Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Chapter
Playing in a Virtual Bedroom: youth leisure in the Facebook generation. / Downs, Carolyn.
Children, youth and lesiure. ed. / Ruth Jeanes; Jonathan Magee. Leisure Studies Association, 2011. p. 15-31 (LSA Publication; No. 113).Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Chapter
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TY - CHAP
T1 - Playing in a Virtual Bedroom: youth leisure in the Facebook generation
AU - Downs, Carolyn
PY - 2011/7
Y1 - 2011/7
N2 - Young people like to socialise with their friends and this is an important part of growing up (Putnam, 1995; Smith, 1999). In the last decade the ways in which young people socialise have been assisted by new technologies. Mobile phones and SMS use are almost universal amongst young people (Davie et al, 2004; Ofcom, 2008) while access to the Internet either via the web-and-walk technology of 3G mobile phones or in the home and school allows young people to maintain high levels of contact with friends using instant messaging (IM) and Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace; virtual leisure spaces where activities and socailising take place in an environment largely free from adult oversight. This paper will take the idea of physical personal space in which identity can be explored, leisure activities undertaken and a friendship network maintained and apply it to the new virtual worlds inhabited and personalized as ‘virtual bedrooms’ (Lincoln and Hodkinson, 2008). These worlds offer unlimited opportunities to access content (games, role play, video etc) that is unmediated by adults in an environment where risk-consciousness may be reduced. The realist position on the risk-taking behaviour of young people; that risk-taking can be seen as part of a rational calculation by young people, may not be appropriate for the range of virtual risks now accessible to young people as part of their leisure. This paper seeks to incorporate theories of liminality and edgework as part of the leisure experience alongside dimensions of risk comprehension more generally used to underpin research and theorizing on risky health behaviours. As France (2007) noted; ‘youth research has taken less interest in risk-taking as a cultural phenomenon’ (France, 2007, 146). Exploring this privatized virtual world where young people ‘type themselves into being’ (Sunden, 2003) and create managed and sometimes multiple personas as they self-socialize (Arnett, 1995) in unexpected ways offers new information on the continuing evolution of youth leisure, content-generated risk and youth sub-cultures in the twenty-first century.
AB - Young people like to socialise with their friends and this is an important part of growing up (Putnam, 1995; Smith, 1999). In the last decade the ways in which young people socialise have been assisted by new technologies. Mobile phones and SMS use are almost universal amongst young people (Davie et al, 2004; Ofcom, 2008) while access to the Internet either via the web-and-walk technology of 3G mobile phones or in the home and school allows young people to maintain high levels of contact with friends using instant messaging (IM) and Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace; virtual leisure spaces where activities and socailising take place in an environment largely free from adult oversight. This paper will take the idea of physical personal space in which identity can be explored, leisure activities undertaken and a friendship network maintained and apply it to the new virtual worlds inhabited and personalized as ‘virtual bedrooms’ (Lincoln and Hodkinson, 2008). These worlds offer unlimited opportunities to access content (games, role play, video etc) that is unmediated by adults in an environment where risk-consciousness may be reduced. The realist position on the risk-taking behaviour of young people; that risk-taking can be seen as part of a rational calculation by young people, may not be appropriate for the range of virtual risks now accessible to young people as part of their leisure. This paper seeks to incorporate theories of liminality and edgework as part of the leisure experience alongside dimensions of risk comprehension more generally used to underpin research and theorizing on risky health behaviours. As France (2007) noted; ‘youth research has taken less interest in risk-taking as a cultural phenomenon’ (France, 2007, 146). Exploring this privatized virtual world where young people ‘type themselves into being’ (Sunden, 2003) and create managed and sometimes multiple personas as they self-socialize (Arnett, 1995) in unexpected ways offers new information on the continuing evolution of youth leisure, content-generated risk and youth sub-cultures in the twenty-first century.
M3 - Chapter
SN - 9781905369249
T3 - LSA Publication
SP - 15
EP - 31
BT - Children, youth and lesiure
A2 - Jeanes, Ruth
A2 - Magee, Jonathan
PB - Leisure Studies Association
ER -