Questioning ‘digital global generations’. A critical approach

In the recent sociological debate, the concept of the generation has been used increasingly frequently as a tool for interpreting current social change and the role played by the young in this process. This wave, which also involves media discourses, has created a sort of narrative, whose main feature is the existence of a `digital global generation' characterized by the use of Internet and mobile devices. This new generation has been described as being very similar to that of the protagonists of social movements of the 1960s. This article discusses and criticizes this `generational storytelling' from two different perspectives: on one hand, it focuses on a more complex definition of the generation and its connections with mediascapes, while on the other, through evidence that demonstrates the `glocal' dimension of the web, it confronts the complexity of the concept of social `activity' and the powerful role of inter-generational interaction in the shaping of collective identities.