Paper short abstract:

Many youth are deeply attuned to the new affordances enabled by online emotional disclosure. Examining young New Zealanders' on- and offline communicative practices, I ask what kinds of new emotional ideologies are at play in generationally-specific enactments of intimacy, distancing, and care.

Paper long abstract:

When 22-year-old James wants to tell his boyfriend something important, he avoids face-to-face communication and messages him instead; “it’s easier to talk about your feelings online,” he explains, “because you can quickly change the topic.” James is one of many New Zealander youth who strategically employ distance to enable an intimacy that otherwise feels potentially uncontrollable. Young people, including James, are also, however, deeply attune to how online emotional engagements entail their own pitfalls. This includes the humiliation of being caught out by those unnecessarily vying for attention and the exhaustion of undertaking “emotional labour” on behalf of too many others. Drawing from theories of recognition articulated by Axel Honneth and Paul Ricouer, this presentation examines young New Zealanders’ self-described communicative practices, and in particular, their careful navigation of online emotional entanglements to maximize meaningful connection while protecting themselves from inter-personal disappointments and threats. Based on interviews with youth aged 14-24, I examine young people’s accounts of how their emotional lives constitute self-improvement projects (leading, ideally, to greater self-recognition) alongside their often acute awareness of the power dynamics generated by becoming deeply entangled in emotional exchanges with known and unknown others. I argue that young people recognize themselves as simultaneously porous and bounded emotional subjects and are often highly self-reflexive about their attempts to open up safe avenues for emotional disclosure. In doing so, I ask what kinds of new emotional ideologies are at play in generationally-specific enactments of intimacy, distancing, and care.