Offline, online. Digitale ungdomsliv gjennom tre tiår

Abstract

Being a teenager in 2021 is different from being a teenager thirty years ago. Although many of the basic questions related to identity and social belonging are the same, the framework around young people’s everyday life – especially in the digital arena – may have changed so much that our understanding of adolescence should be adjusted. In this chapter, we look closely at what new technology and media have meant for young people during the past three decades, especially in connection with changes in young people’s everyday lives, with an emphasis on how leisure habits and relationships with parents have changed. Relying on NOVA’s youth surveys from the 1990s onwards, we describe how access to technology and use of digital media, unstructured and structured leisure habits, norm breaking behaviour as well as family relations have changed. The aim is to provide an overall picture of Norwegian young people in these areas. We discuss whether technological changes have been a driving force for understanding changes in other areas of young people’s everyday life. This question is contrasted with other theories about how social change provides guidelines for young people’s transitions, such as theories of emerging adulthood, theories of democratization and intimacy of the family, and a view that independence in adolescence takes new forms when school and education play an increasingly important role in transitions toward adulthood.