I–Thou dialogical encounters in adolescents’ WhatsApp virtual communities

The use of WhatsApp as a means of communication is widespread amongst today’s youth, many of whom spent hours in virtual space, in particular during the evenings and nighttime in the privacy of their own homes. This article seeks to contribute to the discussion of the dialogical language and “conversations” conducted in virtual-space encounters and the way in which young people perceive this space, its affect on them, and their interrelations within it. It presents the findings of a study based on a community of philosophical inquiry in which young adults students discussed the “I” and “Thou” (the other) and the interaction between them in a WhatsApp community. The results evince that the youth related to the virtual space in very similar fashion to Buber’s “I–Thou” concept, the language they employed to describe what happened in it enabling an expansion of the conceptualization and research language to an “I-Space-Thou” model.