Digital intimacies: friends, lovers and families in contemporary Asia

How do young women understand and experience intimacy in the age of social media, and are their experiences qualitatively different after the millennial turn and the rapid expansion of digital technologies? What impact do these digital experiences have on how millennial subjects experience, understand, and negotiate social relations in globalising Asia? Here are some preliminary findings from a multi-sited ongoing research project which looks at college-going women in Bangalore, Singapore, Hong Kong and Guangzhou to understand how their lives in these aspiring “smart” cities are being shaped by the phenomenal growth of digital technology use in Asia in the past ten years. Our findings thus far suggest that social institutions such as family and marriage are being redefined through digital mediation, a process that includes boundary-drawing, creating zones of intimacy, and the reconfiguration of relationships in the digital domain.