Keywords
higher education
identity purpose
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Abstract
This article examines an increasingly visible paradox: in highly connected digital societies, recent literature reports higher levels of loneliness, disorientation, and subjective distress among young people. The study brings together current contributions on youth well-being and the Emotional Impact Theory for Action (EITA) to clarify the construct of structural loneliness and outline an action-oriented educational framework. The methodological approach was based on theoretical-operational modeling, comparative conceptual analysis, and the translation of categories into observable dimensions. From this perspective, the problem is not treated as an isolated individual difficulty, but as a misalignment among the sociotechnical environment, emotional needs, and educational design. The resulting model links intentional community, structured purpose, and stabilizing routines with nonlinear learning, transdisciplinary integration, the centrality of emotion, and the regulated use of intelligent technologies as cognitive extensions. The article also proposes an intervention matrix that connects protective conditions with pedagogical mechanisms shared emotion, identity narrative, and adaptive feedback and introduces the ESV-PEAL scale, a 24-item instrument organized into four dimensions: structural loneliness, identity purpose, emotional impact of learning, and technological regulation. The article concludes that educational innovation requires redesigning the learning ecosystem around belonging, meaning, and self-regulation; for this reason, a territorial pilot in Breña is proposed for subsequent psychometric validation and structural testing.
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