“A good or a sad future for society depends on the good or bad education of young people.” The volume “Sons of the App” opens with a quote from San Giovanni Bosco, from 8 March in all Italian bookstores, written by the sociologist Francesco Pira, associate professor of sociology of cultural and communicative processes at the University of Messina.
Then, on the same page it is written: «This volume is dedicated to all the victims of cyberbullying, sexting, revenge porn, cutting and those who have lost their lives in pursuit of a challenge. But also to those who use new technologies
to transmit positive messages to the world and share knowledge ». A volume that speaks of our children, who are not Martians, but boys full of hope and fragility.
The author immediately reveals the reason for the title: “Children of apps 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 generation of pre-adolescents and adolescents shows us how the technological revolution is now complete. Technology is an integral part of their lives. They 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. This book intends to analyze the transformations taking place, based on the results of the research carried out in twenty-three years of study on the evolution of communication models of pre-adolescents 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 volume is also an opportunity to share the data of the latest research carried out. The third chapter is in fact entirely dedicated to the results of the online survey “My way in the time of Covid.”
Conducted in the period April – May 2020, it involved a total of 1,858 girls and boys from lower and upper secondary schools who answered an online questionnaire consisting of seventeen questions. The data show that these adolescents represent the first digital generation to all intents and purposes. Virtually 100% (96.6%) of respondents own a smartphone and over 80% (88.8%) have a computer. One of the aspects of greatest interest that emerged is that relating to the tendency to isolate oneself from the family environment. Increasingly dependent on the peer group, they experienced a strong feeling of isolation, fear and discouragement, with over 60% of respondents claiming to have felt this feeling. Then there is a fact that more than all the others offers insights, and it is that relating to the possible possession of a fake social profile. Out of 544 responses obtained, 69% said they had it. They live on Instagram and Whatsapp. It is evident, once again, that in the liquid-modern era, deception has become central in the processes of understanding reality, and the distinction between true and false is no longer perceived.
Essayist and journalist Pira explains how we have gone from non-communication, to hyper-communication, to self-displaying and systematic manipulation, aware or not, of reality, with profound impacts on the development dynamics of society as a whole.
“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 creation of a thematic and longitudinal system of research and approaches relating to the sociology of communication, showing the perplexities that we have faced from time to time, the solutions that have been proposed and the new questions that have arisen ».
And the author underlines how the essay stems from: “A journey through generations that have evolved within increasingly technological environments, often alone, and who today are adults who have just become parents, all united in the evident dichotomy between connection and relationship. A use of technology that shows us how intuitiveness, immediacy are the prevailing aspects that in fact seem to almost completely cancel the space to understand the context before acting. Thus, action comes before reflection, which generates an immediate emotional response mediated by the screen ».
Francesco Pira is associate professor of sociology of cultural and communicative processes at the Department of Ancient and Modern Civilizations of the University of Messina, where he is the University’s Communication Delegate and Didactic Coordinator of the Master in Social Media Manager. Sociologist, essayist and journalist, he is the author of numerous articles and scientific publications. Columnist of the US newspaper La Voce in New York, he writes for specialized magazines. It is his sixth book with Franco Angeli La net political communication (2012), How to say something left (2009), The new political communication (with L. Gaudiano 2007), How to communicate the social (2005), Facing the citizen (2000).