“A máquina está a serviço de quem?”: a critical reflection on digital technologies and education

The experiences of online practices are part of the lives of adolescents inside and outside the school space. Based on this premise, this work aims to investigate the access and use of contemporary technologies with internet access by high school students at a public school in Minas Gerais. This is a qualitative-interpretative investigation, from the perspective of Indisciplinary Applied Linguistics ( Moita Lopes, 2006 ), an area that integrates knowledge from various fields of study to support the analysis. The results confirm the presence of smartphones in the vast majority of adolescents’ daily activities within and outside school walls. The data also demonstrates excessive screen time and the predominance of access to social networks. However, this time online does not translate into mastery of technological resources for pedagogical purposes. Given these results, the school must assume the fundamental role of educating in the use of these technologies, in a reflective and critical way.

Keywords:
Smartphone use; Teenagers; High school; Critical education