Young people imagining media(ted) futures: developing a methodology for change

The starting point of the research is in the phenomenon we call ‘digital saturation’: the way people draw and renegotiate boundaries to their attachment to and use of smart devices and network connections. Today, these activities are discussed in both academic research (e.g. Morrison & Gomez, 2014; Ylipulli, 2015; Han, 2018; Saariketo, 2019) and in the popular press (Hayes, 2018). We argue that this phenomenon is illustrated for example in how the media and self-help literature share tips on digital disconnection, associations launching events such as National Day of Unplugging, as well as businesses developing around digital disconnection such as digital detox retreats. At the same time, people themselves describe that media and technology cause them stress, make managing time difficult, hamper the possibilities to concentrate, create feelings of being hooked, and increase conflicts in social relationships  (Saariketo, 2019). The dependency on networks and devices is experienced both as taken-for-granted and ‘infrastructural’ (e.g. Paasonen, 2015; Saariketo, 2020) as well as dystopic and agonising (e.g. Ylipulli 2015).

In this project, digital saturation is explored from the point of view of young people – an age group that has not been closely studied yet. Theoretically, we are interested in the possibility of disconnection in a thoroughly networked country like Finland. Our project is motivated by previous research that shows a deeply resigned sense of agency shared by many people in relation to networked technology (Saariketo, 2020). In circumstances where the relation to Google compares to that of a prisoner to the guard, as one of the participants in Saariketo’s (2020) research said, the question is whether disconnecting and finding alternative ways to connect are even possible.

Media-alan tutkimussäätiö

Tampere University, Aalto University