A Model of Digital Socialisation

Focusing on the portability revolution, this theoretical paper explores how smart devices and their associated visual and algorithm-driven social networks have become highly impactful socialisation agencies, especially for youth. Integrating secondary data with various mass communication theories, the study introduces an original set of conditional propositions to interpret the contemporary digital environment. The framework suggests that social networks’ influence expands as the educational efficacy of traditional socialisation agencies decline, and that they tend to develop a more global social knowledge but do not equally promote pluralism. As heirs to the visual culture inaugurated by television, these platforms exert pervasive structural pressures that risk constraining critical thinking and in-depth analysis under specific exposure conditions, despite their inherent democratic potential. Rather than asserting deterministic outcomes, the model specifies generative mechanisms and moderating factors, showing how platforms may saturate social knowledge with slogan-like, rapid, and uncritical information, regardless of the specific content being addressed; consequently, even the ethical dimension risks becoming increasingly tied to the trends they establish. Ultimately, the study presents the “follower” construct as a Weberian ideal-type and heuristic limit-case: a modern iteration of the mass-man, a tool to map potential risks of simplified, emotional, and polarizing mainstream communication.