Urban Nature and Digital Media Technologies Entangled: Sensobiographies of Young People in Turku, Finland

Abstract

European youth to a large extent live with mobile media technologies in their everyday environments. At the same time, young people’s relationships with nature are central to imagining resilient futures, and these relations are often formed in cities. It is, thus, important to ask: How digital media technologies affect young people’s sensory relationships with nature in their home cities? This chapter offers novel insights into the myriad ways the use of smartphones and of digital music listening devices mediate perceptions of the urban green. For young city dwellers, mobile media technologies have become entangled with their experiences of natural areas. Technology participates in both social communication and personal mood control. The sensobiographic data of this study, produced with young people in Turku, Finland, demonstrates the multifaceted importance not only of urban forests, but also of so-called “weedy landscapes”: those green areas and rewilding margins that are less controlled by public ordering. In these sensobiographies, both seeking out green sites and the use of mobile technology are integral to the interviewees’ attunement with affective atmospheres.