Multitasking of existence: Technological mediation in the daily life of the new digital generation

This study uses a qualitative research perspective in order to explore how young adults of the net generation get involved with ICTs and what types of meaning they attribute to ICT use. Eighteen to twenty-two years old adults in Greece constitute the first generation that were born and raised in a digital environment. Our purpose is to explore how this generation express themselves and fulfil psychological needs while in cyberspace, in what ways and to what degree fulfilment is achieved, how authentic the expression of needs is, and to what type of emotional experience this whole process contributes. Are young adults able to distinguish the psychological signification of their ICTs use? We investigated these questions by asking participants to keep a diary for a period of five days about their patterns of ICTs use, the emotional needs covered by this use, the satisfaction they receive from it, and their multitasking practices, and then to reflect and report on their personal findings. Thematic analysis of the findings and self-reports indicates that young adults do not seem to receive the psychological gratification they seek while using ICTs; this lack of fulfilment contributes in turn to extended multitasking practices, even when it comes to selected leisure activities. Τhis mediated daily routine creates new forms of anxiety to young adults, who report feeling trapped in a permanently escaping reality that requires constant presence and participation. 1. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Contact: Anthi Sidiropoulou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Dept. of Communication and Media Studies. Sofokleous 1, Athens 10559, Greece. E-mail: asidirop@media.uoa.gr Multitasking of existence: Technological mediation in the daily life of the new digital generation ◆ 21 charging and connectivity to the internet. The use of smart phones accomplishes a transition from “bedroom culture” (Livingstone & Bovill, 1999; Livinstone, 2007), to the “endless symbiotic connectivity culture” that Suler (2015) describes. Up until a few years ago, we could make a more clear distinction -mostly for teaching and research purposesregarding what computers, the internet, mobile phones and digital applications could offer to the user. The capabilities provided by ICTs -their software and hardware requirements along with their network limitations (e.g. slower data transfer speed)ensured a form of use that was quite clear in its functionality, namely aiming towards information, communication or entertainment. At present, broadband connections, smart phones, and constant connectivity, as well as software and hardware upgrades concerning speed and volume of data transfer, allow simultaneous use of different technologies and applications, which in turn results in servicing different needs with devices smaller than 14 centimeters. Davou (2005) and Davou & Sidiropoulou (2017) offer an operational distinction about how ICTs are involved in the life of individuals. ICTs are new communicating “tools” at the disposal of modern individuals, and in this sense they may constitute extensions of the body in the classical McLuhan (1964) line of thought, expanding senses and mental processes, while, at the same time, necrotizing the physiological organ they replace. ICTs also have “contents”, i.e. new images, ideas, styles of life etc., globally produced and circulated. As tools, ICTs expand human experience and multiply relating capabilities, i.e. in psychological terms, they have an impact on how people perceive and experience self, others and relationships. With their “contents”, ICTs have an impact on the way people understand and interpret the world, i.e. on the representations formed and the thought processes linked to these representations. These ‘operating modes’ can be silent, as all ICTs are so integrated in peoples’ lives that they are being taken for granted as they “help us lead our lives without making their presence loudly declared” (Davou, 2005, p. 43-44). At the same time the presence of ICTs is loud, since “more and more information, consumption, movement and activity are being pushed into the time available to the individual, which is relatively constant (although there exist lunatics who earnestly try to ‘sleep more efficiently’)” (Eriksen, 2001, p. 101). Cyberspace as a psychological space is defined through representation, interpretation and social interaction (Suler, 1999). In other words, cyberspace transcends the instrumental functionality of computers and is transformed into a space of presence, representation, experimentation and communication as well as absence, abstention, fixation and isolation. In that sense, cyberspace constitutes another field of socialisation and experience, a space where expressing needs and deriving gratification is possible, while it co-exists with family and with social contexts such as the workplace or the school. The manner in which the individual places her/himself inside cyberspace forms an experience that results from already established psychological resources, the sense of self, as well as unsatisfied yet imperative needs related to different life stages. From bedroom safety to mobile safety The gradual silent impact of new technologies on new generations, as we move from television to the cyberspace, is reflected in a study, mentioned by Eriksen (2001). Carried out in the early 1990s among Californian students, this study concluded that the time the students could stay focused in a lecture was, on average, seven minutes, a timeframe that corresponds to the rate of television commercials. This reference to the influence of television on how cognitive processes such as 22 ◆ Anthi Sidiropoulou attention are used is indicative of an impact of media that began long before the influence of interactive technological applications. Television, as the dominant medium of information and entertainment, is easily blamed for keeping children busy indoors. But a study by Clement (2004, as cited in Gray, 2011) indeed showed that many mothers admitted that they preferred to keep their children at home and watching TV for safety reasons. According to Gray (2011), media coverage plays an important role in sustaining a phobia of the outside world. In addition to the “dangerous outside world”, the increase of time spent at school and the subsequent decrease of traditional free-play time intensified the habit of watching television and enhanced its impact on shaping habits and needs (Gray, 2011). Inside the home, television sets provided potentially innumerable “intimate others” (Thompson, 1995) who intruded in face-to-face family interactions. As if family members had become more and more indifferent in or incapable of communicating with one another; and as if individuals had never mastered or had lost the developmentally essential capacity to be alone, i.e. the capacity for the experience of being alone and turned inwards, while some reliable other is quietly present (Winnicott, 1958/1990). Television not only synchronised large portions of the population to common lifestyles (Eriksen, 2001), but also constituted a symbol of free time and protected space within the household; it managed to blur the “distinctions between here and there, between face to face and mediated, and between the private and the public” (Davou 2005, p. 96). Studying teenagers and their relationship with the media a few years ago, Davou & Sidiropoulou (2013) had found that teenagers were setting television aside, as its use constituted a habit that connected them to their parents, whom they wanted to emotionally distance themselves from, as part of their developmental process. Even if a TV set had remained inside the bedroom, viewing habits had changed during adolescence and were geared more toward the internet and its capabilities, such as downloading TV series and live streaming. By the time adolescence arrives, mobile phones are transmuted into symbols of freedom and independence. Parents provide teenagers with mobile phones in order to ensure their protection within the need for growing independence that coincide with their current stage of development (Turkle, 2011). The phone must be turned on at all times and teenagers must always be available to their parents, when they are away. This way, teenagers (as well as their parents) feel secure, but also at a comfortable distance from them. Naturally, all these exchanges are intensified by a non-safe external representation of the modern world. Mobile phones are now mediating between feelings of loneliness, insecurity and boredom and deprive individuals of the opportunity to experience these feelings in a constructive way that would strengthen and enrich the sense of self (Storr, 1988; Phillips, 1993). Based upon this techno-social culture and the violent representation of external reality, ICTs found the appropriate ground to grow. The cyberspace was quickly integrated to an already existing “bedroom culture”, i.e. what Livingstone (2007) and Livingstone & Bovill (1999) had initially attributed to television, and defined as a set of conventional meanings and practices closely associated with identity, privacy and the self that have become linked to the domestic space of the child’s bedroom. With the establishment of smart phones, it became possible for cyberspace to be available everywhere and for everyone. Teenagers, who had associated their freedom with the provision of mobile phones, have now come of age, and while the outside world fears still hold both for them and for their parents, cyberspace accompanies young adults on every experience of interacting with that “dangerous” world. Multitasking of existence: Technological mediation in the daily life of the new digital generation ◆ 23 Connectivity and disruption The endless symbiotic connectivity (Suler, 2015) through smart phones creates new capabilities but also new forms of anxiety. The experience of a reali