Digital Memory Practices of Young Adults

Background and Goals

A growing number of personal memory objects like photos and letters exist in digital form. This affects how we remember our past, but also poses questions of how these memories can be preserved for the future and be passed on. This project, which culminated in my PhD thesis researched young people’s practices in creating, sharing and maintaining their personal memories. It also aimed to understand how digital technologies affect young users’ everyday lives in IRL and what meanings they attribute to their digital memory practices. I focused on Instagram for my analysis, but also made observations on Facebook, to contrast the usage of the two platforms.

Methods

  • Digital Ethnography - 12-month ethnography that involved having online conversations with participants, observing and analysing participants’ behaviour and wider cultural discourses on Instagram and Facebook

  • Photo Elicitation - I went with participants through their personal photo archives, predominantly on Instagram. People spoke about the meanings of the pictures, their emotional value and

  • Qualitative Interviews - conducted 17 interviews with young people aged between 19-27. I interviewed 3 people in person, but because of the pandemic, the rest was conducted via video conference applications.

Results

  • How young people use digital media is highly moralised by parents, teachers and society at large.

  • The usage of digital media is often medicalised: People speak of being ‘addicted’ or getting sick from too much social media.

  • Young people internalise and reproduce these moral standards through their own activities

  • The usage of social media directly affects how often and in which situations young people take pictures. The aesthetical choices are also heavily influenced by what they see on Instagram.

  • Social media is as seen as mainly ‘unsafe’ for keeping personal memories long-term, because the platform could disappear and the general low trust in social media corporations.

  • Most photo gallery applications and social media platforms can only fulfil a very specific need that young users have. Users make do by selecting certain apps that are used together to create the desired functionality.

  • Pain points are experienced across mobile applications and social media platforms. They mainly concern the management of large amounts of images and videos as well as simple ways to preserve them for the future, as services and technologies constantly change.

My Learnings

  • Remote interviews have their own pros and cons. As a pro they enhance the likelihood of people having time to participate. As a con a lot of body language can get lost.

  • Remote interviews profit from having short ice breaker conversations and/or exercises to make the participant more comfortable and reduce the ‘awkwardness’