Mental health and digital literacy: A bridge to adolescent well-being in Merlo (Argentina)

Updated June 24, 2026

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Key Details

Organisation Name

National University of the West

Location

Merlo. Buenos Aires

Argentina

Website

Social

eMHIC Member Status

Research Collaborator

At a Glance

Description

This university extension project addresses adolescent mental health in Merlo through digital literacy. It implemented workshops covering emotional management, communication, and digital skills to promote emotional well-being and safe online self-care among high school students.

Implementation Status

Scaling implementation

Completed its 2025 cycle across 17 workshops. It has been renewed for 2026, currently expanding implementation to additional high schools within the municipality to scale its community impact.

Target Population

Adolescents

Public schools within the Merlo community collaborating with local university extension programs.

Impact & Outcomes

jan 2025-dec 2025

Outcomes are measured through mixed-methods assessments, including pre- and post-intervention surveys to evaluate digital literacy and emotional management improvements. Student satisfaction metrics , qualitative feedback from focus groups, and tracking the number of expanded schools and adolescents reached during the 2026 cycle are also utilized.

17 In-pers

In-person workshops delivered. Interactive session

75%

Positive evaluation rate

100%

Students surveyed

79%

Mental health prioritization

50.9%

Artificial Intelligence adoption

Academic dissemination forums

17 In-pers

In-person workshops delivered. Interactive session

75%

Positive evaluation rate

100%

Students surveyed

79%

Mental health prioritization

50.9%

Artificial Intelligence adoption

Academic dissemination forums

Student Voices (Qualitative Feedback)"The workshop was very intuitive and easy to understand. It addressed complex topics at an age where these discussions are highly relevant to our daily lives." "We need to talk more about how school environments directly influence young people's mental health, and why some classmates stop attending due to emotional struggles."

student

"I would love to dive deeper into the dynamics of virtual friendships. Sometimes, online relationships impact our emotions deeply, creating a thin line that borders on emotional dependency." "It is essential to keep talking about high-magnitude issues like anxiety, depression, and how the everyday comments or judgments of other people affect our emotional well-being."

student

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Initiative Overview

The Current Gap

While 79% of adolescents recognize mental health care as essential, a critical digital gap hinders their well-being. Although 79.3% habitually use search engines and 69% use social networks , only 39.8% feel comfortable seeking mental health support online. Furthermore, 47.9% cannot identify trustworthy information , and 50.9% navigate unchecked Artificial Intelligence tools.

This initiative addresses the lack of digital literacy as an emotional self-care tool, tackling the stigma, anxiety, and misinformation that high school students face when navigating the digital ecosystem without proper guidance.

What else should we know?

This initiative bridges university research with local government policies to maximize territory-based impact. The project’s methodology and diagnostic findings on youth digital habits have achieved international and national validation. It was presented at the 2025 World Congress on Digital Mental Health in Canada, the Medical Association of Argentina, and the Evangelical University of El Salvador in early 2026.

These academic presentations underscore the solution’s high scalability, scientific rigor, and potential to serve as a replicable public health framework for adolescent community care in similar urban environments.

Our Solution

This university extension program tackles adolescent mental health through targeted digital literacy. Implemented alongside local authorities, the initiative replaces digital risks with community-based emotional self-care opportunities. The project developed academic modules on emotional regulation, stress management, and effective communication, delivering 17 interactive, in-person workshops to high school students.

Achieving a 75% positive evaluation rate, the solution empowers youth to safely evaluate online resources, combat stigma, and build peer support networks. It has successfully expanded its school-wide implementation to continuously scale local impact.

Key Features

1

Community-University Synergy

Strategic alliance between university and municipality, connecting higher education and community needs while reducing mental health stigma in schools.

2

Data-Driven Workshop Customization

Based on student surveys identifying stress, anxiety, and depression concerns, shaping 17 workshops addressing actual adolescent needs.

3

Targeted Gender and Stigma Architecture

Uses diagnostic data on gender differences in mental health perceptions to tailor strategies that reduce stigma and taboos.

4

Tri-Centric Curriculum Model

Classroom intervention using Digital Literacy, Emotion Management, and Effective Communication modules, promoting youth empowerment and emotional self-care.

5

Peer-Centered Problem Mapping

Captures student perspectives, identifying stressors including virtual friendships, emotional dependency, school climate, and suicide prevention needs.

6

Scalable and Internationally Validated Framework

Demonstrates scalability and validation, expanding from successful presentations and pilot implementation to replication across Merlo schools.

Collaboration in Action

Main Collaborators

Municipalidad de Merlo
Provincia de Buenos Aires

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Key Learnings

Main Challenges

Institutional Coordination: Initial school outreach and logistical planning faced bureaucratic bottlenecks, requiring significantly more time than scheduled due to delayed communication from directorships.

Adaptive Scope Alignment: To meet school requests, the strategy shifted a posteriori to deliver intensive, multi-course workshops within fewer institutions, adapting instructional management while meeting the target student coverage.

Complex Peer Realities: Interactive modules surfaced severe student vulnerabilities, forcing the team to skillfully address unprompted, high-magnitude demands regarding suicide prevention, academic anxiety, and emotional dependency on virtual friendships

Important Lessons

Leverage Intersectoral Alliances: Co-designing with local government education sectors is vital to overcome school entry barriers and turn academic data into agile public policy.

Design Data-Driven Modules: Deploy baseline diagnostics first; mapping real digital behaviors (like high AI adoption and gender-polarized views) ensures highly tailored, high-impact content.

Prepare for Deep Vulnerabilities: Interactive spaces organically trigger unprompted, high-magnitude peer demands regarding suicide prevention and emotional dependency. Teams must be clinically equipped to navigate these complex classroom realities

Collaborative Insights

While local partnerships executed the fieldwork, international dissemination was essential to validate the project’s framework. Presenting the diagnostic data and methodology at the 2025 World Congress on Digital Mental Health in Canada and the Universidad Evangélica de El Salvador provided global peer-review and cross-cultural validation.

This collaboration transformed a municipal intervention into an internationally recognized model, proving that local digital literacy strategies can effectively scale into global public health solutions for adolescent community care.

Looking Ahead

Future Plans

Institutional Scaling: The 2026 renewal focuses on expanding the implementation of the 17 core interactive workshops to additional high schools within the Merlo municipality to scale geographic and community impact.

Curricular Deepening: Future modules will integrate specific, data-driven content addressing complex student demands, including youth suicide prevention, the psychological impact of school climates, and emotional dependency in virtual relationships.

Sustainable Policy Integration: The team aims to institutionalize this hybrid digital literacy and mental health self-care framework as a permanent municipal public health program, optimizing local budget execution to ensure long-term territory-based sustainability.

Future Vision

Building on its 2025 cycle, the initiative’s next step is the active 2026 expansion into additional secondary schools within the Merlo municipality to scale community impact. The aspiration is to refine the curriculum by integrating specific modules that address critical student-demanded themes, such as youth suicide prevention and virtual relationship dependency.

Ultimately, the project aims to establish a permanent, scalable public health model that seamlessly blends digital literacy with emotional self-care, transforming localized academic research into long-term institutionalized community policy.