Adolescence, Algorithms and the Search for Coherence

From Scrolling Through to Working Through: Adolescence, Algorithms and the Search for Coherence

Digital technologies now play a formative role in adolescent development, shaping the conditions under which identity and self-experience unfold. Within this altered landscape, some young people increasingly turn to online self-diagnosis and health-tracking practices as ways of stabilising a fragile sense of self. Each piece of data is an echo that promises self-knowledge but arrives refracted through algorithmic glass.

Using psychoanalytic concepts, this paper explores the interrelated dynamics that characterise adolescent engagement with these digital practices, examining the specific textures of technologically mediated experience.

Drawing on clinical material, Professor Lemma argues that adolescents’ reliance on digital tools exemplifies a fragile psychotechnical becoming, exposing how recognition and selfhood are now negotiated through machinic mirrors that both promise control but threaten to erode the essential work of representation.

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Host or Publisher Brent Centre for Young People