Literature on youth and risk has traditionally been dominated by psycho-dynamic explanations of social action, studied within a set of adult and problem-centered discourses focused on the abuse of alcohol and drugs, unprotected sex and dangerous driving. Despite the most radical deterministic positions no longer hold sway, many studies on youth risk-taking are still grounded in a series of assumptions about the meaning of youth and adolescence that see biology and psychology as key influences on behaviour (France 2010). Thus, the research intends to investigate the relationship between young people and risk-taking, shifting attention from excess to pleasure, and analyzing perceptions and experiences of online "dangerous games" (Giordano, Farci, Panarese, 2012; Giordano, Panarese, Parisi, 2017) in a sociological perspective.
Dangerous games are heterogeneous forms of fun - such as balconing, choking games, and surfing suicide - common to which are: the search to overcome physical, legal or moral limits; performative dimensions exhibited among peers or spread by digital media; playful or challenging connotation.
A specific aim of the research is to identify the main hermeneutical dimensions that characterise the risk-related attitudes and behaviours of young people in social-media-based dangerous games, such as Cinnamon challenge, Tide Pods challenge, Salt and ice challenge, etc. Social media challenges - also known as social media dares - are viral videos of people performing acts based that they have been dared to do.
The methodology includes content analysis, discourse analysis and visual analysis of online images and texts regarding a selection of social media challenge on the main Social Network Sites (SNS), and a nationwide web-survey aimed at detecting perceptions and experiences of risk-taking in the social media challenges, and differences and similarities in symbolic, normative and moral assumptions on risk among young people and adults.
