Snap, Scroll, Repeat: Routine Engagements with and Understandings of Visual Communication Among Youth

This study focuses on understanding what happens when visuality becomes a part of youths' everyday practices of interaction and how visual communication contributes to youths' understandings of self. This paper draws on data collected from 35 interviews with youth between the ages of 15 and 22, capturing variation in socio-economic status, gender, age, and material infrastructure. Preliminary findings suggest that visuality creates new knowledges and practices surrounding key factors such as: age, socioeconomic status, peer group, and parents. The myriad activities of looking add a new component to young people's lives, it allows and encourages them to continually remake their visual selves in a fast paced, digitally mediated environment.