Moving Toward a Generational Conversation on Transplanetary Connectivity: A Case of Collective Reading by Global Youth on Reddit
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abstract
Examples of youth withdrawing from economic activities – such as Hikikomori in Japan, NEET (young people Not in Education, Employment, or Training) in Europe, Latin America, and Africa, and the recent “lying flat movement” in China – have been widely observed in the context of contemporary globalization. Such phenomena have been studied either through a deficit lens or as separate, geography-based issues; we know little about the perspectives of affected youth across places, however. Using data (consisting of over a thousand comments) collected from Reddit, an online platform used by young people worldwide for exchange of ideas, this paper explores how a news report on China’s “lying flat movement” was discussed in that supraterritorial space, and how this collective reading event has enabled the emergence of a global consciousness among global youth. From broader perspectives transcending territorial borders, these Redditors re-spatialized the local phenomenon under discussion as a generational issue of common concern and, hence, a conversation of transplanetary connectivity. This case manifests the ongoing construction, extension, and intensification of social links among youth who feel stuck, or “out of place and pace”, at the current stage of contemporary globalization (Overell, 2018, p.212). I argue that consciousness of connectivity can function as an innovative and productive entry point to understanding the contestations and possibilities of “planetary youth”. Exploration of such subjective aspects of contemporary globalization, especially from the perspectives of youth who are habitually peripheralized and neglected, also reveals some progressive potentials that merit future consideration.
