Lead researcher : Eve Pouliot

Co-researchers : Marie-Eve Blackburn and Jacinthe Dion

Abstract. The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly transformed adolescents’ lifestyle habits, notably by producing a substantial increase in the time spent in front of screens to socialize, seek entertainment and pursue schoolwork. While a number of studies have documented the effects of this intensive use on young people’s physical and mental health, few have examined its repercussions for their social lives, particularly in a post-pandemic context. This exploratory project aims to document the perspectives of adolescents living in a remote region who use screens for more than five hours a day. More specifically, it seeks to understand how their screen use has evolved since the pandemic, to identify their main uses today as well as the changes observed over time, and to describe the positive and negative effects they associate with this use in their social relationships. The results will provide a better understanding of the place screens occupy in young people’s lives after the pandemic and will serve as a basis for developing a larger-scale research project.