Teen boys and their smartphones as worldmaking devices in the palm of their hands

This book is about how teen boys use their smartphones to create a world for themselves and their peers. Based on an ethnographic fieldwork spanning two years and following six teenage boys on and offline, the book investigates what kind of worlds these boys are making, and how. It explores the ways in which teen boys connect with other people and express themselves, how they gain agency and make shared worlds. It also asks to what extent this worldmaking is shaped by the opportunities and constraints of technology as well as by social and cultural patterns and the individual existential projects of its creators. A key finding of the book is how smartphone technology offers boys belonging to an ethnocultural or sexual minority new opportunities and agency. This book sheds much-needed light on how the smartphone impacts teenage lives and breaks new ground with its focus on boys, and by introducing the worldmaking perspective, inspired by the thinking of Hannah Arendt, to the study of digital lives. John Magnus R. Dahl (PhD University of Bergen 2021) is Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen – Department of Communication. The research reported in this book was carried out during his postdoc at UiB’s MediaFutures: Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology and Innovation. He has shared his research in Norwegian media, on international academic conferences and in classroom settings