Young People and their Significant Adults in Italy. The Constitution of Youth Generations through the Use of the Internet

• Author: Iorio, G.
• Position: Professor of Sociology at University of Salerno
• Pages: 151-166

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov

Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 6 (55) No. 2 - 2013

YOUNG PEOPLE AND THEIR

SIGNIFICANT ADULTS IN ITALY.

THE CONSTITUTION OF YOUTH

GENERATIONS THROUGH

THE USE OF THE INTERNET

Gennaro IORIO1

Abstract: This paper presents the results of research carried out in

Italian schools in relation to the world of adults and young people. It

principally focuses on generational relationships through the use of new

digital technologies. The research design, the analytical techniques used

as well as the models constructed will be described from the perspective

of the general relevance of technology for society, discussed on the basis

of the theoretical writings of Mead, Mannheim and Castells. Secondary

data will be used to describe the Internet population with reference to the

variables of not only sex, age, education and geographical area but also

generational. Subsequently, the quantitative and qualitative results of the

effects of the Internet on generational relationships will be presented. In

detail, how young people and adults use the Web within the relationships

between parents-children and teachers-students. Finally, the results of

the multi-dimensional analysis are summarized. In this perspective, by

using the Mannheim concept of generation, it is possible to state that

digital technology has instituted the current generation of young people,

on the basis of the process that occurs when there are cultural

experiences that characterize a cohort in relation to the previous one.

Key words: Internet, generation, socialization, technology.

1 Professor of Sociology at University of Salerno.

1. Theoretical references: the

construction of generation

Margaret Mead in her essay Generations

in Conflict: A Study of the Generation Gap

(Mead, 1970), claims that there are three

types of culture in the evolution of human

society: a ‘post-figurative’ culture

characterized by children who learn from

their seniors; a ‘co-figurative’ culture in

which children and adults learn from their

peers, and a ‘pre-figurative’ culture, our

contemporary one, in which the

relationship of socialization is inverted

and, for the most part, adults learn from

their children. For the American

anthropologist, the crisis of our

contemporary society is a cultural issue

that manifests itself in the detachment and

isolation in which generations live, also

caused by the electronic revolution: ‘[we

have] entered into a present in which no

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov • Series VII • Vol. 6 (55) No. 2 - 2013

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one was prepared for from an

understanding of the past, from an

interpretation of the experience that was

drawing closer or by a forecast of the

future. All of us who grew up before the

Second World War are pioneers,

immigrants in time from their own familiar

worlds that they left behind to live in a

new era in which conditions are quite

different from those they previously

experienced. Intellectually, we are still

connected to the past, to that world that

existed during our childhood and

adolescence. Born and having grown up

before the electronic revolution, many

among us still do not understand what it

represents… The younger generations…

are similar to the first generation born in a

new host country. They are at home in this

era. Artificial satellites are the norm in

their skies… those that use electronic

calculators do not anthropomorphise them,

because they are aware that they have been

programmed by human beings’ (ibidem,

pp. 112-3).

In the Network Society (Castells, 2002;

Iorio, 2005), it is worth noting a radical

break-off between the two generational

groups that live in mutual contact but are

isolated. Young people and adults face

each other with awareness that nobody

will, in considerable measure, live an

experience already lived by the other. For

the first time, no adult will be able to live

the empathic experience that allows them

to understand the young people they are

faced with. No one will be able to act as a

parent or teacher of a certain time, who can

recall their youth in order to understand the

experience of their own children or

students. This is probably what many

adults insist on doing, even though they are

fully aware of the inadequacy of their own

tools.

Digital technology, therefore, transforms

a cohort into a generation. In fact,

according to Mannheim, generations are

the product of cultural and historical

influences that cause a discontinuity in the

biography of individuals, the effect of a

rapid social-historical transformation: “it is

not the fact of having been born

chronologically at the same time, of having

become young people, adults and old at the

same time, that constitutes one’s location

in the social space, but only the chance that

derives from it to take part in the same

events, life content, etc., and even more, to

do that starting from the same ‘stratified

conscience’” (Mannheim, 1974, pp.346-7).

Mannheim again indicates the concept

of the ‘generational nexus,’ the condition

for the configuration of a generation.

This occurs when a historical

discontinuity produces a fracture, limited

in time and not permanent, in the

transmission of the traditional cultural

patrimony of adults to their children. The

transformation has an impact on all the

members of a society, but is particularly

incisive on the values of young people,

especially those included in the age

bracket of our group who find

themselves in a period of transition in

which the bonds with the significant

adults in their lives become weaker and

without any others substituting them.

These are the conditions that cause a

restructuring of the cognitive maps of

individuals, of their self-images and what

they think of their world. (Cavalli et al.,

2008, p. 332).

2. The methodology and research design

The research is part of a larger national

survey carried out using analytical,

qualitative and quantitative techniques. It

was carried out in cities in both the North

and South of Italy: Bari, Bergamo, Milan,

Salerno and Turin. In the first phase, the

qualitative research involved 38 students

between the age of 14 - 18, and their

respective one parent and one teacher, for a