Young people’s views on technology in their everyday lives

The ReConnect project aims for young people of to understand the impact of digital technology on their daily lives, appreciating how much time they devote to social media and gaming, and opening up a window to offline activities. The University of Bristol study, of a sample of the 1040 young people involved in the project, showed that they were thoughtful, reflective and insightful about the digital world and in some cases understood its complexity and could move beyond their own immediate experience of it. They believed that they the ones who should control the time they spent using technology, but examples of being readily able to do this were infrequent. For a proportion of those involved, the ReConnect project had opened an awareness of elements of offline life in which they had, up to that point, been more peripherally involved.