Teléfono inteligente y mediación sociotécnica en jóvenes digitales de 18 a 28 años: vida saludable en Bogotá-Cali-Riohacha

Abstract

This research analyzes the sociotechnical mediation of smartphones on the healthy practices and lifestyles of university students aged 18 to 28 affiliated with higher education institutions in Bogotá, Cali, and Riohacha, Colombia. Using a mixed-methods, descriptive, cross-sectional, and sequential explanatory design, it integrates quantitative and qualitative results to examine patterns of use, gratifications, healthy practices, bodily experiences, social relationships, and forms of technological appropriation, along with a review of public policies and regulatory frameworks related to healthy lifestyles. The findings show that smartphones do not act as an isolated cause of healthy or unhealthy practices, but rather as part of a sociotechnical relationship in which embodied dispositions, gratifications, connectivity conditions, platforms, social contexts, and youth agency converge. The research identifies the configuration of a digital habitus through which technology is incorporated into ways of perceiving, feeling, relating, organizing time, disposing of the body, and developing care practices. It also reveals tensions between access to information, entertainment, recognition, self-regulation, rest, physical activity, emotional well-being, and body image. As a central contribution, the thesis proposes shifting the analysis from the quantity of device use to understanding the sociotechnical relationship as the unit of analysis, broadening the reflection on youth digital health, public health, and public policy from a situated, relational perspective, rather than an exclusively individualistic or biomedical one