Youth in the Digital Age: Technology, Social Change and the Future of Global Society

Digital technologies have integrated into young people’s lives all over the world, transforming the way they develop identity and relationships, how they express politics and how they practice social change. This article combines the latest social science and communication research to explore how digital technologies impact the social lives of youth and, by extension, the social lives of the global community. The analysis begins by paying attention to a body of scholarship conceptualized through the lens of six analytical strands: identity and social relationships, civic and political participation, activism and protest, digital inequality, education and digital literacy, and psychological well-being, and how these scholars have understood the transformations. The review demonstrates how digital media have given birth to new forms of networked public space where youth identity work and accumulation of social capital take place and also how digital media allow for new forms of participatory politics and youth-led mobilization, such as Fridays for Future. Meanwhile, evidence exists of the non-simplistic technological determinism. Digital inequalities are not only issues of access, but are also about degrees of skill, confidence and opportunity, and social disadvantage is often replicated online. Similarly, when it comes to large-scale and meta-analytic well-being studies, the association between technology use and mental health outcomes in the adolescent population is weak and complex, and mechanisms are more important than simply the amount of time spent. The article concludes that the social consequences of digital technology for youth will not so much be about the technologies per se, as about digital capital, the design of platforms and the power of education and policy interventions. It concludes by highlighting the gaps in the literature and directions for future research.