Social Control and the Illusion of Freedom in Leisure: The Internet Paradigm

The aim of the present paper is to examine the incorporation of young people in the process of socialization in Greece during the first years of the 21 century. Based on models of leisure that is, non-working and non-educating time, will underline the contrast between leisure and working time. Whereas working time is considered as regulated by mechanisms of social control, leisure is considered, in the context of social representations as well as of the literature of social sciences, as unregulated by such mechanisms. This paper is trying to uncover contemporary structures of surveillance and mechanisms of social control applied on controlled, even ‘hegemonized’ leisure types of young people.