Digitalization in youthwork, brief history and the future:
I’ve been working as an youthworker in different roles for many years now in different companies and I’ve had pleasure to see how digital tools have developed tremendously during my life time (I’m now in my 30’s). I’ll give you all a brief summary of my childhood experiences:

History
I was born in 90’s and it took me until 5th grade before I got my first phone. I recall it was one of those banana shaped, yellow colored, Nokia telephone. It wasn’t anything fancy, no, it just had “worm game” and you could make phone calls with it. When I got to the junior highschool we got first phones with facebook integration and web browser. Once again, it wasn’t anything that
great, but what I do recall, is that girls during that time carried digital cameras to school and took photos with it and then put it to the good old website called: https://irc-galleria.net/. What is amazing that site is still operational after 22 years.

We got our first dial-up modem internet connection during that time as well. It was loud when booted up and compared to todays internet speed standards, it was also abysmally slow to operate. If you really wanted to put your photo to the facebook, which you took with your digital camera in early 2000’s, you had to to first transfer photo from camera to computer, which took about 30 minutes of your time. Then waiting for modem to boot up which could take around 10-15 minutes of your time. Then uploading picture to facebook and waiting for transfer to finish could take another 30 minutes. That was little over an 1 hour of your time to just upload 1 single image file to the internet. In worst cases, it could take longer if internet went down in mid-process.

When it comes to other devices, I recall having Sony walkman with few casette tapes and really big headphones. Then that got replaced with first iteration of mp3 players with plug-in headphones. It could fit around 30 songs and it was groundbreaking at the time. Oh those were the days. It can’t get any better than this, right?

Present day
Present day mobile phones have access to fast internet, access to wide variety applications, social media platforms, games. We have tablets, bluetooth connected headphones, multiple videogame devices (Nintend Switch, Playstation 5, Xbox S series to name the few), digital drawing tablets and even fridge is connected to the internet. It seems that present-day youth is glued to these digital devices, especially mobile phones and parents are worried that their children are spending too much time indoors. Everything was way better back in the 60’s/70’s/80’s!

What many parents fail to see however is that world has changed a lot from their time and present-day applications offers different way of coming together. From the surface level, it sure does look like youth of today is doing nothing but staring at their phones. It’s important to realize that’s how they communicate with eachother nowadays. Youth uses wide variety of social media platforms to connect with each other (Snapchat, Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook to just name the few). They form chat groups from their school and hobbies to schedule meetings and coming together. They also use chat applications to communicate with group of people simultaneously. This is a “must have” if your group of friends are playing videogames together over the internet, which brings me to my next topic.

Esport scene and lan parties. I know what you must be thinking: “Oh great, our kids are spending time indoors and now they bring their computers / gaming devices together to be even more indoors for few days. This doesen’t help at all! ” Actually, if you think about it, it could be *just* the right place for youth to make those connections that lasts for their entire life time. At least, that’s what happened to me. It’s an hobby as any other, but just provided thanks to the modern technology capabilities. Videogames can be challenging and these “Esport games” rely on building team coordination, focus, discipline. You are essentially competing with others team just like in regular sports. Winning in videogame has been proven to give same amount of satisfaction as winning in regular sports.

Rather than blaming present day youth that they spend too much time with their digital devices, I think we should try to find that middleground where we see it as one way for youth to connect with eachother. Imagine if you take that option out completely for someone who already has problem with connecting with other youth of the same age. Limiting already limited option is not the medicine needed, as it does exact opposite. Of course, it’s necessary to set rules for what should be proper time to spend with those devices, as they have been proven to be addictive.

Future
As I see it, present day digital devices don’t have yet that seamless capability to connect chatting with real life. I think future digital devices will make it so that social platforms are connected to these “augmented realities” where people can scan their enviroment and see things hidden in plain sight. Without a doubt, social platforms will advance to give more features and I could see things like geocaching becoming even bigger thing. We can already see this with scannable QR-codes that open link to webpages. I think these will become new ways to educate youth about different topics, such as history, religion and natural science. You could organise these “treasure huntings” around the city where youth try to find scannable QR-codes to open up tasks that they need to perform for their class. It could be even used as a team building excercise.

In summary, I think we, as adults, need to take more active role in these digital spaces / social platforms and make sure youth have safe communities, organized by us. This way we can make youth to participate in different group activities in an safe enviroment, even over the internet to minimize risk of youth discrimination.

Risks of open digital society:
Security breach and misuse of private data. This was heavily discussed in our orientation material. Criminals can sell personal data forward to third parties or use your stolen identity to cover their tracks and make sure you take the blame for it. There’s also risk of “ending up in a wrong place” where criminals keep online community that could be used for criminal activity.

Exclusion from the groups and group chats (discrimination) has become modern day problem. It could be also called “modern day bullying”. One textbook example I could give is that group of youth makes Whatsapp group for their entire class. Then, someone they don’t like in their class, get’s excluded from it. I think this is one of the harshest ways to make sure that one person knows that they are excluded. Now imagine if you are stuck with the same class for next 5 or 6 years. That’s going to be harsh blow for your mental health.

Youth gaining access to the material they shouldn’t be seeing at their age (trauma, developing harmful self image). It’s known that our brains develop a lot during our lifetime. It’s also known that our brains handle information differently, depending on our age. I’ve followed professional discussion about youth gaining access to let’s say, adult content, before their brains have capability to understand what they are seeing. This then has affected growth of the youth in an harmful way. In worst cases, they develop harmful self image and don’t view themselves as valuable person. This then could lead to one or multiple mental health issues that can last for long time, if not treated properly.

Self reflection:
I had great time writing this blog post. I took glance at my life and how I’ve lived and what I’ve seen by my own eyes. I didn’t get any actual “ah-ha, I learned something new” or moment where light bulb started shining on my head, no. It was fun reminiscing about things and how I thought things are not going to get any better than already they are, but then coming back to present day and thinking how many things have changed to better.

To summarize my thought process in this, I think this blog post was more of a confirmation of things that I’ve been thinking inside my head more than anything else. It reinforced what I already know. I think there’s also little hint of gaining a bit more confidence. That’s how I feel, at least.

Two blogs that I commented on:
(Amiinius)
https://blogi.savonia.fi/amiinius/digi-society/

(Site for L)
https://blogi.savonia.fi/lach/digi-society/