Youth Culture in a Digital World (YCDW)
A combination of lecture notes and lecture slides.
Table of contents
Lecture 1: Introduction - Loïs Schenk 1
Lecture 2: Media theories applied to youth - Ymke de Bruijn 3
Lecture 3: Using media literacy to fight disinformation: a mission impossible? -
Eugène Loos and Leon Horbach 8
Lecture 4: Online celebrity culture - Gaëlle Ouvrein 10
Lecture 5: Gaming - Dr. Margot Peeters 13
Lecture 6: Parenting and social media - Ina Koning 15
Lecture 7: Social media use and adolescent well-being - Regina van den Eijnden 17
Lecture 8: Smartphone policy - Florine van Berne 20
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Lecture 1: Introduction - Loïs Schenk
Definitions
Culture = a group’s distinctive way of life, including its beliefs and values, its customs, and its
art and technologies.
● Geographical culture: a culture based on a country, region, or place.
● Social culture: a culture based on interests
● Temporal culture: a culture based on age and time.
- Youth culture = shared beliefs, behaviours, practices, and values of young people
within a particular society or subculture. The ways in which young individuals express
themselves, interact with one another and distinguish themselves from older
generations. Youth culture is dynamic and can vary significantly across time and
place, reflecting the cultural, social, and historical context in which it emerges.
● Fashion and style
● Music
● Language
● Social activities
● Values and ideals
● Media and technology
○ Why this part? Because it’s a huge part of the youth culture and it
contains all of the other youth culture aspects, listed above.
○ Social media = sharing, following, and collaborating (Granic et al.,
2020)
■ E.g. tiktok, instagram, snapchat.
■ I.e. you can interact with it, instead of only consuming it.
Disrupting or enriching traditional communication?
‘Digital media has disrupted/enriched traditional communication’
- Social presence theory: The ‘sense of being together’ is lower in digital media. So
social media disrupts this sense.
● In social media, you’ll have the least sense of someone really being there.
And that is our richest form of communication.
- Social information processing theory: communicators’ interpersonal needs prompt
them to try their best.
● How you interpret social cues (verbal and non-verbal).
● This is difficult with social media because these social cues are not there, and
this partially impairs communication.
● Social media is not just disrupting or enriching our lives, it depends on the
receiver and how they process information.
- Channel expansion theory: users with experience will strive to develop the necessary
skills.
● E.g. emojis have a huge meaning, which enriches our communication.
How is social media used?
★ Replacement vs. addition
○ Does it replace other communication or does it add to your daily
communication?
★ Passively vs. actively
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- Uses and gratification theory(UGT) approach to understanding why and how people
actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs.
● Lasswell (1948)
○ Surveillance of the environment
○ Affective need
○ Transmission of social heritage
● Self-promotion, maintaining existing relationships, need for creativity, escapism, and
expressing opinions (Sheldon et al., 2017)
○ It’s not a ‘one size fits all’. Instagram doesn't have the same purpose as
Twitter/X.
Approaches in youth development
- Youth development
● Developmental tasks approach: developmental tasks/challenges need to be
fulfilled.
○ Basic idea; hierarchical list of tasks, met through
○ Applications; e.g. Eriksons’ developmental theory, Havighurst
developmental theory.
■ E.g. scary media content and trauma.
● Perceptual stage (2-7); looking scary
● Conceptual stage (7+); being real.
■ E.g. adolescents and celebrities.
● Parents are examples (<12)
● Influencers are examples (12+)
● Risk and resilience approach: differential life experiences among children.
○ Basic idea; risk and protective factors explain differences between
children → cumulative risk model.
○ Applications; snowball effect, turn around models.
■ E.g. risk factors: growing up in a bad neighbourhood.
■ E.g. protective factors: having supportive parents.
The ecological model - Bronnfenbrenner(2005)