Adolescents’ media practices in secondary schools in the Metropolitan City of Bologna

In the onlife world (Floridi, 2014), the smartphone has become the main Internet access device for pre-adolescents and adolescents, in many industrialised countries (Mascheroni & Olafsson, 2016) by offering the possibility of developing a remediation (Bolter & Grusin, 1999) of media practices in the always-on form (De Kerckhove, 2010) for entertainment, relational interactions, gaming, telephone conversations and face-to-face meetings. Which are today’s adolescent’s online media-practices? In which terms do these practices have an impact on adolescents’ socialisation? Our contribution intends to explore these questions and focus attention on the ways in which digital devices are managed by teenagers on a personal level. The research involved nine upper secondary schools with different curricula in the Metropolitan City of Bologna (1657 students, age 14–19) in the school year 2020/2021. The data are collected through questionnaires and focus groups. The research has highlighted how manifold adolescents between 14 and 19 are and escape the usual mainstream definitions that paint them as apathetic, incompetent and dependent on technologies. Reality is much more complex and multifaceted (boyd, 2014) and gender, age, class attended and personal experiences intersect to form a dense net of opportunities, activities, fears, curiosities and skills also experienced, thanks to social media.