The loss of importance of work as people's raison d'être in post-industrial society and the commercialisation of social life as consumption of life styles in Western society, leads us to take a look at consumption habits and their role in configuring identities in society. Taking as its starting point an ethnographic study carried out in the first three months of 2003 in four districts of the city of Barcelona in places where there is public access to the Internet, our work looks at the possibilities of cultural production associated with the practices of consumption of ICT among adolescents in leisure spaces. The results of the first phase of the study strongly suggest a role played by adults, parents and educators in stigmatising the young as a population at risk or dangerous. Particularly noteworthy is the role of new technology in the processes of interaction and relationships that arise and which contradict the image of the isolated, addicted adolescent often portrayed in the literature and the media; rather, we find adolescents practising new ways of constructing a digital culture: relating to each other through ICT.
|
|
