Using the cyborg to re-think young people’s uses of Facebook

The use of information technologies by young people is commonly understood to be a separate, often risky, activity and a distinct form of sociality. Challenging the dominant understanding, this article applies Haraway’s cyborg theory to explore how Facebook-mediated relationships are interconnected with material relationships and daily social life. Young people’s perspectives are privileged through 40 face-to-face interviews in two rural Victorian towns. The cyborg metaphor highlights the fluid melding of various conceptual dualisms altered in the overlap between the virtual environs of Facebook and the material, everyday lives of the young participants, analysed here using the cyborg metaphor. In this sense, Facebook can be best understood as an individualised extension of young people’s broader social lives, part of a larger suite of information technologies, social media and other mediated sociality that is interconnected with materially based, face-to-face interactions.