XXI Annual Conference of Youth Studies 2022

On-line and off-line: Digitalization and the ‘fresh contact’ generation

University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, 9–10 November 2022

The conference will be organized as a hybrid event, both on-line and in Joensuu, 9–10 November 2022.

XXI Annual Conference of Youth Studies 2022 will be organized at the University of Eastern Finland in cooperation with the Finnish Youth Research Society. The theme of the conference is On-line and off-line: Digitalization and the ‘fresh contact’ generation. For some decades now, young people have been described as ‘digital natives’, born in the era of digital developments and therefore believed to benefit from them much more than older generations. Despite the numerous promises and imaginaries of digitalization (as a means of equalizing opportunities to study, participate, engage in activities, consume, etc.), it has not been able to eradicate the inequalities that characterize young people’s everyday lives and life courses. On the contrary, the trends can be quite the opposite in many ways as digitalization has added one more dimension to the complexity of social differences and inequalities. During this conference, digitalization and its implications for young people will be examined from many different angles.

The keynote speakers at the conference will be Professor Kirsten Drotner (Denmark), Dr Sofia Laine (the Finnish Youth Research Network), and Project Coordinator of Petlja, Katarina Andjelkovic, MA (Serbia).