Digital Young

Each month, at Radio Romania Cultural, I have a small contribution at Science in the right words show. I talk about the relationship between young people and the new information and communication technologies. I thought to start with some general things about that, why do young people use these technologies and a first effect of this use, already frequent, large and diverse. Therefore, one main observation was that young people start to use the ICTs from utilitarian and functional reasons, to make time more efficient, after which they get to another level, the use of ICTs from a need of autonomy and independence towards their parents in order to achieve a function strictly of socialization with peers. What determines them to continue? It’s something that also makes them specialize in using the ICTs, and that is the role played by play need. Almost in the case of all ICTs, we could outline a practice of playing, the object is even reappropriated if it doesn’t have this function primarily in its usage.

Now, an effect that I and other specialists observed when talking about the relationship between parents and teens which could be the retro-socialization, meaning that parents start to learn from their children how to use a certain technological object. This phenomenon we could see it in the case of a lot of parents and children; for example, I had a colleague who was around 45 years old. He was strongly against the idea of having a cell phone, thinking about his independence etc. His ideology of anti-appropriation had coherence and meaning. After three months, he bought himself a cell phone. He was always saying that it is just for emergency cases. After around four months, we I saw him again, he was already texting messages. The person who taught him how to use the mobile phone was his niece, 20 years old.

Parents do learn from their children how to function in this new cultural context. They cannot stay aside, because they need these informations and these technologies in various environments.