The subjective architects: When tweens learn to immaterial labor

The rapid rise of the tween, an influential market-constructed demographic of youth between the ages of 8 and 13, raises several questions. How and why did the tween emerge? How do we account for this downward trend in marketing and the corporate targeting of younger and younger children? And most importantly, for the purposes of my argument, what role has immaterial labor played in demarcating this new category of youth? Initially, Hardt and Negri theorized the shift of production outside the factory walls; this diffused, expanded and intensified production now accounts for new modes of sociality and hence modalities of subjectivization required for capital’s reproduction. As such, the concept of immaterial labor, beginning with Maurizio Lazzarato and extended by Hardt and Negri, is paramount for accounting for new subjective formations such as the tween. This paper illustrates the intensification of immaterial labor by examining how the tween has already “learned to immaterial labor 2.0”. By so doing, it examines the synergy that flows out of the ease in which this demographic moves between the virtual and the material and the marketing practices used to engage and capitalize on their mediated cultural practices.