Understanding Technological Socialization. A Socio-Generational Study of Young Adults' Techno-Biographical Trajectories in the Region of Madrid

Abstract

In this article the author takes a socio-generational perspective in order to reconstruct young adults’ biographies of socialization in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the region of Madrid, presenting a Bourdieuan approach which includes two entangled dimensions of this process: material domestication of ICTs in daily activity and distinctive digital literacies internalized as dispositions towards practice. From a sample of thirty in-depth interviews structured by gender, age, education and type of digital accessibility, the author’s analysis results in a typology of four ideal techno-biographical trajectories (‘T1-pro-technology users’, ‘T2-practical users’, ‘T3-mobile users’, ‘T4- professional users’) which represent distinctive forms of appropriation of digital technologies into practice.