1 Introduction

There are different factors influencing young people’s opportunities and ways to move in public and private spaces. Some of these factors are socio-economic, some based on age, gender, or physical characteristics of the neighborhood (Barker et al., 2009). One of the reasons for young people’s movement that is shared by most of them is social: they want to meet their friends and other young people. They meet others by moving from one place to another, in which case their routes may change quickly, adapting to the movements of others or avoiding the adult gaze.

The aim of this article is to introduce the concept of social compass that was developed in the research project ‘Youth in the cities during the COVID-19 pandemic’ in 2020–2022 (Laine et al., 2023). This comprehensive project investigated how young people’s leisure changed in Finland during the Covid-19 lockdowns and other restrictions. Ethnographic observations were conducted on young people’s leisure time activities in urban spaces together with detached youth work in the biggest cities in Finland. Interviews were conducted with young people, and some of them were also co-researchers. Their experiences were gathered through the theatre GÄNG – guided city tour. Through the research project it became evident that, while the Covid-19 restrictions changed young people’s use of public spaces, their ways of being together and hanging out, it also made young people’s strategies, tools and functions of hanging out more concrete and visible for researchers.

Another research project Young people in urban space, which also analyzed the use of urban space by young people during the Covid-19 in Europe (Prinzjakowitsch & Zentner, 2023) found many similar results than our study. This four-city evaluation project involved also Helsinki, that was one of the cities we also studied. As one of the results in their project shows, the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions had a deep impact in the usage of public space, especially for teenagers. Young people lost more than other age-groups in their life structure (school, public space) and had less alternatives. (Prinzjakowitsch & Zentner, 2023, p. 15.)

1.1 Previous Studies and Theoretical Starting Points

Social aspects of young people’s leisure time can be studied in the context of organised hobbies but also from the viewpoint of hanging out. Even when young people can ‘hang out’ with their friends in private spaces such as their homes or youth centres, most often hanging out is understood as the way in which they spend their free time in public or semi-public spaces with their peers. What is characteristic in hanging out is its creative and unspecified nature. There are no ready-made plans for what to do or how long to stay in a certain location; the most important thing is to be together (e.g. van Lieshout & Aarts, 2008; Tani, 2015, p. 134).

Parks and city squares have traditionally been popular hangout places due to their central location and public nature. Being there does not cost anything. Shopping malls and public transport stations have also often been used as hangout sites. In many shopping malls, public services (such as local transport stations) can be located under the same roof as privately owned commercial companies, which means that certain walkways and squares inside the mall are public, while most of the walkways leading to privately owned shops can be regarded as semi-public (Tani, 2015; Voyce, 2006). This means that regulatory practices differ in these different spaces. From the viewpoint of young people, their presence is regulated and monitored by adults (especially by security guards but also the other users of the same space) during their free time. Shopping malls can thus be regarded as polymorphic spaces (Jones, 2000; Thomson & Philo, 2004) where diverse ways of using space occur side by side.

Young people have different reasons for hanging out. In his empirical study in Sweden in the 1990s, Lieberg (1995) identified two types of spaces that were important for young people hanging out. First, they wanted to spend time in places where they could withdraw from the adult gaze and their parents’ surveillance to the world of their peers. These ‘places of retreat’ or ‘backstage spaces’ (see Goffman, 1963) can also be found in some calm corners of public and semi-public spaces.

The other element to hanging out that was identified by Lieberg (1995) was young people’s need to find spaces where they could be ‘on display’, to be able to see others and simultaneously to be seen, too. These spaces can be called ‘places of interaction’ or ‘on stage spaces’ (Lieberg, 1995; Matthews et al., 2000, p. 285; Tani, 2015, p. 136). Both on stage and backstage spaces offer young people important opportunities to take possession of space by simply being there together with others. Hanging out can thus be understood as ‘micropolitics’, whereby young people claim their right to be in public (Colombo et al., 2023, p. 94; De Backer, 2019).

Teenagers hanging out in public has a long history (e.g. Kievitsbosch et al., 2019), but during the last couple of decades, technological innovations have caused some essential changes in the ways that young people select spaces where they want to spend their free time. Before mobile phones, there were certain fixed hangout places that young people could go with their friends to spend free time and meet new people. They would know that others would gather there, too, so there was no need to set the time or place beforehand. The rapid increase in the ownership of smartphones among young people has changed the way in which they can decide where and when they will meet others. One of the interesting features in hanging out now is its mobile and flexible character.

According to Vanden Abeele (2016), the concept of mobile youth culture has often been used without paying enough attention to the heterogeneity in young people’s media use. In her conceptual article, Vanden Abeele (2016) explores three aspects that can be understood to be characteristic for young people’s ways of using mobile technologies. First, there is the social logic of perpetual contact, whereby physically distant people can have real-time connection with each other by using ‘mobile communication to navigate through their social world’. Second, there is the network logic of anytime-anyplace connectivity, which refers to the opportunity to ‘(de-)activate their personal networks whenever and wherever they want’. Third, there is the logic of personalisation, which refers to young people’s opportunities to ‘contest adult control over public space’ (Vanden Abeele, 2016, pp. 90–92). These three aspects will be explored in this article by applying the concept of social compass in the analysis.

1.2 Research Questions

In this article, we examine the social movement and mobilities of young people in public, semi-public and private spaces in their leisure time. ‘Social compass’ will be used as a methodological tool to show how physical, digital and social elements are intertwined when young people navigate in the city. We will ask: What kinds of physical locations were popular sites for hanging out during the Covid-19 pandemic? What kind of role did digital applications have in young people’s hangout practices? How can the concept of social compass help in analysing young people’s use of urban spaces?

We start by defining the central concept of the article, the social compass, which will be used as a tool of analysis. After that, we focus on the implementation and results of the research. Finally, we consider the importance, opportunities, and challenges of the concept of social compass.

2 The Social Compass as a Metaphor and Methodological Tool for Analysis

Reasons for young people’s hanging out and moving in and between public and semi-public urban spaces are often social. They want to meet their friends and other young people. For them, being together can be meaningful fun (Pyyry & Tani, 2016, p. 205), and moving around urban spaces can offer them opportunities to improvise and act together (Amin & Thrift, 2002, p. 157). Young people meet their friends by moving from one place to another, in which case their routes may change quickly, adapting to the movement of other young people or to avoid the eyes of adults (Pyyry & Tani, 2016, p. 206). For young people, mobilities are part of the process. How they engage with the world (Skelton, 2013) and the role of digital social spaces have become increasingly important for them (Genova et al., 2023). They navigate in the city using their smartphones and their prior knowledge of their surroundings. A mobile phone can be thought of as the equivalent of a compass: when you share your location on your phone, the Global Positioning System (GPS) shows you where you are, and the use of route maps (e.g. Google Maps) will become possible. You can see your physical location from the route map, and when there are changes in your plans about where to go next, the route map will show your exact location in real time.

The physical and digital location is therefore important from the point of view of social interaction, practices, and customs. Today, information about our movement is collected and utilised with the help of technology to an ever-increasing extent (Wilson, 2012, p. 1272–1273). Mobile technology is a natural part of our daily movement by walking, car, bicycle, or other means. Mobile experiences connect physical and virtual places using technology, and at the same time, the boundary between public and private, physical and virtual places may become blurred (Rueb, 2014).

In this article, we introduce the concept of social compassFootnote 1 both as a metaphor and methodological tool that can be used in analysing young people’s ways of using urban spaces in their leisure time. Before defining the main elements of the social compass, we start by describing the basics of the traditional compass. It is based on its ability to show the direction of magnetic north, which is used in geographical orienteering. When the orienteers want to proceed from one checkpoint to another, they take the desired direction from the map with the help of a compass. This way, they will know where north is and how they can move as straight as possible towards the next checkpoint. Although we do not use a compass in everyday life, we navigate with the help of maps in our minds, mobile phones and the observation of the environment. A similar process happens in our mind when we tell somebody the way to a place they would like to go. We use these mental maps often unconsciously.

In the social compass of young people, the situation is different. When young people move in the city, their navigation is based not only on their knowledge of the locations of certain physical spaces (e.g. railway stations, shopping malls, streets) but also on their knowledge of the movements of their peers. Young people’s social compass is not just about their ability to navigate with route maps – it also includes the knowledge of their friends’ locations, which they can get from Snapchat, for example. To apply the metaphor of a compass in the context of hanging out, we can imagine that young people readjust ‘the travel arrow’ of their social compass whenever their friends move in the city; these other young people can be thought of as mobile ‘checkpoints’ on the city map. Young people thus navigate urban spaces with the help of their social compass. Moving from one place to another occurs through geographical, social and digital negotiation. Smartphones have therefore turned into social compasses that combine physical, social and digital elements.

In this article, we use the concept of social compass as a methodological ‘tool’ to analyse elements of young people’s hangouts. As hanging out is thoroughly social, its aspects in the analysis will be included in both sections where physical locations and the use of digital devices are described. Next, research materials and methods used will be described, after which we will share the results of the project starting with the diverse elements of popular hangout locations and then moving on to show how digitality is embedded into young people’s navigation of the city.

3 Materials and Methods

The research data consist of materials collected in the research project carried out by the Finnish Youth Research Society, studying urban youth during the Covid-19 pandemic and their leisure time in relation to detached youth work in five cities in Finland (Table 1). This research employed an approach known as multi-site or mobile ethnography. Our research site took shape and changed as the research progressed and researchers moved geographically to different places, conducting research on the move. Researchers were also able to incorporate data collected by others (Hämeenaho & Koskinen-Koivisto, 2014, p. 11; O’Reilly, 2009, p. 144). This kind of multi-local approach enables us to examine the same phenomenon from different perspectives and permits us a more multifaceted understanding (Tuuva-Hongisto et al., 2016, p. 20). It is essential to move along with a certain phenomenon, theme or event (O’Reilly, 2009, p. 147) – in this case alongside the detached youth workers and youth acting in the theatre project GÄNG – guided city tour(more below) in urban spaces.

Research data based on observation were collected in the metropolitan area of Helsinki, Finland, from December 2020 to September 2022. Observations were conducted in two contexts. First, the researchers observed young people and their leisure time alongside youth workers carrying out detached youth work during the Covid-19 pandemic. In these situations, researchers engaged in dialogue with both the young people and youth workers. Using observations as a method made it possible to examine young people in their own environment (Marshall & Rossman, 2006, pp. 100–101). Working alongside youth workers, we engaged in applied participatory observation. Knowledge was created in dialogue with youth workers (cf. Honkasalo, 2018, p. 193). Second, researchers observed a performance of the theatre project GÄNG – guided city tour. GÄNG  was created in collaboration between young people and director Joel Teixeira to describe urban spaces from the viewpoint of young ‘professional hangouts’ and their relationship with the surrounding society. In both contexts, we sought to form an understanding of everyday realities by observing and participating (Honkasalo, 2018, pp. 190–191). Researchers took notes and extracted them into field diaries. These diaries are referred to in this article as ‘Researcher’s fieldwork diary, month, year’.

The second set of data consist of three interviews with the same three young people. The first interview was carried out in the summer of 2021 and the last in the summer of 2022. During the summer of 2021, these young people photographed the places where they spent their time. These photos with short descriptions were then sent to the researcher in a diary-like manner using the WhatsApp application. Photos were used in the interviews to stimulate the young people’s conversation (cf. stimulated recall interview, Dempsey, 2010; photo-elicited interviews, see Pyyry et al., 2021). During the summer 2022 interview, we returned to the previous year’s experiences. Young participants reflected on how their lives and movement had changed compared to the previous summer. Through this, we aimed to collect information from the same young people in different stages of the pandemic. The second set of interviews was an entity like a case study of one young person (Cohen & Manion, 1992, p. 124–125). The goal was to focus on the life of the young person in question during the pandemic time and thus form a comprehensive picture of the young person’s experiences. During the spring of 2022, the researcher met the young person regularly 10 times. Nine of the meetings were individual interviews, while one was a walk guided by a young person in his leisure time environment. The third interview is a group interview of two young females. The focus in the interviews was on their free time, use of public spaces, their experiences of young people’s security and sexual harassment in general.

The third set of data includes materials from the experiences during the pandemic produced by the youth workers. The City of Helsinki Youth Services collected information about their employees’ experiences from spring 2021 to May 2022. As the fourth set of data, we used the manuscript of the theatre project GÄNG – guided city tour.

Table 1 Research data and methods
Full size table

Only limited amount of information on the backgrounds of the participants was collected. The young people who participated in the study were mainly 13–17 years old. We did not ask the young people’s own perception of gender, but we estimated that there were more or less the same number of girls and boys. In the observation and interview situations we focused on the experiences and perspectives brought up by the young people themselves. In Finnish youth work, the goal is to provide equal opportunities for everyone, and the socioeconomic backgrounds of young people are considered irrelevant. It is essential that each young person is approached with the background he or she wants to share with the workers.

The work has been an application of team ethnography. It can be seen to have features of what is known as multi-sited or mobile ethnography, where the research field ‘takes shape and changes as the research progresses’, where the researcher moves geographically to different locations and conducts research on the move, and where researchers can also use data collected by others (Hämeenaho & Koskinen-Koivisto, 2014, p. 11; O’Reilly, 2009, p. 144). Multi-sitedness enables the same phenomenon to be examined from different perspectives and interpretations to be varied (Tuuva-Hongisto et al., 2016, p. 20). It is essential to move with a phenomenon, theme, or event – such as the social compass here (O’Reilly, 2009, p. 147). We have collected data independently and in small groups, shared data with each other, analysed data individually and together, and written together (O’Reilly, 2009, p. 201−207). Through dialogue, our aim is to explore the movement of young people in public space in the most diverse and polyphonic way possible.

The data analysis was carried out with a directed content analysis based on the research questions (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005, pp. 1281–1283). In the first phase of the analysis, the researchers independently analysed the data collected in the projects (fieldwork diaries, interviews) with the aim of being data-oriented while keeping the research questions in mind. They formed an overall picture of their own data and marked the points corresponding to different themes (physical, social, and digital elements) of the social compass in the data. At the second stage, the researchers reflected on the themes that emerged in the data and sought to identify common issues based on the social compass as a tool. The third step was to examine and structure the material from the perspective of three different dimensions: physical location, sociality, and digitality. The concept of social compass was thus used to create a deeper understanding of the characteristics of hanging out.

In the next chapter, we describe the results of the study. The chapter is built to correspond to the three dimensions of the social compass. Based on the analysis, the social dimension passes through the chapter, and the physical and digital dimensions are divided into two sub-chapters.

4 Results

4.1 Hanging Out in Physical Spaces

The social routes of young people are not unipolar but have numerous centres, although certain social hubs and hotspots are highlighted (Laine et al., 2023). In those sites, people hang out and ‘fuse’ – groups split up and come together again like amoebas, moving and frolicking – while in residential areas and urban wastelands, it is more usual that people stick to a certain group.

4.1.1 Young People are Widely Attracted to Hotspots

According to our data, there are certain places where young people come to spend time not only from the metropolitan area of Helsinki but also from other parts of the country. A mall located in Helsinki received the most mentions of such a place in our material. The youth workers of the neighbouring city of Vantaa stated: ‘We’re going to the mall, it has everything’. Young people described it as a place where they could hang out, meet their friends and other people and shop. There they could find places where it was possible to escape the gaze of adults (see also Lieberg, 1995; Pyyry & Tani, 2016; Tani, 2015). The mall is also a transit point. As we travelled with the youth workers, we heard disturbing stories from the mall:

Then there is this other group of elder young people in the mall with the age range from junior high school to 19. They have had fornication and drama. Also, intoxicants, e.g. earlier in the spring ecstasy use, which led to one of the guys being called an ambulance by his friends. One of the gangs also exhibited suicidal tendencies, posting pictures of cutting. Two or three weeks ago, some people in this gang had robbed and assaulted [deleted information about assault] […] The police arrived, and the youths were taken into custody. They had been intoxicated. Different youth workers have been working with smaller groups of these young people for a long time. Now these groups have merged at the mall. These young people are ‘hungry’ for adults. (Researcher’s fieldwork diary, May 2022)

The youth worker says that the youngest children hanging at the mall have been a cause for concern. They are about 6th–8th graders, drifting between [two malls]. Where do they come from? All over the place, all of them have raised concerns in their own areas in the past. In the mall, they often cause conflict with other young people. But they are not a united group, as there is a process of grouping going on all the time. In total, there are dozens of them, just under a hundred. (Researcher’s fieldwork diary, May 2022)

Alongside the positive images, the mall is also associated with negative experiences and images related to experiences of insecurity, intoxicants and the related trade, inappropriate treatment and even violence. It is interesting that despite the negative images, young people still go there to meet friends and to be where ‘everything is happening’:

Researcher: Can you tell me why the mall has become such a main place for hanging out?

Liisa: Everyone just goes there, or if there is a beef [fight] or something, then of course everyone wants to see it, or something, so of course everyone goes there.

Researcher: How does everyone know if there is ‘a beef’?

Liisa: Through Snap [Snapchat].

(Interview 2)

Similar positive and negative images and experiences belonging to the ‘city capital’ (see Tolonen et al., 2018), since then referred also ‘urban capital’ in Tolonen’s work, were associated with the central library and the central railway station in Helsinki, as well as the Tikkurila region in the neighbouring city of Vantaa. Especially during the summer, many young people spent time in front of the library where they met old and new acquaintances and, for example, danced, played street basketball and skateboarded. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the strict assembly restrictions, the central railway station offered much-needed indoor space when it was cold or raining. In the area between the library and the railway station, there were sometimes larger groups of young people who could occasionally cause disturbances and weaken the experience of safety for adults and young people.

4.1.2 Social Hubs Attract Urban Youth

There are several residential areas and centres in the capital region, where the shopping centres act as social hubs for young people. Each of these centres has its own specific features, but what is common is the fact that young people gather in these shopping centres both from the residential area in question and from the surrounding smaller residential areas.

Social hubs are often defined by the fact that they are in places where, in addition to a residential area, there is a train or metro station, a shopping centre, a youth facility, a sports park and a nearby park where young people gather to celebrate on holidays. During the observations, many young people could be seen in such hubs, many of them living in the same area, but some of them would arrive there by train or bus from other nearby residential areas. These centres often have more opportunities for hobbies than in the surrounding areas, so young people also move there after school to pursue hobbies. In the shopping centre of the area, many young people told the researchers that they were going to or coming from some hobby. In a shopping centre, we encountered, for example, a girl passing through to go to her wrestling training (Researcher’s fieldwork diary, May 2022), a boy waiting for a friend to go to the gym (Researcher’s fieldwork diary, February 2022) and girls waiting for transport home from the swimming hall (Researcher’s fieldwork diary, February 2022). Especially in the summer, sports parks, skate ramps and other outdoor recreational areas enable young people to enjoy themselves in their residential areas in diverse ways compared to the opportunities during the winter.

We visit the sports park where the sun is shining, and the mood is cheerful. Dozens of young people, from the very young to almost adults, have found their way here. The majority are boys, but there are some girls, too. Many skateboarders and kick bikers, most of whom seem to be hanging out on their own with a group of friends. The fenced area is used for running, throwing balls, and lifting weights. I assume four girls as a team, as they all wear similar colourful outfits. (Researcher’s fieldwork diary, May 2022)

Occasionally, young people gather in the social hubs in large groups, which is a typical use of public and semi-public spaces for many young people. The gathering of even large groups of young people is guided by the social compass. Their movements are based on the physical and virtual negotiations among other young people, mental images, and expectations of what will happen, and the information obtained through digital maps. Social hubs are typically places where young people come using the social compass to meet other young people and spend time together.

4.1.3 Residential Areas as Places to Hang Out

Third, in our analysis, we identified some residential areas that were places for young people to hang out. Residential areas usually have shops, and some even have their own shopping centre, which, however, does not attract young people from other areas as much as the social hubs described in the previous chapter. These areas thus do not function as hotspots or social hubs.

We formed mental images of residential areas based on our own experiences, stories told by others and public images of the area. Based on previous studies, especially young women have a higher risk of experiencing insecurity than others. Personal experience of violence or witnessing violence, as well as the area’s socially supported housing, the proximity of a railway station, the substantial number of alarms related to disturbances and socio-economic disadvantage, predispose to insecurity (Kemppainen et al., 2014, p. 16). The socio-economic background of residential areas affects the image of the area. In our data, some young people said that they were avoiding certain residential areas because, according to their perception, those areas were restless or even unsafe. At the same time, the young people living in these areas and the students at the schools in the areas experienced the area positively. When an area is familiar, it feels like one’s own and it often feels safer. In the Finnish Youth Barometer 2022, 88% of the respondents answered that they did not feel unsafe in their residential area (Kivijärvi & Myllyniemi, 2023, p. 30). One young person in our interviews even stated:

But I feel that it is just that people don’t know the area that well, that it is just the fear of the unknown, and that, after all, there are a lot of people in the area that you don’t know anything about. It just feels threatening. (Interview 1)

The way in which people attach meanings to their neighbourhood often affects their ways of navigating certain spaces. Some places are avoided while some others are found pleasant and worth visiting or spending time there. Some earlier studies (e.g. Orellana, 1999) have shown how young people appreciate different elements of urban spaces compared to the ideas of many decision makers and planners. Young people often favour social solutions over physical ones in city planning – for them, accessibility, sense of belonging and the ability to be with friends are the most important features of a good neighbourhood (Laughlin & Johnson, 2011; see also Gerodimos, 2018).

‘Little ones’ often hang out in residential areas, i.e. primary school children and young people at the beginning of lower secondary school. This means that hanging out may also sometimes include more playful elements, such as climbing snow piles and throwing snowballs. (Researcher’s fieldwork diary, February 2022)

Urban planning also has an impact on the relationships among separate groups. Young people of different ages have dissimilar needs and, with age, opportunities to expand their circle of life. Based on the youth workers’ observations that emerged from the data, one can consider whether the social compass is one of the reasons why younger people seem to have moved further away from their own residential area towards social hubs.

4.1.4 Urban Wastelands

In addition to hotspots, social hubs and residential areas, young people hang out in spaces that are remote and abandoned, urban wastelands. Despite their decay, or perhaps rather because of it, the wastelands attract some young people. An explanation for this can be found, for example, in Solnit’s reflections on youth and the city, ‘going wild’ and breaking boundaries, which makes young people look for a home in ‘the shadows and dust of the city’ (Solnit, 2020, pp. 108–109). The attraction must also have something to do with the aesthetic appeal of abandoned buildings and the fact that wastelands often offer spaces free from the adult gaze, where young people can hang out and claim space for themselves (cf. Kuusisto-Arponen & Tani, 2009, pp. 52–53).

In the case of this research, a fenced off area with some abandoned factory halls and empty office spaces in poor condition was found attractive by some young people. For them, this forbidden area worked as a space for adventure:

Around the hall the beauty of an abandoned site is visible. Nature has slowly begun to take it over from the edges, with moss growing on the walls of the buildings. Shards of broken glass crunch under shoes. But it is dangerous to enter these buildings. They contain asbestos and have burned many times. The structures could collapse. The roof of at least one hall has already come down. (Researcher’s fieldwork diary, May 2022)

The area is accessed through openings made in the fences, through which you can enter. When the fences were renewed a few years ago, it did not take long before the new holes were punched again. Young people moved around the area all year round. On one occasion, when we passed by the area by train, we could see young people on the roof during the snow (Researcher’s fieldwork diary, March 2022). For this reason, youth work had a special permit to move in the area. Youth workers could not prevent young people from going to the area, but they were able to inform them about its dangers: asbestos and the risk of collapse. They had done this, among other things, on Instagram, where this was reported. According to youth workers, there were many videos circulating on Instagram where young people had adventures in the area, and this attracted new adventurers. Sometimes parties had been organised in the parking garage. The youth workers were concerned that when young people did not go around through the gates, they could instead go straight across the train tracks to the area.

The safety risks in the wasteland may be obvious but so is its attraction in the eyes of the young people. Young people’s hangouts include not only the need to be together with others but also to be away from their parents’ surveillance. They could look for their own space, use it creatively and, with this kind of experimental use of space, take possession of it (Kuusisto-Arponen & Tani, 2009). When old wastelands disappear, new buildings rise and the city changes, it is likely that young people will look for new premises, abandoned and remote areas of the city. Cleaning up the wastelands hardly removes the longing and decadent romantic attraction experienced by some young people, whatever the motives behind it may be. It is interesting that even though there are sometimes clear safety risks hidden in wastelands, at least in our data they do not emerge as unsafe places from the perspective of young people. The places may have become familiar to the young people, and familiarity creates security. The feeling of security is also strengthened by the fact that you are not alone in the areas but are with familiar peers.

From the point of view of the social compass, wastelands are special areas where you can have a party, make graffiti, or have an adventure with your own friends or with a larger group of people. Young people are aware that these areas or the events that they set up in them may be illegal, but the opportunities to socialise with others makes them cross the borders. Here, the social compass invites the young person to break the rules of the city – to claim space for themselves.

4.2 Digitality Makes it Possible to Find Peers, Move Around and have Virtual Social Encounters

In geographical orienteering, a traditional compass is used together with a map, and the orienteer knows where they are going. When using the social compass, there is no need for predetermined locations because digital applications enable the sharing of information about where to meet or where others are. Young people use applications such as Google Maps, Reittiopas (route guide used in the metropolitan area of Helsinki), Discord, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Zenly (which Snapchat has since bought), as do other digital citizens who upload digital applications on their smartphones.

Jouni: Well, we have a Discord group, where we almost always agree on everything when… If there’s no Discord group, then Jarkko will send me a Snap around six o’clock saying ‘now out’. I’ll ask where, and he’ll say something, and I’ll go there.

Aku: Well, I have a Snap group and I have a Discord group, or a Discord server where we usually hang out at night and play games, and during the day we hang out on Snap and say where we are and what we’re doing. […] I play guitar or just simply stare out the window for 20 min, and then I get a code that says, ‘yeah, we’re going to DLX to buy a new chord and then we’re probably going to UFF and probably to the band rehearsal space’. I’m like ‘ok, let’s go’, and I go outside. (Interview 1)

The Snapchat application, perhaps the most popular one among young people, also includes a map function that utilises users’ location data. With it, you can easily check where the friends who use the application are and then go to where ‘everyone’ else is, if you want to meet your friends and spend time with them. All of this results in an interesting swarming effect, which in the dark evenings of autumn 2022 could be seen, for example, when thousands of young people gathered in parks. Places alone do not draw young people who miss their friends to move, but the promise of being together, formed by friends, acts like a magnet. All of this creates young people’s own geographies, pockets of social spaces that are important to them, spaces that fall outside the scope of control and routes and corridors to the thoroughfares of urban structures. The popularity of Snapchat has added a new layer on the ways in which young people use urban spaces for their hanging out: instead of having to agree beforehand where to meet, they can just check others’ movements in real time and adjust their own plans based on this knowledge.

Recent European study (Prinzjakowitsch & Zentner, 2023, pp. 16−17) found gender specific differences among young people in the selection of the place to spend their free time: Girls and young women spend a significantly higher proportion of their leisure time at a friend’s place, whereas skateparks, playgrounds, soccer-grounds are significantly more often used by boys and young men. What is important here, is the fact that no significant difference was found regarding spending time at places like streets, squares, or parks (ibid.). This is very much in line with our findings. To illustrate, two of our female informants explain in an interview how they move in the urban space, showing one example how the concept of social compass concretely works in young people’s reality:

Researcher: […] Where in particular do you spend your time, even when you are here in the city? (Aisha and Jasmin laugh)

Aisha: at [Helsinki Central Library].

Jasmin: At [Helsinki Central Library].

Aisha: Okay, but sometimes we’re just at home….

Jasmin: Yes….

Aisha: You know, at either one’s home. And then if we have money, we go out to eat, for coffee and stuff. Shopping.

Jasmin: Somewhere like [shopping mall] or something.

Aisha: Yes, everywhere around. And then sometimes we rent the scooter.

Jasmin: Then we’ll go for a ride with it.

Aisha: So, we’ll go for a ride everywhere and then… Then we’ll go and say hello to some friends who are in the neighbourhood, for example. Looking at the Snapchat map or if someone has just sent a message….

Jasmin: Yes.

Aisha: … “Where are you?” and then they reply that they are here in the same place as us. So, then we just go and see them there. (Interview 3)

As the Interview 3 shows, for many, young people’s leisure time is thus digitally and geographically intertwined with certain places. Digital devices are one of the most significant factors that shape the way young people hang out (the script of GÄNG). Devices and new forms of communication blur physical borders, expand young people’s activity areas and create a new virtual hangout culture. The physical location and digital activity of important friends are monitored in various applications, sometimes also secretly.

In the theatre project GÄNG, the use of the social compass was performed to the audiences. In the following scene, one of the young females was standing alone and voicing to the digital space something the audiences heard from their headphones:

Sipu Sipu Sipu Where are everybody Sipu Sipu Sipu.

I am waiting here, here, here, heeereeee.

Main station, East Centre and the park of drug addicts.

Shitty places aaall.

Come on, come oon, to the park hall of S, fast now.

Or to the basement at T, everyone is there.

Who is, who is, who is this creepy guy? Who slides all the time into the DMsFootnote 2 to me?

Who is, who is, who is this creepy dude?

Now, dude, dude, duudee, get out of heeree,

or I’ll find something stronger than my fists.

CU, CU, CU.

sii-juu sii-juu sii-juu.

see you, see you, see you.

(Excerpt from the script of the GÄNG)

The phrase ‘sii-juu’ (see you) was at the core of the theatre project. The phrase binds together the potential of sociality, the wish for sociality in the near future and more concrete set-ups. In addition to performing the negotiation of the direction of the social compass, this scene from the theatre project talks about unwanted traffic on a mobile phone and on its social media apps when a ‘creepy guy’ actively sends direct messages to the young female online. Similarly to a result in a four-city evaluation project in Europe (Prinzjakowitsch & Zentner, 2023), specifically young women reported that they feel unsafe in public spaces.

With the help of digital applications, young people can be in many places at the same time: in their own current physical environment, in the virtual social space shared with their friends using the same application and often also physically when they are on their way to see the others (cf. Wilson, 2012). Snapchat and similar opportunities offered by digital society shape sociality, movement in everyday life and orientation in urban space. If in the past, young people could travel to their favourite places even from a long distance to check if anyone they know was there, now the possibilities offered by applications make us wonder to what extent this ‘checking’ is still relevant for the young people of the 2020s. In addition, digital applications offer opportunities not only for young people to communicate with each other about their whereabouts but also for guardians and parents to control and monitor where they hang out.

4.3 In Constant Movement Using the Social Compass

Since the young people may be constantly on the move, the ‘checkpoints’ shown in the social compass are also constantly on the move. There is no need to have a specific prearranged location to meet since public transport enables smooth movement, even crossing municipal borders.

In a shopping centre in Espoo, four girls and two boys hang out on a bench. Two youth workers try to make small talk, but the youngsters are not really in the mood for chatting. One turns her back on the conversation, and the other doesn’t dare look at the youth workers. I wonder if there is some previous history between these young people and the youth workers. They ask me who I am, and I introduce myself. Where they come from: [Location 1], [Location 2] and [Location 3] [i.e. Helsinki]. (Researcher’s fieldwork diary, May 2022)

As shown above, young people in the capital region move across the boundaries of residential areas, even across municipal boundaries. Their movement goes in many directions. Some of them come from different towns outside the metropolitan area. They are attracted, on one hand, by certain shopping malls that are popular among young people and the social hubs of young people, which we will return to later in this chapter. Especially in the summertime, the appeal of ‘those bright lights of Helsinki’ was a significant reason, as one of the youth workers we met says, for young people from the capital region going to the parks in the central area of Helsinki. Ironically, when the parks are without lighting, ‘only here [in Helsinki] the young people realise that there are no lights’ (Researcher’s fieldwork diary, September 2022).

As the example of the attractiveness of parks shows, from the viewpoint of the social compass, young people can head to new places based on their previous experiences but also based on some shared images of the places that are unfamiliar to them. Digital applications like Snapchat or Discord offer them easy-to-use platforms for negotiations about where to meet, and with the help of digital route maps, they can easily find others in these new locations. In cases where the idea to go to a certain park was shared by other young people online publicly, hundreds of young people could head to a certain park using their social compass to guide the way. This creates ‘party trams’ or ‘party buses’ when huge numbers of young people jam into the same vehicles.

The concept of social compass can help in analysing young people’s use of urban spaces by showing how physical, social, and digital spaces are intertwined and how these three aspects construct geographies of hanging out for many young people. It is still important to remember that not all young people move from their own residential area and that some of them only move to areas close to their own residential area. The movement of young people is influenced by their place of residence and the possibilities of public transport. In areas where there are no good public transport connections, young people seem to move a lot by foot, bicycle, moped and car within the area and between areas. In addition to social capital, economic resources may be connected to the possibilities to move in and between cities (Tolonen et al., 2018, p. 70). Travelling between cities may be too expensive for some young people and in some areas. Free public transport would support the mobility and well-being of young people.

5 Conclusions

There have always been certain locations in the physical environment where young people know that there are other young people. Digital technology has made it possible for young people to find friends and other young people as well as interesting events in different parts of the city more easily than before without having to agree on the place in advance. The Covid-19 era made it increasingly important for young people to use digital applications such as Snapchat. It worked itself as a digital hangout space but also offered easy opportunities for young people to find physical locations to meet others when more traditional hangout places (e.g. youth centres, libraries) were closed during the lockdowns and other gathering restrictions. Remote wastelands, parks and means of transport (buses, trains, and trams) became popular places to gather and spend free time with others.

Digital applications have also their downsides. Although they offer many opportunities for young people, digital applications can also be used as environments for bullying or harassment, for example in the form of exclusion and shared videos. Since young people actively switch between different applications and away from applications that adults use more actively, it can be difficult for adults to detect such activity, at least not early enough.

Digitality also offers tools for adults to reach young people. On the one hand, it could be seen as supervision or control, for example, when parents follow the activities of young people using mobile phone applications. On the other hand, during the Covid-19 era, youth workers also met new young people in digital environments and offered young people more web-based activities and support than before (Kivijärvi et al., 2024). Using mobile applications, youth workers can support young people in using urban space and follow the movements of young people and go to where the young people are.

Social hubs and hotspots for young people are typically places where young people use their social compass to meet other young people and spend time together. Young people move together, and spontaneous features and quick enthusiasm can be seen in what they do (cf. Amin & Thrift, 2002, p. 157). Young people’s routes may change quickly, and for example, during the same evening, young people can move between different nodes (Pyyry & Tani, 2016, p. 206). Digital applications help them find each other, navigate to a certain node or be present with each other digitally. Both physical and digital location are hence important for young people (cf. Wilson, 2012, pp. 1272–1273).

The hubs of youth gatherings are in constant motion and cannot be found on the official map of adult society. Some places to hang out may be passed down from one generation to another, but even then, the images attached to them can live on in time, and their hangout community or perception of them can remain the same. There are many reasons behind the fact that certain locations become places for young people from different cities and municipalities to meet and hang out. On one hand, it is about transport connections, the facilities and services offered by the centre, and the opportunities for young people to find their own spaces – social pockets in the facilities that are hidden from the eyes of adults. We can talk about the ‘urban capital’, based on which young people choose places and routes (Tolonen et al., 2018). However, the most important thing is sharing the space with other young people, being together and being where things are happening (Pyyry & Tani, 2016, p. 194; Tani, 2015, p. 134), and it is happening in these centres. From the viewpoint of the social compass, digital devices bring information to young people when ‘something happens’ in these hotspots. It may move young people who do not already know each other to the same location, even in droves.

The social compass points somewhere, but it also points away from something. Young people may avoid going to places they feel unsafe, for example due to harassment or racist treatment (Nyyssölä et al., 2023). The social compass can, on one hand, help to avoid certain places that are perceived to be the territory of a certain group of young people or even a gang. On the other hand, it can help to challenge territorial divisions between factions.

Hanging out in one’s own neighbourhood would seem to be typical, as expected, especially for younger teenagers. Little by little, the young person’s territory expands. However, there are young people who move less than others to different areas, which makes their urban experiences different. The reasons for mobility or immobility are often related to the young person’s ‘urban capital’, based on previous experiences, such as how the young person can read the city, what kinds of resources they must use to move around the city and what kinds of relationships they have in the city and with the city (Tolonen et al., 2018; see also Skelton, 2013). In the background are the marginal conditions related to family and finances and, of course, social relations, where friends and loved ones live and move. Young people often move to new places together with friends (Tolonen, 2010; Tolonen et al., 2018, p. 63). If there are no friends, the young person will be alone here as well.

The mobility of young people in the city seems to affect the use of urban space in adulthood as well (Rönnberg & Bernelius, 2021). So, to find new opportunities in their hometown, to enjoy themselves and to know how to use the city’s services even later in life, it is necessary to encourage and guide young people to move around the city outside their own residential area. Young people find things to do and feel welcome in places that they know and feel as their own (ibid.). From the viewpoint of the social compass, it could be useful to support the mobility of young people independently or with friends outside their own residential area.

The concept of social compass helps to understand the diversity of spatial movements of young people in public and semi-public spaces with their social and digital motivations for direction. We hope that the concept will support youth work and urban planning to understand better and clarify more the mechanisms behind young people’s social and spatial movements, and its digitality. In particular, we hope that the concept of social compass will highlight the importance to understand young people’s rights to leisure and recreation as being different from those of other age groups. As the Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment No. 20 (2016) states, the right to rest and leisure as well as to participate freely in play, recreation and artistic activities are essential to young people´s identity development. Unfortunately, these rights are not considered enough, especially for girls: “Fear of and hostility towards adolescents in public spaces, and a lack of adolescent-friendly urban planning, educational and leisure infrastructure, can inhibit the freedom to engage in recreational activity and sports.” (CRC/C/GC/20, pp. 19−20.)

The General Comment No. 17 (2013) of the Committee on the Rights of the Child states that parents, caregivers and public administrators do not give sufficient value to the importance of play in the development of young people. It also highlights that the “greater recognition of the forms and locations of play and recreation preferred by older children is particularly necessary. Adolescents often seek places to meet with their peers and explore their emerging independence and transition to adulthood. This is an important dimension for the development of their sense of identity and belonging.” (CRC/C/GC/17, p. 11.) We argue that the concept of social compass is useful for guardians, caregivers and public administrators to better understand and recognize the importance of young people’s play and recreation in different forms, leading to the development of more appropriate youth policies at local, national and international levels.

6 Discussion

Young people move in and between cities. Borders of municipalities or residential areas do not determine mobility, especially today, when rail traffic has increased in the metropolitan area of Helsinki and public transport ticket pricing does not follow municipal boundaries. The mobility of young people that are ‘big spenders of urban space’ is often extensive, and the hangout places that are important to a young person can be in a city other than home and school. Moving from one place to another and location choices are guided by the social compass, a young person’s city literacy skills (cf. Solnit, 2020) and the ‘urban capital’ (Tolonen et al., 2018). In our data based on observations, young people who moved independently or with their friends and who did not stay in their own residential area were especially highlighted. This is also explained by the method of data collection, where, along with the youth work, our attention was often directed to urban nodes where there are a lot of young people and specifically groups of young people. The other materials gathered in the project opened some perspectives on how different routes were formed by young people who moved alone or in pairs, as a rule – potential passers-by of urban space. Although this point of view came up only a little, we still consider it important to carry it with us, if only because it helps highlight the diversity of young people’s use of the social compass.

According to our interpretation, the understanding of the urban spaces is influenced at least by public transport; stories about interesting places; other young people’s digital or verbal messages about different places; the time of year and day (e.g. opening hours, coldness); the opportunities offered by digital applications; the media; shared mental images of the areas; and the restrictions set by parents and guardians, which included negotiations about health safety in the pandemic time. The familiarity of the place and the experience of the area’s safety or insecurity are also elements affecting the ways in which young people experienced moving in urban spaces and areas (cf. Kemppainen, 2016, p. 10). It is interesting that many meeting places preferred by young people were located at or near a railway station, which according to previous research, increases the risk of insecurity (Kemppainen et al., 2014). The list above is not comprehensive, and its importance for an individual young person certainly varies. For some, even a parent’s wish may be enough to avoid certain spaces, while another may violate an open prohibition. Young people’s hangouts are a social activity, so from its point of view, one factor takes a very central position: a young person who wants to hang out goes where they know or believe other young people are (Malm, 2018, p. 31).

The results of the article show that young people move between city boundaries in their leisure time and navigate between different places. This finding is important to consider more in details when planning multi-professional work, especially services where young people are encountered in public and semi-public spaces (Kauppinen et al., 2024).

As Prinzjakowitsch and Zentner (2023) state, we also agree that that gender specific urban planning alone cannot solve the problem that young females feel unsafe in public spaces. We support Prinzjakowitsch’s and Zentner’s proposal: “It is a general gender issue that needs to be approached in an interdisciplinary way [where] youth work can provide advice and represent the interests of young people in this discussion” (ibid., p. 29).

Age as a category of analysis has been underemphasized within intersectionality (see e.g. Hill Collins, 2019, p. 196). Within intersectionality, violence has long been accepted as an important social problem. Our data shows both sexual harassment from the older men against young females on the public sphere as well as racism that especially elderly men act against young ethnic minority youth. Therefore, moments of violence provide a window into the connections among multiple systems of power (ibid., p. 237), and there is a strong need for further research on the everyday racism and sexual harassment that young people face in public spaces, leading to recommendations on how to reduce these grievances. The concept of social compass is also relevant to understanding these themes, as it can function as a tool to socially inform about threats and safer routes in the city.

We stated earlier that some young people did not move around the city and did not actively use city spaces for many different reasons. Some young people spend time hanging out in their own residential areas. Residential areas can be viewed from the perspective of community resilience, which here means the ability of a system, community, or society to resist, absorb and adapt to various difficulties, crises and threats and their effects and to recover from them in a timely and efficient manner (Jha et al., 2013, p. 4, 22). According to Unger (2008), resilience is linked to the context, and the resilience of children and young people requires that the family and community around them also have resilience (Unger, 2008, p. 221). Thus, it is necessary to examine the resilience of communities. From the point of view of young people, the sociality within residential areas, the boundaries of social groups and belonging to the community are significant (Tolonen et al., 2018, pp. 63–64). A residential area forms a community that benefits from community resilience when faced with various challenges. According to Grönlund and Mäenpää (2021, p. 28), community resilience refers to utilising the abilities, knowledge and skills of individuals and communities in crises, often in cooperation with official work. From its point of view, for example, resourcing schools in residential areas where disadvantage can be seen to accumulate is one way to try to increase the resilience of the residential area, but it is by no means enough. According to Jha and colleagues (2013, pp. 22–24), building effective, successful community resilience requires, among other things, the genuine participation of residents, the opportunity to influence decisions and cross-sectoral, multi-level partnerships. So, a comprehensive, community-based approach is needed.

In this article, we have described the ways in which young people moved in and between different areas of the metropolitan area of Helsinki. In addition, we analysed physical locations that young people found attractive for hanging out. The metaphorical and methodological concept of the social compass was introduced in order to emphasise the multifaceted character of young people’s hangout practices in this day and age. By this concept, our aim was to show how physical locations, digital applications and the social character of hanging out were intertwined in young people’s movements in the city. The use of the social compass can strengthen the mobile sense of place (Edensor, 2010, p. 70; see also Wilkinson & Badwan, 2021, p. 384). Young people navigate from one location to another in urban spaces with the help of their social compass, which shows them their friends’ movements in the city in real time and thus makes it possible to change routes smoothly when the others change their routes. In the social compass, friends can be thought of as checkpoints that are constantly changing their locations and thus make it possible to readjust one’s ‘travel arrow’ towards a new location. In the social compass, moving from one place to another takes place through physical, social and digital negotiation. As a metaphorical and methodological concept, the social compass helped us to understand the diverse characteristics of young people’s movement in the city, as well as different forms and functions of hanging out.