The millennials of Manila: Filipino digital natives and the social automation of everyday life

• Main Author: Velasco, Joseph Ching
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2020
• Subjects: Generation Y > Philippines > Metro Manila; Social networks; Sociology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/1391; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2418&context=etd_doctoral
• Institution: De La Salle University

There has been increasing interest in the millennial generation and scholars have embarked on different inquiries to understand their desired career projections, work ethic, and consumption practices. Millennials have been given different monikers such as GenMe, Generation Y, net generation, generation next, and digital natives. Consumer insight organizations illumined that millennials have a predisposition toward living a public life through social media. More specifically, they have the proclivity to technologically document different facets of their lives and share it on digital social networks. This dissertation, therefore, delineated three life areas of Filipino millennials particularly culture, social relations, and work. Life areas, as understood in this study, are domains of human activities. In order to systematically unpack these life areas, a combination of content analysis and case studies were conducted. All respondents are millennials based in Metro Manila, 50 individuals provided data for content analysis and 10 individuals provided data for the case studies. More specifically, CAQDAS-assisted thematic content analysis on 5,000 social media posts were conducted and 10 cases were assembled to expansively construct an understanding of Filipino millennials as situated in their local context. Karl Mannheim’s multidimensional formulation of generation shaped the theorical direction of this study. In terms of culture, the self and popular media seem to be most apparent in the data. In terms of social relations, family and friends were recurrently featured. In terms of work, Manilabased Filipino millennials seemingly voiced out their contentment and dissatisfaction with their professional and educational engagements. This dissertation, therefore, posits that this set of individuals experienced the digitalization of experience and existence as well as the social automation of everyday live.