Global Reach, Local Roots: Young Danes and the Internet

een from a meta-perspective young people’s uses of the Internet do not differ essentially from those of the average population of Internet users. We all basically communicate, find information, are entertained or trade on the net. We meet other people, exchange experience and opinions and emotions. Experience and influence of the various forms and purposes of virtual life are intertwined with our experience and life in the physical world and we develop our identities in the dual realms of the virtual and the physical. The world opens up to us via the Internet when we transgress traditional borders in time, space and place and achieve direct and immediate access to people and places around the globe. At the same time we drag the world into our computer and comprise it into meaning and usefulness in our local context. But, with these general meanings in mind Internet uses - and attitudes towards these - are as much defined by social, cultural and educational background transversely to uses distinctive to age and gender and to individual interests, needs and competence.