Abstract

This ethnographic study investigates the role and meaning of digital culture in the everyday lives of a group of middle-class, urban, young people in Montreal. In this work, I examine how a range of new media and technology are influencing their communication and sociality. Additionally, I consider young people’s changing experience of on and offline spaces, and the ways they have reconstructed notions of public and private identities.
The research reflects an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on ideas from the fields of Sociology, Communications and Education to examine young people’s engagement with digital culture. The study considers how geography, socio-economic class, language, culture and a pervasive anxiety about risk situates and contextualizes their particular experience of technology.

While this project reflects on theoretical discussions surrounding young people’s use of technology, it means to highlight their voices. Here, participants share rich accounts of their daily use of technology in school, at home, and on city streets, providing a complex and nuanced interpretation of their own experiences. Their narratives provoke critical questions, such as: How do technologies alter existing social norms? How do young people make important decisions about privacy issues online? How do their digital interactions affect interpersonal relationships in on and offline spaces?
Both the stories and the inquiry that emerge from this work contribute a better understanding of what it means for contemporary youth to come of age in an increasingly digital world.