2023-08-31

Childhood, adolescence, and technology - exploring the culture of/for Generation Z and Generation Alpha

In our upcoming issue, we would like to address the topic of the relationship between childhood (as well as adolescence) and new technologies in the context of culture of/for young recipients, concerning both the actual status quo and the cultural reconstructions of these relationships (movies, series, video games, music, visual arts, literature, fan fiction, etc.). Describing the so-called Generation Z, Agnieszka Całek argued that these are people born “already in times of widespread access to computers, the Internet, and mobile technologies. [This] generation is the first one that did not need to mechanically learn to use these advancements, but grew up and socialized in the environment of mobile phones, constant access to the network, and social media” (2021, p. 105). Representatives of Generation Z can therefore be described as “digital natives 2.0” (Kosacka, 2020, p. 51). Usually, by preschool age, they already have their first experience with modern technology (Kowaluk-Romanek, 2019, p. 194). The editor of the monograph Dziecko – media – rozwój. O konsekwencjach obecności mediów w życiu dziecka [Child ­– Media – Development: The Consequences of the Presence of the Media in a Child’s Life] even indicates the fact that “we usually register a child’s first contact with media in fetal life” (Bednarska, 2020, p. 9).

People born in the 21st century spend much time online, which is their ‘natural’ environment, and they not only consume but, above all, create Internet content. As a result, they react in a more engaged and mediated way to the problems that bother them. These issues encompass personal, social, cultural, and political aspects, including mental health, gender and psychosexual identity equality, ethnicity, disability, the crisis of democracy, and the climate crisis (Stunża, 2017; Team Facebook, n.d.).   At the same time, there are discussions about the impact of new technologies on the development of children and youth. This influence, however, remains relatively unexplored in the context of culture: its reception, creation, transformation, revolutionization, redefinition, etc.

The culture of Generation Z has been described as networked and participatory (although these terms have already been used by, among others, Henry Jenkins in the 1990s and at the beginning of the 21st century). Young people are no longer only its recipients but also its co-creators. Although this culture is sometimes accused of being a “factor that unifies and homogenizes its recipients” (Wysocka, 2019, p. 20), it offers unlimited possibilities for participation and expression. Children, teenagers, and young adults engage with it (including reading and creating literary works) through the screens of phones, tablets, and laptops. At the same time, cultural texts showing depicting 21st-century childhood and adolescence ­– especially those aimed at Generation Z and the youngest members of the so-called Generation Alpha, born after 2010 ­– portray the lives of young protagonists in a technical, digital world. This applies to content created for mature audiences as well as the Z and Alpha generations. The dialogue between reality and cultural texts, which both reflect and influence it, is evident, e.g., in extreme approaches to modern technologies and their cultural images: on the one hand, uncritically enthusiastic, on the other ­– based on fears and reluctance, occasionally tinged with technophobia (narratives about young people “dominated by information and communication technology” and “consequences of being marked by digital childhood” – Leksy, 2018).

In recent years, these issues in Poland have been examined ­– primarily from pedagogical and media studies perspectives ­– by, among others, Hussein Bougsiaa, Małgorzata Cackowska, Lucyna Kopciewicz, and Tomasz Nowicki in the publication Smartfon i tablet w dziecięcych rękach. Być dzieckiem, nastolatkiem i rodzicem w kulturze mobilnej [Smartphone and Tablet in Children's Hands: Being a Child, a Teenager, and a Parent in Mobile Culture] (2016), Karol Kowalczuk in the study Edukacja w pikselach. Gry komputerowe w procesie kształcenia [Education in Pixels: Computer Games in the Educational Process] (2017), Kopciewicz and Bougsiaa in the book Tablety i smartfony w szkole. Uczenie się wspomagane technologiami mobilnymi [Tablets and Smartphones at School: Learning Supported by Mobile Technologies] (2020), Bożena Kaczmarczyk-Gwóźdź in the monograph Wśród lalek, misiów i smartfonów. Od zabawek tradycyjnych do gadżetów kultury popularnej [Among Dolls, Teddy Bears, and Smartphones: From Traditional Toys to Gadgets of Popular Culture] (2021), authors of texts collected in the volume Sztuka dziecięca i młodzieżowa a nowe media [Art of Children and Youth and New Media] edited by Maciej Wróblewski, Elżbieta Kruszyńska, and Aleksandra Szwagrzyk (2015), four volumes of the series Cyfrowy tubylec w szkole – diagnozy i otwarcia [Digital Native at school ­– Diagnoses and Openings] edited by Marzenna Nowicka and Joanna Dziekońska (2018–2022) or the collection Dziecko – media – rozwój. O konsekwencjach obecności mediów w życiu dziecka [Child – Media – Development: About the Consequences of the Presence of the Media in the Life of a Child] edited by Natalia Bednarska (2020). Abroad, the topic of the relationship between modern technologies and childhood and adolescence has been addressed, for example, by Emma Bond in the publication Childhood, Mobile Technologies and Everyday Experiences: Changing Technologies = Changing Childhoods? (2014), Gülşah Sari in Handbook of Research on Children's Consumption of Digital Media (2018), Kate Eichhorn in The End of Forgetting: Growing Up with Social Media (2019), and researchers whose studies have been published in collective volumes: Digitising Early Childhood edited by Donell Holloway, Kylie Stevenson and Lelia Green (2018), International Perspectives on Digital Media and Early Literacy: The Impact of Digital Devices on Learning, Language Acquisition and Social Interaction edited by Claudia Müller-Brauers and Katharina J Rohlfing (2020), Social Media, Technology, and New Generations: Digital Millennial Generation and Generation Z edited by Ahmet Atay and Mary Z. Ashlock (2022). In these discussions, educational and media studies contexts have prominently shaped the discourse, while understandably, there are still limited studies on Generation Alpha.

We invite you to submit articles exploring, for example, the following problem areas:

• the impact of modern technologies on childhood and adolescence, within the context of young people’s participation in culture;
• the impact of a technicized reality on the forms and content of culture of/for young people;
• the culture-shaping potential of technology, both as a theme in cultural texts and as a practice of Generation Z and Generation Alpha (digital culture created by young people);
• cultural images of childhood and adolescence in a high-tech world;
• cultural reconstructions of the identities of ‘digital natives’;
• touch screens as a “pre-alphabet” of culture ­– children’s pre-linguistic method of engaging with culture;
• the potential or actual impact of modern technologies on the deconstruction/blurring of the division between childhood, adolescence, and adulthood;
• social and cultural narratives concerning the opportunities and threats posed by digital culture; “the courage to search, uninhibited, unconventional, and innovative expression” (Bougsiaa, Kopciewicz, 2016, p. 144) vs. insufficient “critical awareness related to the reception and production of content” (ibid., p. 147);
• modern communication channels concerning culture: Bookstagram, BookTok, Wattpad, and others;
• the discourse on the triviality and low value of Generation Z’s digital culture and attempts to question it (false dichotomy: adult verbal culture as high vs. child/adolescent visual culture as low);
• (post)pandemic reality ­– new technologies in the museum, theater, gallery, ...;
• the commercialization of technological achievements in the culture of/for young people (mobile applications accompanying various cultural texts/products).

 

We also invite you to submit texts unrelated to the issue’s subject matter to our Varia and Review Articles sections.

Articles submission deadline: 02.01.2024.

 

References

Bednarska, E. (ed.). (2020). Dziecko – media – rozwój. O konsekwencjach obecności mediów w życiu dziecka. Wydawnictwo APS.

Bougsiaa, H., Kopciewicz, L. (2016). Dzieci w kulturze mobilnej. Partycypacja, uczenie się i emancypacja pokolenia „cyfrowych tubylców”. Teraźniejszość – Człowiek – Edukacja, 19.1(73), 139-154.

Całek, A. (2021). Pokolenie Z – próba diagnozy. Zeszyty Prasoznawcze, 64(1), 105–108.

Kosacka, K. (2020). The narratives about contentment in two generations of digital natives. Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Sklodowska. Sectio J Paedagogia-Pyschologia, 33(3), 49–66.

Leksy, K. (2018). Zdominowani przez technologię informatyczno-komunikacyjną – o konsekwencjach naznaczenia cyfrowym dzieciństwem. Chowanna, 51(2), 119-139.

Wysocka, E. (2019). Młode pokolenie w kulturze imagologicznej. Wyzwania i zagrożenia rozwojowe. Dydaktyka Informatyki, 14, 11-29. https://doi.org.10.15584/di.2019.14.2.