Introduction

Summary table of the respondents’ characteristics

First name	Age	Curriculum	Declared feeling of expertise*	Preferential uses of the digital**
Anastasia	17	Student First year in an English degree (dropout) Planned reorientation in a Sales BTS	Strong	Playing video games Hacking
Armelle	18	Student First year in a Modern Literature degree	Very low	Chatting on social media Searching for information
Flavien	17	First year in a Political Sciences degree	Moderate	Searching for information Listening to music
Guillaume	17	First year in a Spanish degree	Very low	Searching for information Chatting on social media
Morgan	19	Upper sixth (repeated a year)	Strong	Downloading and watching movies Searching for information
Pierre	18	Student First year in a History degree	Moderate	Downloading and watching movies Chatting on social media
Reynald	18	Student Audiovisual BTS	Strong	Downloading and uploading movies “Regulation”
Zoé		Student First year in a Japanese degree (expected to repeat a year)	Moderate	Downloading Fansubbing

Date of data collection: April 2015 [during portrait-interviews]
** The feelings of expertise in the field of the digital were studied based on the adolescents’ declarations, as well as on a scale measure they were provided with (the researcher gave them a small ruler graduated from 0 to 10, so that everyone could mark their level of expertise on it).
* By “preferential uses of the digital,” we refer to the two main uses that the respondents would make of the internet.

1. The awareness of a dominant economic model

6The adolescents whom we have met, users of the digital in all of its forms (social networks, video games, information search...), demonstrate a real awareness of the dominant economic model on the internet. They strongly contest this model while still feeling that they have to “make do with” it, in order to “ fit in ”.

1.1. “It’s capitalism” (Pierre)

7Declaring herself a “non expert,” Armelle has noticed that throughout her daily uses of the digital, she would often be driven to choose tools according to logics that are independent of her will. She also notes the limited compatibility of certain software she uses for schoolwork, as well as the “default” equipment of her computer station: “I don’t really know why that is, but on my computer, I got Windows, which means that a lot of the programs that were already installed on my computer are called Windows something.” That situation disturbs the young woman, who realizes the limited nature of her freedom of action on the digital tool, she who in addition does not have the necessary skills to divert the “ready-made path of the program” and resort to other tools.

9This is why Reynald and Pierre, confronted with the need to use video-editing software to produce a digital travel journal for their class, refuse at once to choose Windows Movie Maker, though already installed on the computers running Windows and used by several of their classmates—the same ones who declare themselves “non experts” like Armelle or Guillaume.

• 14 The researcher’s initials indicate that she is speaking.

Reynald: – Using this means surrendering to the Windows empire in all its splendor! Do not look for anything efficient, Windows takes care of you!
AC14: – And do you mind that?

Reynald: – I do indeed, it’s pure marketing. Anyway, you have to pay for all this software, we’re not naive, we know that already. But now, being limited in the use of software because the machine’s designer did everything he could to make it that way, yes, this bothers me.

Pierre [with a disgusted pout]: – It’s capitalism…

1.2. “At the same time, we can’t live cut off from the world. But…” (Morgan)

10While the ideological refusal of this economic model reaches consensus among the surveyed adolescents, they are still involved in and committed to this system. Regretting “permanent connectivity” and the proliferation of applications inducing constant soliciting, Reynald strives to regulate his uses of the digital, namely his consideration of the requests addressed to him and resulting from his uses of the digital. For him, the ability to escape the dominant model lies in the development of communication strategies relying on digital tools and their mode of operation. For example, he uses Facebook to create a buzz around the movies he directs: for his movies to best circulate on social media, thus ensuring “[his] self-promotion,” Reynald plans and targets his posts, first on Facebook and then YouTube, making the best of the existing economic model:

“We know how all of this works, I think we have to use it to our own advantage. [...] Once I have made a short, I post it once, I wait for a bit, post it once again so that it is at the top of the newsfeed, increasing the chances for it to be seen, a true communication strategy! [laughter].”

11One might deem this dialectic contradictory, i.e. ideological rejection of the model vs support/utilization of the model for personal purposes. However, could we acknowledge that everyone does more or less the same and that it is indeed quite hard to exist, to find one’s place in the information and communication society, without being an integral part of it?

12The surveyed high-school students are perfectly aware of the apparent contradiction between their ideological and practical positions with regards to the dominant economic model on the internet. All of them explain their practices in a similar way, like Zoé:

“We have to fit in, it’s not so much that we get used to it as we have to get used to it, otherwise we lag behind, we’re going to end up looking like an 80 year-old guy discovering the Minitel for the first time!”

13Eventually, Morgan, who is President of the high school’s Maison des lycéens and has implemented a communication strategy to “touch” his classmates based on the various social networks they use, summarizes the surveyed students’ apprehensions of the digital and its underlying commercial and industrial logics: “That said, we can’t live cut off from the world. And since we have to cope with it, best we learn how to use these logics.”

2. A political view of the digital society

14Aware of the internet’s dominant model, the adolescents make the best of it—which summarizes the expression they often use “to make do with it”—rather than they are happy with it. Quite the contrary, in fact. As we got used to knowing these adolescents better, we realized that they felt truly concerned with the way the digital, along with the society shaped by and with it, are considered nowadays. Being questioned on their informational “being in the world” gave them the opportunity to express a genuinely political vision of the digital society, a vision in which they want to be fully involved, refusing to be mere spectators, and expressing during the interviews their wish to develop their perspective on this world at the crossroads between economic, social and cultural logics. By the way, Reynald is categorical: “We have to further develop this vision of the internet to make it a genuine democratic tool.”

2.1. “The internet needs a truly democratic political program” (Reynald)

15The free circulation of knowledge is central to the remarks of the adolescents whom we have met. They plead for a universal access to resources, confronted with the feeling that the internet is subjected to a strong contradiction: being an extremely powerful medium for the circulation of knowledge and being subjected to strong enclosures, preventing a universal access to the produced knowledge.

16Reynald is particularly wordy and virulent when we tackle this issue together. The young audiovisual media enthusiast, who directs feature films and short films with his own equipment, is confronted on a daily basis to the paradox of a “medium which provides us with everything we need to do awesome things, yet is stranded in every way.” In order to create audiovisual products meeting his expectations, Reynald does not hesitate to resort to professional video-editing software, the cost of which is quite significant. He claims the right to use such software, for the sake of the democratization of access and promotion of talents, beyond the economic capital held:

“Originally, it is designed for professionals, but you should never forget that there are talented people who can’t afford it. Depriving them from a tool that allows them to fully achieve their potential is anti-democratic, in my opinion, and the internet shouldn’t encourage this, no, on the contrary, the internet should help everyone achieve their goals, to the best of their abilities, without any economic constraints. This is my opinion. [...] In disadvantaged countries, it is said that school should be free for all children, so that they become emancipated and break their chains. We already have free education, but we can go even further, the technology of the internet allows us to become emancipated, provided that we are given free access to its contents. That’s it.”

17A true political program (Reynald) that also demonstrates the Western awareness of having opportunities to access knowledge in the so-called material society—the comparison with free education is particularly interesting—, and calls for the expansion of this emancipating accessibility across networks.

• 16  A French movie magazine specialized in fantastic, science-fiction and horror movies.

Morgan: – I was reading a review in Mad Movies16, movies I didn’t know, I owe my entire culture to downloading! [...] I know it’s prohibited, I’m careful, because I don’t want my mother to pay for me, since I still live in her house. But I admit that once I get my own bandwidth in my flat in Lille, then I won’t have any moral dilemma. I don’t care. If that’s what it takes for me to improve my knowledge...
AC: – Is that what downloading is for you? A means to be educated?
Morgan: – Well yeah, sure! Like I told you, I owe my movie culture, my whole culture to illegal downloading! Of course I think it’s outrageous to make people pay to access cultural works on the internet.

19Later during the interview, the young adult paid a vibrant tribute to the creators of American TV series South Park, who presumably do not partake in commercial logics and make their creations available to the greater number.

20As one can see, far from being a simple transgression, illegal downloading is considered by these adolescents as a practice in keeping with their political idea of the digital society, which must favor the private appropriability of cultural goods as much as possible.

21Zoé is convinced of that: this idea of the internet as a medium for cultural emancipation must not be limited to the sole digital space, but should be a political principle for society as a whole. The adolescent points out with great acuteness the contradiction between words and practices in politics, which according to her are detrimental to the universal access to cultural goods:

“Truth is that there’s also a financial market behind this, and that the government gets something out of it, I guess. I always find it a bit paradoxical, and... disgusting, yes, I find it disgusting to tell us ‘you have to educate yourself, the internet is great for that’ on the one hand, and on the other hand ‘you have to pay for culture, otherwise you get a fine.’ To me, networks also give this freedom: that of finding culture, information, which you couldn’t set your hands on without the internet. I believe that this is a privilege.”

2.2. “The internet is first and foremost an opportunity to share and exchange without restraint” (Zoé)

22“A privilege,” Zoé affirms. This “privilege,” the surveyed adolescents fully exercise it, in order to promote the data-circulation tool that the internet represents for them, as well as to foster sharing at every level. These young people are often accused of heralding fanatical individualism. Yet, as we observe and question them about their digital practices, we realize that many of them make use of the network to share, and not necessarily for their personal interests. A genuine “sharing” culture is at work.

“The benefit is that we’re all fans of the same thing, so our exchanges are very healthy. Providing that we have the same tastes in anime, we begin to talk, sometimes for hours, it’s interesting, it’s just for pleasure. [...] The community is just here to help each other, no one’s interested in anything other than sharing information.”

25Similarly, Reynald—along with Pierre and another classmate—recently created an association that aims to promote young moviemakers. Because they also provide cultural works with great visibility, digital tools are largely used to structure this network.

3. Counter-culture in actions

3.1. “We are all responsible for the use we make of it” (Guillaume)

28Once again, action is considered from a collective perspective, with a view to improve the conditions of living and sharing on the internet for the community.

30This use of the network, with an aim to share what they consider as “ridiculous challenges” (Armelle) or “inanities bringing nothing to the community” (Anastasia), is condemned by the surveyed youths, who affirm that they do not take any part in it. Besides, some of them set themselves as regulators of this sharing space which is the internet, a space that follows one rule only, as expressed by Morgan: “I don’t want the internet to become a town square”.

31Consequently, along with three of his classmates who are convinced that internet users should be made aware of their responsibilities with regards to their use of the digital, Reynald exercises a power of regulation on the exchanges taking place across the social networks. He tells how, irritated by “people who post pictures of themselves in a ridiculous pose or close to hyper-pornography too, or those who use the internet to spew out their hatred of others, the racists, homophobes, things like that,” his classmates and himself have created a fake Facebook account. The members of this account are responsible for directly alerting the users of the social network who make remarks breaking the law, or post pictures likely to stain their e-reputation. Reynald’s words reveal an acute sense of responsibility in this regulation of contents and exchanges, which does not so much aim to muzzle internet users, as to make them realize that the internet is “a chance, for every one of us, to educate ourselves, to inform ourselves without being slaves to the television industries, as well as to develop ways of thinking and think together.” To quote the adolescent’s own terms, the aim is to “do Facebook justice” through this act of regulation and empowerment.

3.2. “I’ve got the power!” (Anastasia)

32In concrete actions, counter-culture follows a horizontal logic of regulation within the internet users’ community. However, for others, counter-culture in actions directly tackles the vertical—one could say pyramidal—organization. For some of the surveyed youths, reversing the domination relationships they observe and experience on the internet, through their daily use of this tool, has become an act of political activism of the utmost importance.

33To do so, one must have a strong power of action, namely the power to act on computer systems beyond function creep. Anastasia, whose passion for video games has led her to take a specific interest in the technical resources of networks, is fully aware of the power that lies in her hands:

Anastasia: – I didn’t just learn things about Japan. And that’s all thanks to games!
AC: – What do you mean exactly?
Anastasia: – Well, one thing leading to another, I did some research on operating systems, the most efficient equipments, and I even learned how to hack websites! Of course, don’t shout it from the rooftops, but since I am good at that, I’ve got the power [sic]! [laughter]
AC: – You’ve got the power! Power on what exactly?
Anastasia: – Well, on the internet first, and on others too.

AC: – “On others”?
Anastasia: – Those who block websites, who design closed systems, the kind which you have to pay to access, or be a member of the Society, all that. So yes, I’ve got the power in a way, because since I know how to hack, well, I can somewhat rule this whole system.

34Of course, the adolescent’s words show subversion of technical order, which consists in breaking into blocked resources through specific configurations. However, throughout the long interviews that we have conducted, it has appeared to us that subversion includes another, more essential facet: its political dimension. By hacking, the adolescent wants to reverse the power relationship. She objects to the impact of this relationship on her digital info-communicational practices and mentions her will to fight against a “system” whose machinations she denounces.

Flavien: – I never use Word. I’m an Open Office user for life!
AC: – Is this a claim?
Flavien: – Sure it is!

AC: – Why?
Flavien: – Word, it’s the Windows empire, the markets developing on the users’ backs, you, me, everybody, while there are free tools that are at least as well made, or even better! Did you know for example that Open Office improves according to the users’ actions and needs? So yes, I’m all for using this rather than Word.
AC: – You make it sound like militancy.
Flavien: – Yes, I have to admit it’s somewhat true. Well, you know, for me it’s quite like people who defend biological agriculture because it’s good for society. I believe in that.

Conclusion

37So are the “digital natives” the slaves and accomplices of an economic, industrial model dominating the internet? Not at all!

39Do not misjudge though: those who take actions to express themselves, beyond words, are those who have the power to act, and therefore those who, in addition to possessing the keys to understand the system, have the keys to affect it. Armelle or Guillaume, both declaring to be non-experts, are aware of the limits of their power to act: their mastery of the tool is not sufficient to assert themselves in the digital society. They are reduced to silence, all the more so than our society grants paramount importance to those who express or show themselves, or in short, to those who take action.