Youth Behavior in Digital Age:
The Born-digital Archival Concepts
Bachrul Ilmi
Department of Library and Information Science, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
Keywords: youth behavior, born-digital archiving, digital age, social media phenomenon
Abstract: Along with technological developments, today's archival revolution has developed the concept of born-
digital. This is the era in which archives have been created that are not printed on paper. Archives are also
unwittingly created through daily virtual activities. This can be observed through the phenomenon of social
media usage, which today most youths have, depending on its function. This paper aims to analyse the born-
digital archival concept that occurs in relation to youth behaviour that has been embedded in the digital age.
This paper used the qualitative approach; the data in this paper was obtained through literature studies and
observations of social phenomena in Indonesia. The data obtained was collected, analysed, interpreted, and
presented descriptively. The results of the paper show that the youth’s habits and dependence on social
media today unconsciously leaves a record and creates digital-archives, namely through online storage,
making online documents, arranging documents by folders and through the use of social media included
photo archives, documents, posts archive etc. The need for recognition and identity seeking has become the
main factor of the youth’s dependence on social media that also forms the born-digital archives.
1 INTRODUCTION
The rapid development of technology has greatly
affected the changing habits of the people who are
inside it. This development makes people slowly
leave behind obsolete conventional technology and
begin to welcome in the latest technology as its
successor. Ease and freedom of access is one of the
backgrounds of community migration using the
latest technology to fulfil their information needs.
All of their needs can now be found by smartphones,
which are assisting tools. In its broad functions
supported by internet access, people can do several
tasks at the same time (multitasking). Therefore it
will consume time more effectively and the person
will get more productive.
The ease of internet access today is increasingly
allowing societies to reach any information in
seconds with unlimited access. Through the
collaboration between smartphones and easy internet
access support, an individual can do their work
easily, in a lighter manner and in handheld. Such
developments can drive the fulfilment of the daily
information needs of the community. They even tend
to rely on gadgets/smartphones in their daily
activities.
The information obtained is certainly no longer
attached to physical objects (printed) but it can be in
digital form. The users in the digital environment are
called the digital community. This ease drives people
to think about changing their habits, from
conventional into new habits, utilising the ongoing
technology developing. Now with the technological
advances taking place, habits are beginning to shift
to the digital environment. Photos taken digitally no
longer need to be printed and stored on conventional
media, but they can be directly uploaded to online
storage media. Such cases are mainly conducted by
the internet generation who have internet literacy
and the ability to surf their information needs in the
digital form.
Based on the Internet World Stats survey in
2017, it was noted that the number of internet users
in Indonesia ranked 5th in the world, after China,
India, the US and Brazil; 143,260,000 individuals
were active internet users with an internet growth of
7.063%. These results indicate that the literacy and
awareness level of the technology development rate
of the Indonesian people is above average. There has
been a detailed composition analysis of the
Indonesian internet users based on the age
demographics categories by Asosiasi Penyelenggara
Jasa Internet Indonesia (henceforth APJII) in 2017 :
49.52% were users aged 19-34 years, 29.55% were
Ilmi, B.
Youth Behavior in Digital Age.
DOI: 10.5220/0008819502230229
In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Contemporary Social and Political Affairs (ICoCSPA 2018), pages 223-229
ISBN: 978-989-758-393-3
Copyright
c
 2019 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
223

users aged 35-54 years, while 16.68% were users
aged 13-18 years. The remaining 4.24% were users
over the age of 54 years old. According to the data
acquired from the survey, it can be concluded that
the internet users dominated the productive ages,
which is where the internet facility is needed to
assist their work. Not only does it assist their work,
the use of the internet can also be a tool in education
and to meet the daily needs of young adults and
youths as well. The youth use of the internet is
mostly as a medium for learning, for building a
networking in a friendship-based environment, and
looking for public information to fulfil their
information needs through their smart phone as an
access tools. The networking needs of youths are
inseparable from youth internet users.
The bloom of the social media phenomenon
nowadays is an indicator of the dependence of
human activities. Every single activity (office,
household, and all human needs, both primary and
secondary) is not spared from the use of information
technology. Search histories and online activities are
unconsciously created and collected into archives.
Search history and online activities are
unconsciously created, collected and archived. These
archives are personal archives as by being born-
digital, the archive is created in digital form and not
as the result of digitalisation (digitised archives)
(Bountouri, 2017). Such a phenomenon mostly
occurs in youths, in which it is a daily habit and
tends to depend on online activities, especially social
media. The importance of the study of born-digital
archives in the youth’s daily activities is apparent
through good digital archive management and being
able to facilitate and accelerate daily activities,
especially when using social media and networking.
There has been a similar study conducted on the
pattern of child and youth communications through
the internet conducted by the Ministry of
Communication and Information and UNICEF in
2014. The results revealed that the majority of
adolescent communication was conducted with their
peers. This was followed by communication with
their teachers, and with their family members and
was also significant. This paper will review and
analyse the habits and digital activities of youths
regarding born-digital archiving.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Born-Digital Archives
A digital archive is a repository that stores one or
more collections of digital information objects with
the intention of providing long-term access to the
information (Gerderen, 2005). The resources include
items created and managed in digital form (Erway,
2010). There are different types of Born Digital
Material according to Erway (2010):
 Digital photographs. The prevalence of digital
cameras is making digital photos one of the
fastest growing forms of born-digital content;
 Digital documents. Maintained in digital form,
standard formats such as the Portable
Document Format (PDF) are used to retain
formatting, while separating the documents
from the software that created them;
 Harvested Web content. Archives can harvest
material from websites related to a particular
subject or event. Open-source tools developed
by the Internet Archive can be used to crawl
and provide access to the content. The data
can be kept in the ISO standard WARC
(WebARChive) file format;
 Digital manuscripts. Personal “papers” can be
created as born-digital manuscripts, which
may accumulate automatically while
archivists plan what to do with them. A very
few manuscript collections may merit
emulation in order to recreate the workspace
of the author;
 Electronic records. This type of collection
might consist mostly of documents in word
processing formats or it may include an array
of e-mails, databases, spreadsheets,
presentations and other types of files, some of
which can only be read using proprietary
software. In most cases, it is best to get the
content out of the proprietary format;
 Static data-sets. Some data-sets need special
software and documentation to make them
usable and the system may need to be retained
or emulated. Context, including the nature of
the sample, the data collection approach and
software used, should be retained;
 Dynamic data. This type includes data-sets
that are added to over time, that are time-
based, or that include genetic sequencing or
Computer-Aided Design (CAD). It can
include data that is meaningless until it is
acted upon—and there may be an infinite
number of actions and results. In many cases,
the software, if not the hardware, environment
will need to be retained or emulated;
 Digital arts. Digital art may be as simple as
digital photography or it may be much more
complex in that it could be mixed media,
dynamic, or could require the recreation of an
entire installation to render effectively;
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 Digital media publications. These are
materials that are routinely published in digital
form. Commercial publications like music
CDs, movies on DVD, and video games are
on fairly stable media and when those media
is replaced, the content is often re-released in
new formats.
2.2 Personal Digital Archiving
Personal files contain the documentation of
individual lives and human personality. While these
finds often reflect the recorded evidence of the
functions of the creator, in the same way that the
finds of organisations do, personal archives also
contain traces of the individual character of the
record’s creator (Hobbs, 2001).
Personal archives require a different appraisal
approach than administrative or government records.
A starting point for this new treatment could be
concerned with how we conceptualise the records
and how we approach them during the acquisition
process (Hobbs, 2001). Personal archives are not
only about the transactions of “official” personal
business and formal activity, but they are also a
prevalent source of commentary on daily and
personal life and relationships, by their very nature.
Broadly put, the finds of an individual are a site
where their personality and the events of life interact
in documentary form.
Personal archives reflect not only what a person
does or thinks, but who they are and how they
envision and experience their lives. An individual
creates records to serve his or her needs,
predilections or personality, not because some law,
statute, regulation, or corporate policy says so.
Regardless of any perceived historical or cultural
value, personal digital archives represent an
important chance for individuals to give voice to
their own perspectives, to make sure that the cultural
record reflects their lived experiences and to share
their stories with other people if they choose.
Well-managed personal archives will also make
it easier for individuals to maintain control over their
personal digital files and allow them to make well-
informed decisions about how their files are used in
daily life, while allowing them to plan for the
preservation or disposition of their digital files after
death.
Redwine (2015) stated that technological
obsolescence and a lack of planning are two of the
most obvious threats to the wellbeing of personal
digital files, but less visible threats can be equally
harmful. Most of the risks to digital files fall into the
following categories:
 Ageing hardware and software;
 A lack of secure storage and backup;
 Natural and man-made disasters;
 Neglect;
 The loss of cloud-based hosting or service
providers;
 A lack of planning and
 The death of the individual.
Moreover, there are 3 main recommendations
provided Redwine (2015), addressing the key threats
to personal digital files, namely Quick Wins, More
Effort, and Maximum Effort:
Firstly, Quick Wins. The archives owner/
crerator should:
 choose software that is well supported and that
creates files that can be read by a variety of
different programs;
 develop file naming conventions that are easy
to remember and apply them consistently;
 create multiple back-up copies and store them
in different geographical locations;
 test the back-up copies to make sure that they
are accessible and contain what they intend
them to; and
 transfer files to new media every 2 to 4 years..
Secondly, More Effort. The archives owner/
crerator should:
 access the stored media regularly to confirm
that it is in good working condition;
 regularly transfer and back up photos, videos,
and other important digital files from mobile
device(s) to a more secure form of storage,
either cloud-based or physical media such as a
computer’s hard drive;
 be conscientious about migrating files to
newer file formats if the software necessary to
open them is becoming obsolete;
 compare cloud storage providers and do the
legwork to find a secure service and
 maintain more secure, geographically-
distributed back-up copies of your files both in
the cloud and on physical media.
Thirdly, Maximum Effort. The archives owner/
crerator should:
 survey their digital files and create an active
plan that includes selecting files for
safekeeping, assess the need for file format
migration and utilise secure and backed up
storage;
Youth Behavior in Digital Age
225

 identify and locate the hardware and software
necessary to access obsolete formats in their
care and
 reorganise and rename unidentified files in
accordance with their used file naming
conventions.
2.3 Youth Behavior
Adolescence is a period of life in-between childhood
and adulthood. It is described as a time of
experimenting with roles and identities, still void of
the burden of social norms and obligations yet
slowly preparing the youngsters for their lives as full
members of the social collective. During this process
of social integration, young people find themselves
in a complex social system, composed of elements
such as tradition, history, social demands, hopes and
individual future prospects, all of which they have to
incorporate into a coherent picture in order to build a
proper foundation for their personal life. Step by
step, they have to obtain new social roles and extend
their range of social performance (Henze, 2015).
Youths make up the largest percentage of internet
users and the users of telecommunications gadgets.
“As the early adopters of new media, youths are, in
many ways, the defining users of new media”
(Montgomery, 2001). Today's young people are the
generation of 'net-geners', who have their own
uniqueness. Their brains have developed differently.
Their brains process fast-moving images differently”
(Tapscott, 2009 in Zimic, 2009). Participating in
online media is one of the distinguishing features of
today's youth character, as a digital generation
compared to the youths of the previous age.
3 RESEARCH METHODS
This study used a qualitative approach, where the
data was obtained from several theories relevant to
conditions in the field related to the practice of born-
digital archives in the youth environment and then
examined qualitatively. Conclusions were drawn up
according to the data.
4 RESULT AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Youth Behaviour in the Digital Age
Rahmayani (2015) predicted that in 2018, Indonesia
will become "the sleeping digital technology giant of
Asia." Supported by data from the Digital Marketing
Research Institute (e-market), it estimates that in
2018, there will be more than 100 million active
smartphone users in Indonesia. With such a large
number of users, Indonesia will become the country
with the fourth largest number of active smartphone
users in the world after China, India and America.
Based on this data, it can be concluded that there is
great potential for Indonesia in the area of equitable
technological mastery. This needs to happen,
because one indicator of the development of a
country is the prevalence of public services and the
affordability of technology evenly.
According to Pertiwi (2018), the research
conducted by We Are Social in the Kompas issued
on March 1st 2018, a British media company
working with Hootsuite, the average Indonesian
spends 3 hours and 23 minutes a day accessing
social media. From the report entitled "Essential
Insights Into the Internet, Social Media, Mobile, and
E-Commerce Use Around The World" published on
January 30th, 2018, out of Indonesia's total
population of 265.4 million, there are 130 million
active social media users with a penetration level of
49 percent. This data is a reflection that Indonesian
people have digital activities that are very active on
social media as a container for meeting increasingly
diverse information needs. The more active they are
in their activities on social media, the more digital
traces are left behind by the social media users.
Either consciously or unwittingly, social media users
have also collected born-digital digital archives.
4.2 Conscious Born-digital Archiving
Sometimes consciously, born-digital archiving can
be conducted by digital age youths. One of the
habits of youths today is relying on cloud storage.
This requires an internet network to store digital
files. The digital files that they have are uploaded
and stored in cloud storage. It is intended that the
data or files can still be used and that they can be
stored for longer and are safer in the process. Most
of the digital files and data are born-digital, which
includes image files originating from digital camera
devices, mobile phones and office files that have not
been printed on paper. There are several cloud
storage servers that are often used including
Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive, 4shared, Mega,
and so on. Youths today have taken advantage of
these facilities, with them even becoming the
mainstay of alternative storage that is relatively safe
from viruses and other digital disturbances.
Certain management is needed to assist the
owner of the archive in organising the digital
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archives created, especially when looking for
archives that may be needed in the future.
Management is carried out in order to be able to
adjust things personally, so then it can be easily
understood and accelerated, as well as being a
security technique. This is because only the owner
can understand the details of the storage and have
access to the born-digital files or archives that he
owns.
In conscious digital archiving, there are 3 split
main recommendations put forward Redwine (2015)
addressing the key threats to personal digital files.
Firstly, is Quick Wins. The archives owner/creator
should:
 choose software that is well supported and that
creates files that can be read by a variety of
different programs. In this case, the owner
must archive software that can produce digital
files that can be read by other software in
general. This is also related to the digital file
format that is produced. For example, a digital
file in the form of an extension document
(.docx) will not be readable by certain
software, because the (.docx) version is too
high and the file reader does not support the
file. What is done is to reduce the format to
(.doc), (.odt) or (.rtf),
 develop file naming conventions that are easy
to remember and to apply these consistently.
Anticipating file owner negligence is
necessary in digital archiving, therefore there
needs to be a kind of guideline that refers to
consistent and ultimately useful digital file
naming in retrieval;
 create multiple back-up copies and store them
in different geographical locations. Even
though digital files are stored in the cloud, it is
also still necessary to physically backup or put
files on different cloud services. This is to
anticipate the worst possibility that the saved
file is corrupted, lost, or damaged;
 test the back-up copies to make sure they are
accessible and contain what they are intended
to. There is a need to check the backup files
regularly to make sure that the files are still
accessible; and
 transfer files to new media every 2 to 4 years.
Periodically backing up data every 2 to 4
years anticipates unwanted things. If the born-
digital file is stored in the cloud, then the
archive owner must backup to a different
account and even to a different vendor. This is
done so then the risk of losing data due to the
risk of bankruptcy of the cloud storage
companies that are not responsible for digital
files.
Secondly, is More Effort. The archive
owner/creator should:
 access the storage media regularly to confirm
that it is in good working condition. Through
regular checking, the archive owner can
ensure that the digital files are safe and
properly accessed;
 regularly transfer and back up photos, videos,
and other important digital files from their
mobile device(s) to a more secure form of
storage, either cloud-based or physical media,
such as a computer’s hard drive. This can be
done automatically by synchronising the
device with cloud storage;
 be conscientious about migrating files to
newer file formats if the software necessary to
open them is becoming obsolete. Updating the
file format can make a file that can initially be
read properly, unable to be read once updated.
Analysis is needed before converting digital
file formats, to determine whether or not it is
compatible with the reader;
 compare cloud storage providers and do the
legwork to find a secure service. Conducting a
comparison of the services, security and
features in order to minimise file loss;
 maintain more secure and geographically
distributed back-up copies of your files both in
the cloud and on physical media. Maintaining
and paying attention to storage security and
backing up to different locations is something
that digital file owners need to consider.
Thirdly, is Maximum Effort. The archive
owner/creator should:
 survey their digital files and create an active
plan that includes selecting files for
safekeeping, assessing the need for file format
migrations, and utilising secure and back-up
storage. The archive owner needs to carry out
active surveys and plans related to security
assessments and digital file format conversion
needs. This is done for storage effectiveness in
cloud storage, and relates to the access to the
files;
 identify and locate the hardware and software
necessary to access obsolete formats in their
care. If the digital file has been stored in cloud
storage and the file is in an old format, then
the owner of the archive needs to adjust the
reader in the form of the software and
hardware used for access;
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227

 re-organise and rename unidentified files in
accordance with file naming conventions.
Analysing digital files that are not organised
needs to be conducted so then the files can be
found and used properly.
4.3 Unconscious Born-digital Archiving
Without realising it, every individual activity,
especially that conducted by today's teenagers in
cyberspace, will always be recorded and become
digital traces. The trace can be reused for certain
purposes in the future. This is related to the use of
cloud storage and social media, which are often used
by teenagers today in expressing their daily
activities.
Typical cloud storage public applications are
mostly served as SaaS layer services to users. There
are many cloud storage applications that offer
synchronous backup, document saving, offline
downloads, online editing and document sharing.
Typical cloud storage enterprise applications mostly
serve the user with the IaaS layer. Providing basic
storage facilities and basic storage backup services
for developers (mainly for enterprises) are rented to
facilitate their own office or business needs (Liu,
2016). Software that has a synchronous backup
feature makes it possible to auto-backup and copy
digital files automatically and then save them to the
cloud storage. This is so then, without the owner of
the file actively engaging, born-digital files (photos,
videos and other types of documents) on someone's
gadget can be automatically backed up. Usually,
synchronous backups occur on smartphones or
computer devices and laptops that are set up and
connected to cloud server accounts. Some
commonly used cloud storage applications provide
synchronous backup features including Google
Drive, OneDrive, Google Photos, Samsung Clouds,
Iclouds, and many more.
In addition to cloud storage that provides
synchronous backup features, activities on social
media are also recorded accidentally and without
user commands being input. For example, the search
history on Instagram will automatically record each
user or keyword typed in the search field. This is
done so then the users can easily access the search
according to the last keyword typed before. In
addition to the user search history, on Instagram,
there are Posts Archives that keep all old posts
without the owner's order. In addition to this, there
are story archives; stories that have been uploaded
for 24 hours that have not been deleted. They are
automatically uploaded to story archives, and photo
tags, favourites, direct messages lists and
notification files according to the activities of their
followers or followed users on Instagram are also
examples of unconscious archiving. In addition to
the two examples above, cookies in browser
applications are also examples of digital-born
archives that are accidentally collected to store all of
the user's search history in a browser account. For
example, on the Safari browser and on the Chrome
browser.
Another online activity that is usually done by
teenagers today is one that utilises an online
document editor application that is easily affordable
and tends to be safe against viruses. For example,
students often use G Suite, Google docs (which
consists of Word, Excel, or Powerpoint). By utilising
these facilities, students or users can directly save
straight to the available cloud storage, namely
Google Drive. After that, the file / document can be
opened, edited, and downloaded at any time and
anywhere. It is affordable without paying attention
to either distance or time. Another advantage of
using this feature is that you can share documents
simply by getting the document link and sharing it
with friends or colleagues.
5 CONCLUSION
Archiving can occur consciously or otherwise.
Archiving is intentionally carried out by youths in a
variety of ways that utilises cloud storage, allowing
them to organise their digital files. The phenomenon
of social media that is rife today can also be viewed
in archival science, where archiving occurs
unconsciously and where the archives collected are
born-digital archives. Youths can take advantage of
these developments to build a network of friendships
and to support their learning.
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