It's even more Complicated! The Influence of Media Practices in the Development of Adolescents' Identity

Social media have long been considered both a strong driver of peer-to-peer social relationships (Caron, Caronia, 2007) and an important ground for the constitution of participatory cultures that promote informal learning and opportunities for the construction and negotiation of one's identity path (Boyd, 2014; Ito et al., 2010; Jenkins et al., 2015). Particularly in the last decade, the infosphere (Floridi, 2017) has been traversed by a development that, while expected, has surprised in terms of rapidity and profound transformation of teenagers' online practices (Riva, 2012). The research, which involved 1657 students (14-19 y.o.) from ten secondary schools of different curricula in the metropolitan city of Bologna, intends to investigate, from an exploratoryphenomenological point of view, the influence that adolescent online practices (video-social platforms, gaming, etc.) have on the development and negotiation of their identity. Has the transversal and pervasive change generated by digital tools and environments affected the ways in which adolescents perceive themselves, negotiate their identity and their role in the peer group? What challenges and critical issues emerge for identity development from digital consumption? What emerges is a picture in which technologies are mediators of fundamental importance in the relationships of young adolescents; a situation that has been further emphasized by more than a year of health emergency with consequent lockdown and closure of schools. The figure of peers, even those known and frequented exclusively online, as well as that of influencers, play a very important role in the negotiation of the identity of young people and in the construction of their relational dynamics.