Interações sociais e digitais entre jovens de uma cidade pequena: "aqui em Ervália não tem nada para jovens"

Abstract

The advent of the Internet, as well as the presence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT's) in everyday life, has currently been presented as important themes in sociocultural studies, particularly with regard to youth. Identified by some authors as "Digital Natives", these young people have as a common characteristic the fact that they were born and raised in a social context marked by digital culture, characterized by the intensification of production and circulation of information, as well as forms of leisure and interaction through of digital devices. This dissertation seeks to analyze how digital technologies, in particular the use of cell phones, are inserted in the daily lives of young people from a small town, Ervália/MG, aiming to understand the space that ICT's occupy in the process of socialization and interaction among these young people. Based on the qualitative approach, cyberethnography of virtual spaces frequented by these young people were used as research strategies, in addition to the interaction of this researcher with the research interlocutors through social networks. Among the results found, the fact that, despite the intensive use of the cell phone as a form of interaction between peers, stands out, these young people indicate a preference for face-to-face interactions, feeling confined to the virtual environment due to the absence of spaces for leisure in the city; cyberspace becomes like this, a “our moment”.