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Adolescence and Identity in the Twenty-First Century: Social Media as Spaces for Mimesis and Learning

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Identity in a Hyperconnected Society

Abstract

The object of this chapter is to explore the role that online social networks or so-called social media play in the formation of identity among twenty-first-century teenagers. McLuhan in a now famous phrase said that “We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us” (M. McLuhan, in The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, ed. by J. Stanlaw, (Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, 2020)). In that sense, social media, which function as a new tool for establishing interpersonal relations, are not merely a handy and neutral element among the several that form adolescent identity but mark that identity through their use. Having a handful of medium- to high-intensity relationships with friends that one sees periodically is not the same as having hundreds of relationships with persons with whom contact takes place only online and which absorb a great amount of time and preoccupation. The demands and codes of the latter are different from those required by face-to-face relationships, and the self-image that they help form is also different.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    David Reyero & Daniel Pattier

  2. Universidad Católica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    David García-Ramos

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  1. David Reyero
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  2. Daniel Pattier
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  3. David García-Ramos
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Correspondence to David Reyero .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

    José Manuel Muñoz-Rodríguez

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Reyero, D., Pattier, D., García-Ramos, D. (2021). Adolescence and Identity in the Twenty-First Century: Social Media as Spaces for Mimesis and Learning. In: Muñoz-Rodríguez, J.M. (eds) Identity in a Hyperconnected Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85788-2_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85788-2_6

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