Human Arenas and Value Transformations: Moroccan Youth and Digital Platforms as Human Spaces for Identity Reconfiguration

Contemporary societies are undergoing profound transformations driven by digitalization. Digital platforms are no longer neutral tools of communication; they have become human arenas where selves intersect and where meaning and identity are constantly renegotiated. In these arenas, Moroccan youth emerge not as passive recipients but as active agents who daily navigate the pull between family, school, and mosque on the one hand, and the call of self-expression, freedom, and continuous connectivity on the other. This study asks: How do Moroccan youth negotiate their values and identities within these arenas?We adopted a mixed-methods approach, combining an online survey and open responses (January–March 2025) with purposive sampling of 140 digitally active participants, alongside thematic analysis informed by the concept of Human Arenas. Numbers are not presented as final truths but as entry points into lived experience. Three central tensions became apparent: (1) between the voice of tradition and the voice of free self-expression; (2) between the decline of institutional authority and the rise of new networked authority (embodied in digital preachers and their easily consumable discourse); and (3) between the desire for quick entertainment and a simultaneous yearning for ethical and spiritual meaning. As one participant noted: “I open the platform for fun, but I keep searching for something that resembles me.” Another added: “We need guidance, not prohibition.”The findings reveal that youth are engaged in conscious value negotiation: they call for digital literacy in schools, supportive family accompaniment, and meaningful local content. Theoretically, the study confirms the relevance of Human Arenas for understanding platforms as living spaces of self-production, intersecting with Boyd’s networked life, Castells’ network society, and Al-Rawi’s new religious authority. Yet it does so from a non-Western perspective, repositioning the debate beyond the centrality of Western experience. The contribution of this study lies not only in describing change but in re-humanizing the digital space through the voices of youth themselves—where identity today is forged between the local and the global, the formal and the informal, within vibrant human arenas.