ABSTRACT
Born into a digital world, young people today are considered significant actors at the forefront of an increasingly complex social, economic and political world. Traditional transitions (for example, from study to work or unemployment, or from dependence on family to independent living or economic independence) and the strategies young people use to navigate these are distinct from previous generations (Furlong and Cartmel 2007). Wyn and Woodman (2006) argue that a ‘social generation’ approach to the study of youth compels us to explore both how young people negotiate new social contexts and structures and how they make meaning through this process. One significant difference between the experience of people born after 1980 and their parents (and grandparents) is the role of new media and information communication technologies (ICT) in everyday life. Education, work and interpersonal relationships are increasingly mediated by ICT and in most parts of the developed world it is hard to imagine a youth without mobile phones or the internet. What do we mean by new media and ICT? In the Handbook of New Media, Lievrouw
and Livingstone (2006) propose that new media is made possible through ICT that can best be understood as ‘infrastructures’:
Infrastructures with three key components: artefacts or devices used to communicate or convey information; the activities or practices in which people engage to communicate or share information; and the social arrangements or organizational forms that develop around those devices and practice.
