Digital dystopias. Observations on youth, risk and identity in the web society


Abstract

The culture of risk is the product of social organization, and therefore of the underlying relationships. Fatalism, individualism, marginalization are just some of the attitudes that individuals have towards risk. Ulrich Beck (2013) deals with the issue of risk communities, that is, groups of united individuals, no longer from a physical space, but rather from a certain degree of shared risk. In today's society, characterized by uncertainty and loss and by an overabundance of anxieties, in which an oscillation between ambivalent values ​​is manifested, new complexities seem to emerge for the affirmation of one's presence in the world, especially among young people. In the institutional desert given by the progressive erosion of the agencies aimed at social reproduction, the new possibilities offered by the digital gain space by affecting, in fact, in the way in which young people build their own biographical and relational plot. The attempt will be to critically explore, but not exhaustively, some trends that need greater attention in sociological terms in order to intercept the conditions that affect the forms of public participation on multiple levels, mainly for the new generations.