😱 and Other Adolescent Enduring Contributions During and Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic
Based on 75 diaries created by adolescents during the first months of pandemic, I offer a reading reflecting about one contribution of these “quaranteens” to oral history. Instead of providing an overview of their cultural references, media use, or information habits, my aim is to borrow some of their expressions and experiences to show that digital technologies have affected how we communicate, document life, and write. This needs to be considered, if oral history attempts to capture these aspects of life for posterity, as they may escape conventional methods. A key contribution of these diaries is to show that the digital is a constitutive part of life, not a substrate. Subsequently, they remind us to perceive adolescents (and their contribution) beyond what they do online.