1 Introduction

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has become a key issue for research, policy, and educational practice over the past 10 years (Burns & Gottschalk, 2019, 2020; Clarke et al., 2015), especially in the post-COVID era (Wang et al., 2023). The related concept of well-being in the digital age implies broader aspects of living with digital media in everyday life. Research has shown that the integration of cognitive, social, and emotional skills improves life outcomes at the societal and individual levels (OECD, 2021), but that social media use also poses challenges among young people (UNESCO, 2023).

Recent digital technology advances and new digital ecosystems, especially linked to hyperconnectivity (Brubaker, 2023), social media platforms (Harvard Educational Review, 2022; van Dijck et al., 2018) and datafication (Mascheroni & Siibak, 2021; Pangrazio & Sefton-Green, 2022), have raised awareness of the importance of socioemotional skills and the more cognitive aspects of learning. These developments, which combine the social and emotional aspects of learning with recent technological developments, support interesting new modes of learning and conceptions of future developments in education but also cause deep concern about the well-being of young people, which is of great importance in most countries.

In this article, we consider the literature and research perspectives that have evolved during the last decade regarding the social and emotional aspects of learning in the digital age. We highlight some core challenges and concerns considering contemporary social developments within digitalised societies, including the development of artificial intelligence (AI), datafication, and digital platforms, and how we conceptualise learning and education within and beyond formal schooling to provide better ways of engaging young learners.

The aim of this article is to address emerging issues relating to the importance of the social and emotional skills that are relevant for understanding learning and education in contemporary and future societies. We will explore developments in selected countries (Norway, the Czech Republic, the United States (US), and Japan) as examples of how social and emotional skills have gained importance in education systems around the world. The research question underpinning this article is: In what ways have social and emotional modes of learning become important with respect to emerging digital ecosystems within education?

2 Social and Emotional Skills as an Emerging Field

Awareness of the social and emotional aspects of learning is not new in educational research, as referred to in Table 1. Students’ motivation has been a concern of schooling since national formal education was introduced. However, changes have become apparent in recent years. Social and emotional skills have become highly relevant to the way education is defined in the age of digital transformation (Vuorre & Przybylski, 2023). In the following sections, we discuss some relevant frameworks, emerging research agendas, and aspects of digital ecosystems that are highly relevant in this context. These are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1 SEL as an emerging field
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3 Frameworks and Definitions

The literature on social and emotional skills has increased steadily, as evidenced by the growing number of studies on this topic and the development of appropriate measurement instruments, as shown in several reviews of the literature (Halle & Darling-Churchill, 2016; Martinez-Yarza et al., 2023; Sancassiani et al., 2015). During the past 20 years, a broader understanding of social and emotional skills has emerged, and Martinez-Yarza et al. (2023) highlighted the challenges of measuring such skills.

3.1 Initiatives on Competences and Skills

Regarding the development of competencies and skills in the twenty-first century, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has taken important steps towards addressing the role of social and emotional skills in contemporary education systems. At the end of the 1990s, the OECD initiated both the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Definition and Selection of Key Competences (DeSeCo) studies to gain a better understanding of students’ performance in key subject areas and how well education systems were adapted to 21st-century challenges. Both studies have generated extensive research and have been foundational for emerging fields of study during the last 20 years. Within the DeSeCo framework, the notion of competencies encompasses cognitive, motivational, ethical, social, and behavioural components and combines stable traits, learning outcomes (e.g., knowledge and skills), belief-value systems, habits, and other psychological features. By focusing on a broad conception of competencies and the role of education in the twenty-first century, this initiative was important for the development of later frameworks to address social and emotional competencies as important components of learning and development. For example, it has underpinned the European Key Competences for Lifelong Learning: A European Reference Framework reports (European Parliament, 2006, 2016), and the International Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills project (ATC21S) (Griffin et al., 2012).

The report Skills for Social Progress. The Power of Social and Emotional Skills (OECD, 2015) is relevant to conceptions of SEL as part of educational frameworks since it brought together research on SEL to foster the development of appropriate measurement instruments and policies. The perspectives outlined in this report can help us understand how social and emotional skills are defined.

Children and adolescents need a balanced set of cognitive social, and emotional skills in order to succeed in modern life. Cognitive skills, including those that are measured by achievement tests and academic grades, have been shown to influence the likelihood of individuals’ educational and labour market success. They also predict broader outcomes such as perceived health, social and political participation as well as trust. In turn, social and emotional skills, such as perseverance, sociability and self-esteem have been shown to influence numerous measures of social outcomes, including better health, improved subjective well-being and reduced odds of engaging in conduct problems. Cognitive and socio-emotional skills interact and cross-fertilize and empower children to succeed both in and out of school. (OECD, 2015, p. 3)

3.2 Initiatives for 21st-Century Children

Other relevant initiatives have focused on modern childhood and how it has changed in most countries during the last 20 years, often for the better (Burns & Gottschalk, ). In the 21st Century Children Project run by the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (OECD), researchers explored the intersection between emotional well-being and digital technologies. Children in the twenty-first century are reporting more anxiety as access to digital means of communication increases and education systems become more performance-oriented and ever more competitive. There is increased awareness among authorities about both physical and mental health issues among children and young people.

In Europe and the US, several frameworks have recently been developed that focus on social and emotional skills. The most well-known is the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) framework. The team that developed this framework defined SEL as follows:

The process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions (https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-is-the-casel-framework/)

The CASEL initiative has categorised social and emotional skills into five key competence areas: self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, and social awareness. The framework is intended for use by schools, families, and communities to support the learning and development of young people. Each of these five competence areas is important for supporting the broad aspects of learning and living.

In Europe, the European Commission has initiated LifeComp, which is a European framework for the personal and social learning of key competencies based on the competency framework mentioned above. LifeComp defines nine key areas of such skills and competencies: 1) self-regulation (awareness and management of emotions, thoughts, and behaviour); 2) flexibility (ability to manage transitions and uncertainty and to face challenges); 3) well-being (pursuit of life satisfaction; care for physical, mental, and social health; and adoption of a sustainable lifestyle); 4) empathy (understanding of another person’s emotions, experiences, and values, and the provision of the appropriate responses); 5) communication (use of relevant communication codes, experiences, and tools depending on the context and the content); 6) collaboration (engagement in group activities and teamwork while acknowledging and respecting others); 7) growth mindset (belief in one’s and others’ potential to continuously learn and progress); 8) critical thinking (assessment of information and arguments to support reasoned conclusions and develop innovative solutions); and 9) managing learning (planning, organising, monitoring, and reviewing of one’s own learning).

Learning in this sense has become a complex concept involving diverse aspects of young peoples’ everyday lives across formal, non-formal, and informal contexts (Erstad & Silseth, 2023; Erstad, 2023). The digital ecosystems that young people inhabit are becoming increasingly complex with the new challenges posed by algorithmic power, AI, datafication, and platformisation, which influence the ways in which we understand young people’s social and emotional skills today (Pangrazio & Sefton Green, 2022).

4 Technological Developments and Digital Life (During the Pandemic and Beyond)

A key aspect of current media culture, compared to only a decade ago, is the pervasiveness of media, especially due to the development of mobile technologies, social media, and the platformisation of societies (Pangrazio & Sefton Green, 2022; Dijck et al., 2018). The number of internet and social media users has been steadily rising during the past decade, and the latest statistical data gathered from different agencies and sources of internet users worldwide by the Wearesocial.com service shows the following:

More than 66 percent of all the people on Earth now use the internet, with the latest data putting the global user total at 5.35 billion. Internet users have grown by 1.8 percent over the past 12 months, thanks to 97 million new users since the start of 2023. There are now more than 5 billion active social media user identities, with the global total reaching 5.04 billion at the start of 2024. Our latest social media user identities figure has increased by 5.6 percent over the past year, with 266 million new users starting to use social media for the first time over the course of 2023. But despite these impressive figures, more than 2.7 billion people remain offline around the world, with India alone home to more than 680 million of the world’s ‘unconnected’ (https://wearesocial.com/uk/blog/2024/01/digital-2024-5-billion-social-media-users/)

These developments have been described as constituting a ‘culture of connectivity’ (van Dijck, 2013), emphasising how connected our lives are to others and to diverse online spaces to a degree never experienced before. Very few places today have no media use. Of course, both concerns and prospects arise from these developments. The growing use of mobile technologies (e.g. tablets and smartphones) allows for instant and ubiquitous access to the internet via portable devices that even young children can manage and operate easily (Erstad et al., 2020).

During the global COVID-19 pandemic, these technological developments and their use in everyday life escalated because everybody had to rely on digital forms of communication and tuition delivery. Studies were conducted to study the experiences of students during lockdowns and beyond, both the positive and negative outcomes. For example, Vuorikari et al. (2020) reporting from a large-scale European project called Kids Digital Lives in COVID-19 Times, stated:

In these times of unprecedented crisis, most children in Europe and beyond have been affected by confinement. Schooling, leisure time, and social contacts have all taken place at home and very often on digital platforms. This means that children are, more than ever, consumers of digital media and content. Previous research has shown that an increase in time spent online increases the likelihood of negative experiences, while increasing opportunities. (2020, p. 5)

This study showed that more than half of the 10–18-year-old children surveyed were worried about continuing their schoolwork. The differences between countries were notable. For example, regarding online homework, children in Norway, Slovenia, and Portugal were more optimistic than their Romanian, Spanish, or Irish counterparts.

The UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2023) emphasised as today’s most important challenge the increasing inequalities in access to and use of technologies within education systems between countries in different parts of the world. The report showed that even in the world’s richest countries, only about 10% of 15-year-old students used digital devices for more than an hour per week for mathematics and science, and only half of the countries had standards for developing teachers’ Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills.

These examples of technological developments, which together form highly complex digital ecosystems that young people grow up with and that education systems relate to, necessitate paying more attention to the socioemotional skills and well-being of young people and their ways of learning. The massive increase in internet users worldwide, and especially users of diverse social media, raises deep concerns about the socioemotional well-being of young people who may lack the digital literacy to deal with the impact of these technological developments on their daily lives.

4.1 Relevant Research Initiatives

Over the last 10 years, numerous researchers have focused on social and emotional skills within education regarding the development of digital technologies. We will consider only a few studies tudies that have defined different aspects of social and emotional skills in the digital age. These studies were chosen because they both relate to the key issues mentioned previously and involve different countries.

Some relevant studies have documented a decrease in students’ motivation, interest in school, and general well-being across different countries, and topics such as cyberbullying remain prevalent (Bakken, 2022). In a review of the evidence regarding the effectiveness of school-based and out-of-school programmes in the United Kingdom (UK), Clarke et al. (2015) studied ‘what works in enhancing social and emotional skills development during childhood and adolescence’. They claimed:

Extensive developmental research indicates that the effective mastery of social and emotional skills supports the achievement of positive life outcomes, including good health and social well-being, educational attainment and employment and the avoidance of behavioural and social difficulties. There is also a substantive international evidence base that shows that these skills can be enhanced, and positive outcomes achieved through the implementation of effective interventions for young people (Clarke et al., 2015, p. 2).

One important research initiative is the OECD Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES; OECD, 2021), which identifies and assesses the conditions and practices that foster or hinder the development of 10- and 15-year-old students’ social and emotional skills. It does not target digital technologies per se but explores key issues regarding the contemporary understanding of social and emotional skills across several countries. In 2019, the SSES examined the creativity, curiosity, empathy, cooperation, and other social and emotional skills of 10- and 15-year-old students in nine cities across different regions of the world, including: Bogotá (Colombia), Daegu (Korea), Helsinki (Finland), Houston (the US), Istanbul (the Republic of Turkey), Manizales (Colombia), Ottawa (Canada), Sintra (Portugal), and Suzhou (the People’s Republic of China). The subsequent international report shed light on how social and emotional skills differ by gender, social background and age, and why they matter for student outcomes such as academic performance, career expectations, and well-being (OECD, 2021). The first report was entitled Beyond Academic Learning (OECD, 2021), and one important finding was that students’ social and emotional skills differed by social background and gender. Girls reported higher levels of skills related to task performance, such as responsibility and achievement motivation. They also reported higher levels of skills that are important in an interconnected world, such as empathy, cooperation, and tolerance. In contrast, boys exhibited stronger emotional regulation skills, such as stress resistance, optimism, and emotional control, as well as important social skills, such as assertiveness and energy. Students from advantaged backgrounds reported better social and emotional skills than their disadvantaged peers for every skill that was measured in all cities participating in the survey. The learning environment and climate at school also mattered. The second report, entitled Schools as Hubs for Social and Emotional Learning: Are Schools and Teachers Ready? (OECD, 2023), stated:

[The] results indicate that developing social and emotional skills is acknowledged as an aim of schools as much as promoting academic skills. However, the former are less commonly evaluated than the latter. Schools mainly embed social and emotional promotion into their general practices, while activities and lessons with a specific focus on learning these skills are less common. Both an active promotion in schools and extensive learning opportunities for teachers on relevant topics provide a fertile ground for an effective social and emotional education. They boost teachers’ self-efficacy and use of active learning pedagogies, as well as quality relationships at school. Younger students benefit more often from key elements of an effective social and emotional education in school (OECD, 2023, p. 1).

The European project Building social and emotional skills to BOOST Mental Health Resilience in Children and Young People in Europe, (2018–2021), (BOOST, www.boostproject.eu) is another example of a large-scale project aiming to create an innovative approach to strengthening social and emotional skills and promoting mental health and well-being among children and young people in school. Like the previously mentioned OECD project, the BOOST project shows the importance of education for developing socioemotional skills and the need to understand the (digital) ecosystems in which young people are embedded. The question remains as to what extent the digital environment plays a role in these developments.

5 SEL Developments in Selected Countries and Education Systems

Examples of how SEL initiatives had developed across countries emerged during the face-to-face discussions of the SEL thematic working group that met in Kyoto for EDUsummIT 2023 (Cernochova et al., 2023). We present examples from the four countries represented in the discussions in this section. The four countries have diverse education systems and sociocultural structures that are of interest for understanding socioemotional skills for dealing with digital transformations. We will consider how social and emotional skills have emerged, focusing on the well-being of young people and the digital ecosystems they inhabit, as summarized in Table 2.

Table 2 SEL developments in selected countries and education systems
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5.1 Norway

One important implication in the ways social and emotional skills have been defined as central in curriculum developments in Norway is the way the new national curriculum, implemented during and after the pandemic, defines certain transversal topics across all subjects and on all levels of schooling. The national curriculum, implemented during Fall 2020 called ‘Fagfornyelsen’ (‘Renewal of the Subjects’ & White Paper, 2016) was initiated to renew the content of traditional subjects. Three transversal areas are defined as being of key importance in our society today; ‘sustainable development’, ‘democracy and citizenship’ and ‘public health and life skills’. It is especially the last one that is of interest in this context, and also in its connection to the digital life of young people. This topic represents a deep concern about how many young people in Norway today find it challenging to cope with their own life conditions in spite of living in a rich and safe country. Attention to their social and emotional skills have become even more important as part of this curriculum development. However, research shows that many teachers experience this new topic area as a challenge, in both understanding what it implies and how to teach about it (Brevik et al., 2023).

In addition, national surveys have recently shown that motivation and interest for schools have been dropping among Norwegian youngsters (Bakken, 2022), and that levels of stress and anxiety has increased especially after the pandemic. Among policy makers, researchers and practitioners these developments and the need for increased focus on life skills reflect uncertainty about the impact of new technologies in schools and as part of the life of young people in general. As a consequence the government in 2023 established a committee, to give advice on screen time use among students in Norwegian schools, consisting of researchers and practitioners as well as union representatives. The committee provided recommendations on screen time use and also stated that the research base is not clear on these issues.

5.2 Czech Republic

In the Czech school system, SEL is primarily included in prevention initiatives at schools with the aim of minimizing the occurrence of risky behavior or in terms of the need to systematically develop the key skills of student teachers (e.g., the ability to work with the classroom climate). The field of prevention is governed by the ‘National Strategy for the Primary Prevention of Risky Behavior of Children and Youth for the period 2019–2027’ (see MŠMT, 2019)which defines key concepts, sets up a system for ensuring preventive measures, presents the legal framework for the primary prevention of risky behavior in order to clearly define terminology, roles and competencies of individual actors, mainly aimed at children in kindergarten and 1st grade of elementary school (Palová, 2020, p. 50). In 2019, the Czech School Inspectorate (ČŠI) published a thematic report focused on the development of social literacy. From the point of view of the implementation of social-emotional learning in Czech schools, the statement that "almost 85% of teachers and more than 90% of principals consider social literacy to be as important as other skills that primary and secondary schools try to develop" (ČŠI, 2019). According to the RVP (2023) (‘Rámcový vzdělávací program’) a state national curriculum document), one of the components of communicative competence is that the pupil "uses information and communication tools and technologies for high-quality and effective communication with the surrounding world". In social and personal competence, we can see signs of SEL.

Regardless of the situation with SEL in the curriculum and in school practice, SEL is becoming the subject of research at Czech universities. For example, in the years 2017–2020 the Palacký University (Faculty of Arts, Department of Psychology) did a research project ‘Social-Emotional Learning in Czech schools and the Second Step Program’, focused on social-emotional competencies in primary and secondary schools with the aim to point out the importance of those efforts in the primary prevention of risk behaviour. The Program, divided into three parts "Empathy", "Impulsivity Management and Problem Solving", and "Anger Management", was introduced in some Czech schools. The Czech curriculum for basic and secondary schools does not deal with the issue of social and emotional learning sufficiently strongly and comprehensively. This indicates that neither the curriculum documents nor the schools and their teachers in the Czech Republic are fully prepared for SEL, especially in the context of society moving into the digital age.

5.3 USA

In the US, K-12 teacher professional development and preservice teacher preparation are moving quickly to include SEL as a necessary teacher education component. For example, SimSchool (see SimSchool.org), an online classroom ‘flight simulator’ that helps teachers practice with simulated students, has since 2000 used the Academic Index as the primary indicator of educator proficiency for addressing the needs of individual (simulated) learners (Tyler-Wood et al., 2015). However, since 2023, SimSchool has included a companion Socio-Emotional Index that focuses on the extent to which educators have addressed the special socioemotional needs of individual learners, such as their anxieties, introverted personality traits, and attention deficits, during simulated teaching sessions (Christensen & Knezek, 2022). SimSchool is currently used by thousands of teachers across the US and in other countries around the world, and it therefore serves as a trend indicator of the acknowledged importance of SEL (Stavroulia et al., 2015).

A second example from the US occurred at the third author’s home institution, beginning as the US emerged from lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic in autumn 2021. The University of North Texas (UNT) introduced a new required course on SEL that is paired with the Digital Tools in Education (Tech Tools) and is a required course for all preservice teacher candidates as part of their academic preparation. Both half-courses (1.5 credits each) are required for more than 400 teacher preparation candidates per year. SEL is taught by the Counselling Department, while Digital Tools in Education is taught by the Learning Technologies Department. These two courses are paired for students at the beginning of their methods class sequence (early second year of 4 years of preparation). During any given autumn or spring semester, half of the ‘paired’ group attends SEL for 8 weeks, and vice versa for the other half of the group. Therefore, both classes are completed adjacently. The paired course format is currently considered ‘well established’ after having been offered for 3 years. Research on perceived student teacher preparation and learning outcomes is underway.

The implications of these trends in the US are that SEL is rapidly becoming accepted as an important area of study in teacher preparation and in-service teacher professional development curricula. Because teacher preparation guidelines are periodically realigned to address the evolving needs of society, we can infer that SEL is perceived as urgently requiring further attention in primary and secondary school classrooms across the 50 states, despite their independently determined curricular priorities, as prescribed by the US Constitution.

5.4 Japan

In recent decades, problems such as bullying of classmates, violence, refusal to attend school, and shut-in (staying in one’s room and refusing to see anyone) have emerged among students from elementary to high school (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), 2013, 2017, 2023a). Bullying in Japan differs from that in other countries, with the majority occurring within classrooms and involving less physical violence because of cultural differences and tradition (Kanetsuna, 2016; Taki, 2001). In Japan, there are approximately 6 million elementary school students (ages 7–12) and 3 million junior high school students (ages 13–15). In 2022, MEXT reported there were 681,948 cases of bullying, 95,426 cases of violence, and 299,048 cases of refusal to attend school, all increasing by 10–20% each year (MEXT, 2023a, 2023b). A response package has been developed by MEXT by developing applications for the early detection and assistance of changes in mental and physical health by using PC tablets. For example the ‘One PC tablet program’ (MEXT, 2021) includes an application that students can input their daily mental state on a tablet, allowing teachers and school nurses to check them on the school dashboard and provide early care. There is also an expectation to analyze data through machine learning to build predictive models for bullying and absenteeism. The causes of problems such as bullying and absenteeism are unclear. Using video game tasks, the relationship between conformity in bullying and anxiety was suggested through a computational neuroscientific approach (Takami & Haruno, 2019, 2020). Yokotani and Takano studied cyber bullying within a Japanese chat platform with an avatar analyzing the online social networks (Yokotani & Takano, 2021). This study signals that having users discuss the commitment to not tolerate or ignore cyberbullying on a regular and long-term basis can be expected to prevent cyberbullying. In research studies on the factors behind school absenteeism, it has been shown that a primary reason for not attending school is due to students with high levels of apathy and anxiety. Based on such research, it is considered that Social Emotional Learning (SEL) type interventions could be essential in addressing the issues of anxiety and apathy, which are thought to be factors in bullying and school absenteeism.

Given the growing importance of SEL, group learning designs have gained prevalence in Japanese classrooms, with the availability of digital devices and educational big data. A notable example is the deployment of an intelligent group formation system (Liang et al., 2021). This system includes a parameter configuration module that integrates learning data from various sources and a visualization panel displaying the outcomes of the formed groups, which are further accessible for user assessment (Liang et al., 2021, p.1). The application of such a system sheds light on the impact of computer-formed groups, considering intimacy and imbalance of knowledge, on the emotional states of students participating in group activities within a fifth-grade mathematics class in a primary school setting in Japan—the finding also underscores the potential of data-driven tools to encourage positive affections during the group learning process, aligning with efforts on technology-enhanced SEL. The government is exploring the integration of digital technology to further promote SEL by tailoring educational practices to individual students’ needs and learning activities in the face of the increasing number of students who are withdrawn (shut-in) and bullying (ijime).

6 Digital SEL: D-SEL in Progress?

Based on the discussion in this article, we would add a D, for digital, to the overall term SEL, since SEL cannot be disconnected from the digital environment when focusing on children and young people in the modern world. Many of the existing initiatives and frameworks for fostering social and emotional skills do not include, or are quite vague about, their references to the digital culture in which we live. Considering the country examples we have given, it is obvious that, even though D-SEL is clearly an important component of different frameworks and educational initiatives, it is still extremely unclear how these skills and competencies influence educational practices, at least in the countries mentioned in this paper. Especially concerning the broader aspects of young people’s well-being, educational initiatives seem fragmented and lack the coherence necessary to make them meaningful to practitioners. Nevertheless, as we have shown, several important initiatives have addressed the importance of D-SEL, since it has been highlighted in the national curriculum in Norway, hinted at but not clearly expressed in policy strategies in the Czech Republic, included as part of teacher professional development via digital resources in the US, and linked to serious concerns over behavioural incidents among Japanese students.

Although several research projects and initiatives have been identified, the research is fragmented and broad in its conceptions of social and emotional skills. Within educational research on SEL, there are few clear definitions and approaches regarding the important aspects of education for developing and addressing social and emotional skills as part of learning inside and outside schools. Greater clarification is required of the role of digital technologies in engaging students in subject domains in schools and as part of broader processes for fostering well-being. A basic challenge is how to understand well-being as part of learning and being a student across different learning spaces beyond motivational issues.

We believe that D-SEL is highly important, especially because digital platforms, as new technological infrastructures, have generated a major transformation over the last decade in how we interact with digital and social environments, primarily concerning social media, algorithmic power, and AI. Increasingly, digital platforms provide the infrastructure for learning, social connections, gaming, commerce, and engagement with news, and their impact was amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic because home and family life became digitalised rapidly on a scale never seen before.

7 Ways Forward

We have shown that social and emotional modes of learning have become important in many countries, considering the emerging digital ecosystems that young people are part of. Across the world, young people are experiencing cultural transformations that influence the social and emotional aspects of learning via digital technologies. Learning is here understood in a broad sense as humans involved in sociocultural transformations. We perceive that existing education systems are inadequately prepared to respond to the changes taking place in society. As we have argued, not only is cognitive knowledge important for human life but also people’s approach to life and their ability to adapt to changes in digital social and emotional ways of learning.

The perspectives introduced in this paper provide a platform for elaborating on future developments and the importance of studying social and emotional modes of learning in contemporary digital ecosystems. Such ecosystems highlight the need for more integrated approaches to education that connect the cognitive and socioemotional processes of learning with broader understandings of student’s trajectories across different spaces of online and offline learning.