HOW CAMARADERIE FUNCTION OF E-SPORTS CAN HELP POST-MILLENNIALS TO TACKLE SOCIAL ISOLATION IN THEIR EVERYDAY LIFE

Abstract

Compared to other generations in the society Post-Millennials can be considered as a generation who has been mostly subjected to digitalization in their everyday life. Due to many of the positive outcomes people tend to follow the trend and embrace digitalization. However, the adverse effects of it cannot be ignored. One of the main issues of digitalization is how it alienates individuals in their social contexts due to the weakening of human relationships. Because of this, a lot of its users tend to fail in social relationships and face unnecessary stress in their everyday lives. E-Sports can serve the function of creating feelings of community and camaraderie, similar traditional sports. Hence, this study focuses on the research problem; how to tackle the social isolation created through digitalization faced by the post-millennials? The objectives of this study were, 1) Identify how digitalization can weaken human relationships. 2) Analyse how it can create social isolation among the post millennial’s everyday life. 3) Examine how E-Sports can be used to tackle it. This is a qualitative study and empirical data was gathered via three case studies and they were selected using purposive sampling method. Further, to gather supportive data, literature, web-references were used as secondary sources. The analysis showed how digitalization fuels emotionless communication leading to decrease of emotional intelligence, distancing from real-world scenarios leading to social isolation and individualization. This ultimately leads to egocentrism and can weaken human relationships. As E-Sports can be strongly relatable for individuals involved in the cyberspace the study showed that its function of camaraderie can create a sense of community among the players. Further, the subculture of E-Sports also performs latent socialisation function which can lead to strengthening the weakened interactions. This will allow the Post-Millennials to achieve congruence in their social relationships creating an opportunity for them to escape from the social isolation of everyday life.