Popular narratives on digital media practices are often entrenched in psychologized and apolitical frameworks that ascribe simplistic labels of addiction and deficiencies to digital practices of marginalized youths in particular. This paper explores ethnographically the social complexities behind polemicized, mundane, and apparently meaningless digital practices such as scrolling through social-media feeds. The author links elements of interfaces designed to grab attention, erase effort, and enable flow, with everyday struggles of youths faced with unemployment, waiting, and boredom. Scrolling is conceptualized as an embodied everyday practice entangled in the intentions of designers. The research draws primarily on an ethnographic study into Viennese youth clubs in 2018 and 2019. Insights from the fieldwork suggest that seemingly trivial practices such as infinite scrolling represent life-affirming acts of “strolling” through social and commercial arcades as much as they signify boredom and stagnation. [youth, digital design, scrolling, addiction, boredom, smartphones, social media]

中文翻译：

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滚动和无聊的中间空间：维也纳边缘的边缘化青年

关于数字媒体实践的流行叙述往往根植于心理和非政治框架中，这些框架将成瘾和缺陷的简单标签归因于边缘化青年的数字实践。这篇论文从人种学角度探讨了争论化的、平凡的、显然毫无意义的数字实践背后的社会复杂性，比如滚动浏览社交媒体提要。作者将旨在吸引注意力、消除努力和促进流动的界面元素与面临失业、等待和无聊的年轻人的日常斗争联系起来。滚动被概念化为一种与设计师意图纠缠在一起的具体日常实践。该研究主要基于对 2018 年和 2019 年维也纳青年俱乐部的人种学研究。实地考察的见解表明，无限滚动等看似微不足道的做法既代表着无聊和停滞，也代表着在社交和商业拱廊中“漫步”的肯定生活的行为。[青春、数字设计、滚动、成瘾、无聊、智能手机、社交媒体]