The deeper conflict, then, may not be between the human being and the machine, or even between academia and the social network. It may lie between two different ways of existing within a technological environment.
In one, the person understands the device, chooses the task, and makes the tool serve that task.
In the other, the tool continually proposes the next task to the person.
Sometimes the difference between these two situations is no more than a single movement of the finger. Yet it may be precisely in that brief interval—between impulse and deliberate action—that one of the most important territories of intellectual freedom now resides.