YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

336 10.4  YOUNG PEOPLE’S ONLINE AND PUBLIC LIVES Because the internet is one of the fewplaces where young people predom- inate demographically compared to the rest of the population, and be- cause managing online tools comes more naturally to young people than to the rest of the population, the internet can counterbalance young peo- ple’s absence from traditional forms of public life (see Deželan, 2015). This is supported by the increasingly active form of youth citizenship (Dalton, 2009), which is moving away from traditional citizenship, sensitive to conventional institutional policy processes, and increasingly showing el- ements of networked citizenship based on the way and frequency of on- line use (see Loader et al., 2014). As can be seen from the above data, the internet is increasingly replacing traditional (mass) media in terms of providing access to information, and, at least in theory, allows free com- munication between citizens. This is a paradigmatic change in participa- tion from collective to connective (Navarria, 2019), with the central place of political debate, as far as it occurs at all, no longer a political organiza- tion, but a network of connected individuals. It should be emphasized that young people’s political perception is dif- ferent and it strongly differs from the traditional notions of institutional politics. Namely, these are forms of public action that are outside institu- tional politics and can also be directed at completely different targets than is the case in the traditional political struggle (see Norris, 2002). That politics among young people is broader, but also related to the rejec- tion of institutional policy, is also shown by the deliberate avoidance of established terminology regarding institutional policy in their commu- nication (see Vromen et al., 2014), as well as by a higher level of youth participation in general social affairs, compared to narrower political ones (Deželan, 2015). However, data from various studies already show (e.g. Deželan, 2015; Martin, 2012) that if young people lag behind other age groups in terms of participation in institutional policy, this does not apply to the internet, as young people are at least equally online, while participating in conventional political processes. Compared to the rest of the adult population, young people also manage their contacts with the state to the same extent or to a greater extent, and also participate more