From savoir-apprendre to scrolling: Learning in the age of nomophobia

In the post-COVID era, the global educational reforms increasingly embraced digitalisation and e-learning, embedding a reliance on digital devices. While this technological advancement has led to remarkable progress, its dual-edged nature also leads to adverse consequences like nomophobia. Mobile phones today have become the preferred devices for student learning, replacing the traditional systems as they support instant access to educational resources. Nomophobia is the anxiety arising from the inability to have constant access to mobile phones. This article looks at nomophobia through the lens of Stiegler’s philosophy, describing technology as a ‘pharmakon’, working both as an antidote and a poison. Stiegler’s concepts of technics, attention economy, suspension of acts, interruption of actions, and epiphylogenesis explain the phenomenon of nomophobia, which represents the toxic side. Constant mobile phone use leads to ‘proletarianization’, making students passive users and losing their ‘savoir-apprendre’. Stiegler proposes education as a counter to the dependence on mobile phones and emphasises teaching students to use the devices mindfully. The focus of education should be to reinvent the learning process and have the students develop curiosity, enhance attention and engage critically with technology.