Digital Young

Who are they? What are they doing in Romania? How do they identify themselves with the space where they belong? Where and when do they socialize? What are the specific social dynamics?

Again, integrating young people in urban space, specially in Bucharest, I want to see how they define themselves, what are their visions, their expectations and their way of expressing themselves through music, fashion, TIC. Posts that are here integrated will describe every reality of their lives, like high school universe, family and home, socializing spaces, what do they read, what do they watch at TV etc. I will therefore talk about their cultural practices, as youngsters in Bucharest have certain specificities. I don’t want to talk about subjects that sociology has made “famous” when talking about young people (ex: spare time, citizenship, involvement, school etc), but to bring something new, as looking deep in youth culture and spotting those facts that anthropologists call practices.

As I am strongly interested on the ways that we all interact with communication & information technologies (so called TIC), this category will put some different perspectives on how do young people use them. I will start with values that are integrated in these technologies: communication, mobility, motility, interactivity and treat them inside of technologies like cell phone, computer, technological networks, like Mirc, Chat, Instant Messenger, and other social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc). These values will be put together with other dimension like alternative education. How and what do young people learn by using these technologies? How does this learning affect their relationship with parents, relatives and peers?

These are the three forms of association in teens’ and youngsters’ case that we will develop in this category in our following posts.

Subculture [Hebdige]: “community” of young people generated by the music (punk, teds, mods, rock, disco).

Social networks [McRobbie]: today’s young people, specially those that are working in creative segments, practice a network socialization with a powerful and continuous impact (ex: clubbers, bloggers, users of technological networks).

Communities of practices [Lave, Wenger]: associations who share the same practices and the same goals. Practices are used in order to achieve the same goal(s).