"Now, you put it to sleep." "I do what...?!" The empowering effect of information and communication technologies in teenagers' everyday lives
Abstract
Digital natives, tech-savvy or net generation: these are popular expressions used both in academic and lay discourse to signify the generation of young people born into societies with high internet penetration. This labelling is a result of wild innovations of information communication technologies (ICT) shaping the social processes in the last two decades.
But what is behind this one-sided technologically determined image of youngsters? In my paper, I will present several findings of my PhD research project "The role of ICT in the communication practices of the social group of teenagers". The objective of my research is to map the interaction of teenagers with new ICT (mobile phone and internet, application included) in the context of group communication.
I approach this topic from the social shaping and domestication of technology perspective. I covered my research project with semi-ethnographically applied qualitative and partly quantitative methodology.
The project has a nature of two case studies having quasi-longitudinal character - the data have been collected two and a half consecutive years. The sample is constituted by two natural Czech social groups of 15-19 years old students.
Social media, applications and web sites, mobile phones and even more smartphones have been empowering teenagers: they have been weakening the structuring effect of the microsystem they live in such as school, peer group or home. However, ICT did not bring some new structures or types of teenagers' behaviour.
The core practices stay the same, so does the principle of the structuring effect of these microsystem.