Communication Technologies as Cultural Tools for Adolescent Social Development

In this talk, I view communication technologies as cultural tools that have come to permeate daily life around the world, transforming social development in the process. I discuss how mobile devices and social media are involved three major tasks of social development in the transition from adolescence to adulthood: the development of social networks and social capital, the construction of valued gender roles, and the negotiation of autonomy-relatedness in adolescent-parent relationships. Employing a variety of methods including ethnography, structured interviews, and daily-diaries with diverse youth in the U.S., Maya youth in southern Mexico, and Arab youth in Israel, I demonstrate how the integration of communication technologies into different social niches shape developmental pathways.