Attending to others: how digital technologies direct young people's nightlife

Jasmine Truong

doi:10.5194/gh-73-193-2018

Abstract

Abstract. It is a growing phenomenon that young people use mobile information and communication technologies during their nightlife. This article offers an empirical examination of how young people's nightlife is shaped by engagement with the mobile phone application WhatsApp. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's phenomenological concept of orientation, I examine how WhatsApp extends young people's nightlife and how young people become orientated therein. On the one hand, I show that nightlife acquires new boundaries and fixities that encourage young people to direct their attention towards missing social relations and absent nightlife places. On the other hand, I find that young people create new perceptions of how to inhabit and spend leisure time and space. I argue that digital technologies reorientate young people, which I suggest offers novel means of addressing young people's contemporary nightlife practices, places, spaces, and social relations.

Highlights

In recent discussions of the “digital turn” in human geography (Ash et al, 2016), one issue of concern has been how digital technologies shape practices and social relations in everyday life
Alcohol research has recently advanced the idea that information and communication technologies (ICTs) may create harmful “intoxigenic digital spaces” for young people (Griffiths and Casswell, 2010:525)
A growing scholarship is concerned with the “intoxigenic digital spaces” (Griffiths and Casswell, 2010:525) produced through ICTs (Griffiths and Casswell, 2010; Brown and Gregg, 2012; Niland et al, 2014; Lyons et al, 2017); it draws on the “pathologizing of alcohol consumption” (Jayne et al, 2008:249) and predominant understandings of young people as vulnerable and in need of protection (Valentine, 1996; Aitken, 2001)

Summary

Introduction

In recent discussions of the “digital turn” in human geography (Ash et al, 2016), one issue of concern has been how digital technologies shape practices and social relations in everyday life. One headline claims that “social media prevents young people from drinking” while another asserts the opposite: “Facebook increases the desire to drink”3 In both perspectives, it is assumed that ICTs have an affect on young people’s drinking, though in different ways. In order to tease out this intertwining, I draw on Ahmed’s (2006) idea of orientation It allows critical engagement with how young people follow new practices and orientations through their attention towards WhatsApp chats. These extended nightlife spaces enable young people to link to single friends and friendship groups, send text messages, and share images, videos, audio messages, and user locations while out at night. Before delving into empirical findings gathered from in-depth interviews with 20 young people, I detail the methodological process of this article, which has evolved from a larger research project in Switzerland on young people’s going out and drinking practices

Becoming orientated

Methodology

Orientating towards participation and inclusion

Moments of disorientation

Findings

Conclusion