‘Children of the App’, books on new digital-popular and social-addicted generations

by time news

Rome, 2 March (time.news)

Dedicated to all the victims of cyberbullying, sexting, revenge porn, cutting and those who have lost their lives to chase a challenge. But also to those who use new technologies to convey positive messages to the world and share knowledge. With this emblematic dedication, “Sons of the App”, a new essay by sociologist Francesco Pira, associate professor of sociology of cultural and communicative processes at the University of Messina, published by Franco Angeli, published by Franco Angeli, is released on 8 March. cover € 18).


Essayist and journalist Pira explains how we went from non-communication, to hyper-communication, to self-display and systematic manipulation, conscious or not, of reality, with profound impacts on the development dynamics of society as a whole.

The volume talks about the children of, who are not Martians, but boys full of hope and fragility. This generation shows us how the technological revolution is now complete. It is an integral part of their lives and children move between apps and the social dimension in a 24-hour daily flow of interactions, content production and creativity and, for the first time, e-learning has entered their lives. The book intends to analyze the transformations taking place, starting from the results of the research carried out in twenty-three years of study on the evolution of communication models of preteens and adolescents before and after the advent of new technologies and the digitization of society. A journey through generations that have evolved within increasingly technological environments, immersed in social universes, often alone and which today are adults who have just become parents, all united in the obvious dichotomy between connection and relationship.

The third chapter is entirely dedicated to the results of the online survey in seventeen questions “My way in the time of Covid” conducted in the period April – May 2020, with the involvement of 1,858 girls and boys of lower and upper secondary schools. Almost 100% (96.6%) of respondents say they own a smartphone and over 88.8% a computer. One of the most interesting aspects is the tendency of young people to isolate themselves from the family environment. Increasingly dependent on the peer group, 60% of the sample said they experienced a strong feeling of isolation, fear and discouragement. Among the most significant habits, out of 544 responses obtained, 69% said they had a fake social profile. The boys live on Instagram and Whatsapp and it is evident, once more, that in the liquid-modern era, deception has become central in the processes of understanding reality. The distinction between true and false is no longer perceived.

“Children of the app is the provocative title I chose, as a digital immigrant and adolescent, when Alan Sorrenti sang: We are children of the stars / We will never stop for nothing in the world / Forever children of the stars / Without history without age, heroes of a dream… I’m not sure that being children of apps is being heroes of a dream, unfortunately I agree with the thought of the great sociologist Zygmunt Bauman that technological consumerism risks transforming us into individuals without history and identity ”.

“This volume – writes in the preface Professor Giovanni Boccia Artieri, Professor of Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes at the University of Urbino and certainly one of the leading national and international experts in social dynamics – traces the various stages of evolution and domestication of technologies through the creation of a thematic and longitudinal system of research and approaches relating to the sociology of communication, showing the perplexities that we have to face from time to time, the solutions that have been proposed and the new questions that have arisen ”.

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