Digital immersion during the Covid-19 lockdown: its impact on youth transitions through the eyes of young Italians

This chapter engages into a reflection on two fundamental aspects for youth transitions. The first one involves the digital transition that permeates everyone’s daily life in a different way, and which needs to be considered using the generational perspective. The second one concerns the condition of limited sociability and digital overload of young people, due to the outburst of COVID-19 pandemic, with both positive and negative effects. In fact, the new generations – particularly Millennials and Zeta generations – differently integrate digital technologies into their own communication repertoires and into their everyday life. Thus, the digital sphere in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic has been evidently affected by a radical transformation of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) uses and available digital devices, with an impact on everyday life in a pervasive and even substitute way for many activities originally carried offline. The chapter opens to the reflection on the pervasive digital condition resulting from COVID-19 on young people’s life spaces and growth paths. The experience that we can call ‘total digital’ during the lockdown has produced changes that have transformed practices, narratives, life’s spheres, priorities and perspectives of Italian young people. Our research focused on digitalisation in order to explore the perception of young Italians on the theme, to analyse the consequences of the overexposure and the pervasive use of digital media and technologies during the pandemic, and its possible impact in their life paths in terms of transitioning to adulthood. The data refer to an empirical base of 100 texts collected during the first months of national lockdown in Italy (March-May 2020). Participants, aged between 18 and 24, were asked to answer the question concerns if and how their perception of digital sphere has changed, producing a text with a recommended length of 500 words. The findings show that in young people's perception of digital, work and education, considered as traditional field in the transition to adulthood, co-occur with elements that characterise their daily life, such as cultural interest, leisure time, hobbies and most of all interpersonal relationships. All those elements in the perceptions of study participants appear, in general, to be positively influenced by digital, as the latter broadens the opportunities to relate to others even in critical conditions, to be able to use the resources available online to cultivate their passions or simply to make interesting a moment of leisure. The elements emerged by the analysis of youth perception of the digital sphere can be further discussed in terms of «resources» and «risks». Digital as a resource highlights the possibilities offered by digital technology to improve the regular development of the individual during the life course, impacting positively on the relational and cultural capital of young people. A romantic vision of digital, as a way to maintain relationships and to reduce distances is present in the texts. Even the consideration of digital as a “distraction” emphasises positive perception of digital as a useful tool in the attempt to regain their psychophysical well-being in a difficult period. Moreover, the perception of digital as a resource can also be recognized in the discussion on «digital natives», as young people believe that through digitalization it is possible to anticipate future challenges for their generation and propose adequate solutions for problems, including health problems related to Covid-19. On the other hand, the texts produced by the young participants discuss various digital-related risks. Despite the variety of these critical issues, compared to topics that characterised digital as a resource, they are less recurrent and refer to problems and dangers of cyberspace, especially for younger or novice users, rather the negative impact on the youth transitions and life courses. Finally, the recurring «comparison between real and virtual» is an indicator of the pervasiveness of digital during the pandemic days on young people. The pandemic has been a stimulus for them to reflect on the possibility of replacing activities conducted offline in the ‘pre-pandemic era’ with alternative online modalities, in order to provide new instruments and broaden the field where young people can shape and reshape their own growth paths.