Digital Youth: How Social Media are Archiving, Engaging and Capturing the Lives of Young People

Abstract

<p>This dissertation, entitled “Digital Youth: How Social Media are Archiving, Engaging and Capturing the Lives of Young People,” examines how children and youth experience networked sociality in a historic moment that places growing economic value on the content users generate online. By conceptualizing the digital archive, I have laid out a comprehensive framework that accounts for the following issues: i) economic concerns, foregrounded in how user-generated content has become an integral source of surplus value for the networked economy; ii) privacy concerns, which relate to the privacy agreements to which young people must consent when they join social networks, to questions around the rearticulation of private and public spheres online, and finally to the growing importance placed on the computational power of algorithms required to process big data; iii) the extended and intensified sociality engendered by networked affective spaces which produce new ways for young people to engage with their peers and produce subjectivities; and, iv) the political possibilities circulating both discursively and as acts of civic engagement. In addition, given that more ubiquitous access does not necessarily equip young users to understand the myriad challenges accompanying a profoundly networked and mediated existence, I argue that more pedagogical techniques and practices are required. This dissertation concludes by outlining why educators need to integrate data literacy as opposed to media literacy in the classroom. By foregrounding the prevalent role that social networks play and will continue to play in the lives of young people I argue that educators and parents have a responsibility to not only help children and youth appreciate how their immaterial labour is being cultivated, but equally to provide them with valuable skills that will not only facilitate new forms of sociality but civic engagement.</p>