The discursive construction of gay teenagers in times of mediatization: youth's reflections on intimate storytelling,queer shame and realness in popular social media places

New media applications such as social networking sites are understood as important evolutions for queer youth. These media and communication technologies allow teenagers to transgress their everyday life places and connect with other queer teens. Moreover, social media websites could also be used for real political activism such as publicly sharing coming out videos on YouTube. Despite these increased opportunities for self-reflexive storytelling on digital media platforms, their everyday use and popularity also bring particular complexities in the everyday lives of young people. Talking to 51 youngsters between 13 and 19 years old in focus groups, this paper inquires how young audiences discursively constructed meanings on intimate storytelling practices such as interpreting intimate stories, reflecting on their own and other peers' intimate storytelling practices. Specifically focusing on how they relate to intimate storytelling practices of gay peers, this paper identified particular challenges for queer youth who transgress the heteronormative when being active on popular social media. The increasing mediatization of intimate youth cultures brings challenges for queer teenagers, which relate to authenticity, (self-) surveillance and fear of imagined audiences.     

The Digital Self: Through the Looking Glass of Telecopresent Others

The impact of others in telecopresence on the formation of self has not been well studied, and existing research on the self in cyberspace has focused mostly on issues related to the presentation of self. A major question researchers have been trying to answer is how people present their self to others when they become disembodied and anonymous in the online world. The question the present study attempts to answer, however, is almost the opposite: how do people come to conceive their self when others become disembodied and anonymous? This question is particularly important for understanding the effect of the Internet on self‐formation, especially in teenagers who are yet to form a stable view of themselves. Based on the analysis of teenagers' online experience, the present study shows that others on the Internet constitute a distinctive “looking glass” that produces a “digital self” that differs from the self formed offline. Teenagers' playful online self‐presentation is thus an integral part of the process of self‐formation. As such, “intimate strangers” or “anonymous friends” on the Internet play an important role in affecting the self‐development of online teenagers.     

Taking risks when communicating on the Internet: the role of offline social-psychological factors in young people's vulnerability to online risks

Children and young people encounter a range of risks on the internet relating to communication. Making friends online has attracted particular attention as a risky behaviour, especially when this leads to offline meetings, as has giving out personal information online. This article, based on the 'UK Children Go Online' survey, seeks to explain the online communication of 9-19-year-olds in terms of their offline socio-psychological characteristics (shyness, life satisfaction, risk-taking), family communication patterns and online behaviour/skills. Findings show that older teens engage in more online communication activities than do younger children and so encounter more communication risks. Although girls communicate more on the internet, this seems not to put them more at risk. It was found that children's offline social psychological characteristics, particularly their levels of life satisfaction and risk-taking, influence their online communication, with different online communication activities being predicted by different patterns of off- and online characteristics. There are weak indications that, in families which have a more conversational style of communication, teens may take fewer risks online, including a lower likelihood of meeting online friends offline. Multiple regression analyses show that those children and teens who are less satisfied with their lives and who have become more frequent and skilled internet users are more likely to value the internet as a communicative environment in which they feel more confident than they do offline, particularly in relation to the potential for anonymous communication. Since this in turn leads some into risky activities, the implications for research and policy are discussed.     

Appropriation of African American slang by Asian American youth1

This article explores the ways in which Asian American teenagers creatively appropriated two African American slang terms: aite and na mean. While some teens racialized slang as belonging to African Americans, other teens authenticated identities as slang speakers. Through close analysis of slang‐in‐use and particularly of the metapragmatic discussions such uses inspired, this article examines how the teens specified relationships between language, race, age, region and class, while achieving multiple social purposes, such as identifying with African Americans, marking urban youth subcultural participation, and interactionally positioning themselves and others as teachers and students of slang. As slang emerged with local linguistic capital, the teens used slang to create social boundaries not only between teens and adults, but also between each other. The discursive salience of region implicitly indexed socio‐economic status and proximity to African Americans as markers that teens drew on to authenticate themselves and others as slang speakers.     

A New Privacy Paradox? Youth Agentic Practices of Privacy Management Despite “Nothing to Hide” Online

Focus groups conducted with Canadian teenagers examining their perceptions and experiences with cyber risk, center on various privacy strategies geared for impression management across popular social network sites (SNS). We highlight privacy concerns as a primary reason for a gravitation away from Facebook toward newer, more popular sites such as Instagram and Snapchat, as well as debates about the permeability of privacy on Snapchat in particular. The privacy paradox identifies a disjuncture between what is said about privacy and what is done in practice. It refers to declarations from youth that they are highly concerned for privacy, yet frequently disregard privacy online through “oversharing” and neglecting privacy management. However, our participants, especially older teens, invoked a different mindset: that they have “nothing to hide” online and therefore do not consider privacy relevant for them. Despite this mindset, the strategies we highlight suggest a new permutation of the privacy paradox, rooted in a pragmatic adaptation to the technological affordances of SNS, and wider societal acquiescence to the debasement of privacy online.     

Psychological Well-Being and Adolescents’ Internet Addiction: A School-Based Cross-Sectional Study in Hong Kong

This study examines the correlations of adolescents’ self-esteem, loneliness and depression with their internet use behaviors with a sample of 665 adolescents from seven secondary schools in Hong Kong. The results suggest that frequent online gaming is more strongly correlated to internet addiction and such correlation is higher than other predictors of internet addiction in online behaviors including social interactions or viewing of pornographic materials. Male adolescents tend to spend more time on online gaming than female counterparts. In terms of the effect of internet addiction on adolescents’ psychological well-being, self-esteem is negatively correlated with internet addiction, whereas depression and loneliness are positively correlated with internet addiction. Comparatively, depression had stronger correlation with internet addiction than loneliness or self-esteem. A standardized definition and assessment tool for identifying internet addiction appears to be an unmet need. Findings from this study provide insights for social workers and teachers on designing preventive programs for adolescents susceptible to internet addiction, as well as emotional disturbance arising from internet addiction.     

快乐主义理论视角下青少年网瘾问题分析

青少年由于受到来自自身、家庭、学校的压抑而导致不快乐感上升,逐渐沉迷于网络"乐土"的现象时有发生。他们将快乐主义误解为单纯追求感官享受的享乐主义,导致不同程度的人性扭曲问题出现。这些严重后果的产生亟待我们重新理解快乐主义伦理学。从动的快乐与静的快乐、独乐主义与众乐主义、感官快乐与精神快乐等角度分析发现,青少年快乐主义体验型教育不失为解决网瘾问题的良好对策:它重视学习过程中的快乐情感体验,构建快乐主义体验型教育新模式;模拟青少年喜欢的网络内容,创新传统教育方法;改变单一的认知目标,情感目标与认知目标齐头并进。     

Challenging the Roles of “Skilled” Professionals and “Risky” Young Mothers: Peer Support,Expertise, and Relational Patterns in Facebook Groups

Today, many countries spend a great deal of money and effort on programs for expert-guided parenting support to be carried out in face-to-face groups. One goal of such support is to target, help, and educate “risky” groups of parents, such as young parents. It is striking, however, that young parents have a conspicuously low degree of participation in this type of parenting support. Drawing on the assumption that many young parents go online to seek, give, and receive peer parenting support, this paper presents a case study of activities within three Facebook groups. Using a combination of social network analysis, online ethnography, and interviews, we analyze how social network relationships and discussions differ depending on whether the analyzed Facebook group in question is administrated by professionals or peers, what the role of professional experts is, and how young parents might use social media to take control of their own support needs. Our results indicate that some of the affordances provided by Facebook might contribute to a challenging of the roles of “skilled” professionals versus “risky” young parents.     

Chinese youth performing identities and navigating belonging online

This paper examines the experiences of belonging of young Chinese internet users through an analysis of their online identity practices. Drawing on a qualitative research project about online citizenship practices of 31 young Chinese citizens from mainland China, I explore their experiences of belonging on two online platforms (Weibo and WeChat) and the identities formed and sustained through these experiences. The results show that young people experience different senses of belonging in different social media spaces. Their strategies in navigating these experiences are informed by (a) their perceptions of online spaces as private or public, and (b) using online identity performance as a supplement to or escape from identities in physical life. I argue that young Chinese internet users experience different senses of belonging by flexibly appropriating the affordances of social media platforms for communication and networking; these senses of belonging play a key role in forming and sustaining their identities, and are crucial for their wellbeing.     

Youth as content producers in a niche social network site

Most U.S. teenagers participate in online social network sites, devoting hours to these networks, often at the expense of other leisure-time activities. This article describes young people's activities within one topic-focused niche network, outlining its unique features and the role of young people as content producers within and beyond the space. Links between youth's online contributions and their interest, self-expression, social connections, and civic involvement are discussed.     

Trends in teen sexual behavior

This article examines trends in teen sexual behavior. Data were derived from 5 principal sources, which include: 1) the National Survey of Family Growth; 2) National Survey of Adolescent Males; 3) National Survey of Young Men; 4) Youth Risk Behavior Survey; and 5) National Survey for Men. There really was a sexual revolution, as the foregoing data indicate. An increase in sexual activity was observed among young teens, aged 15 years and below, as well as middle-class and white teenagers. The use of contraceptives also increases probably due to the fear of AIDS and the increasing proportion of teenagers who are having sex. Because more teenagers were using contraceptives, the pregnancy rate per 1000 sexually active teenagers actually declined during the 1980s, even when more teenagers were having sex. Nonetheless, failures of contraceptive usage have led to high levels of abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, and nonmarital births. Society should confront these two concerns. First, for younger teenagers, too early of a sexual experience can be emotionally distressing and inconsistent with healthy development. Second, for disadvantaged teens of all ages, sex always leads to an out-of-wedlock birth and long term welfare dependence. The challenge for school-based programs is to pursue the following goals: 1) lower the level of sexual activity and 2) raise the rate of contraceptive use among sexually active teens.     

Coming of Age in the Bubble: Suburban Adolescents' Use of a Spatial Metaphor as a Symbolic Boundary

This article explores how suburban middle‐class adolescents use a spatial metaphor, “bubble,” as a symbolic boundary. The narratives about the bubble, collected through focus group discussions and ethnographic observations, show consensus among the teenagers about the socioeconomic and cultural superiority of the community, but they also reveal opposing views on its moral status. I also find that the teens use the same metaphor to draw moral distinctions among their peers, based on whether they align their identity with the norms and values the bubble symbolizes. I argue that the adolescents living in this community develop a strong place identity, even when they identify flaws with it, because their mundane references to the bubble provide them with an opportunity to critically examine the implication of their middle‐class status.     

Are social networking sites a source of online harassment for teens? Evidence from survey data

Media reports on incidences of abuse on the internet, particularly among teenagers, are growing at an alarming rate causing much concern among parents of teenagers and prompting legislations aimed at regulating internet use among teenagers. Social networking sites (SNS) have been criticized for serving as a breeding ground for cyber-bullying and harassment by strangers. However, there is a lack of serious research studies that explicitly identify factors that make teenagers prone to internet abuse, and study whether it is SNS that is causing this recent rise in online abuse or is it something else. This study attempts to identify the key factors associated with cyber-bullying and online harassment of teenagers in the United States using the 2006 round of Pew Internet™ American Life Survey that is uniquely suited for this study. Results fail to corroborate the claim that having social networking site memberships is a strong predictor of online abuse of teenagers. Instead this study finds that demographic and behavioral characteristics of teenagers are stronger predictors of online abuse.     

Mixed Messages: Inconsistent Parental Mediation Indirectly Predicts Teens’ Online Relational Aggression

Although the predictors of off-line relational aggression have been examined in prior work, less is known about the factors that contribute to online relational aggression perpetration and victimization. This study examined parental restrictive and active mediation of teenagers’ social media use as potential predictors of these outcomes. We were particularly interested in understanding whether parental agreement about media rules and the consistency with which mediation was implemented had implications for teens’ social media use, conflict with parents, and experience with online relational aggression. We conducted an online survey of 814 adolescents from the United States (14- to17-year-olds), asking about perceived agreement between parents about media rules, parental mediation styles, the teens’ social media use, and their experiences with online relational aggression. Results showed that parental rule agreement negatively predicted inconsistent parental mediation. Inconsistent parental mediation predicted more adolescent social media use and more parent-teen conflict over media rules, which in turn, predicted both online victimization and perpetration.     

Technological socialities: The impact of information and communication technologies on belonging among deaf and hard-of-hearing people

This review article examines how different types of communication technologies, from the specialized medical to generic social devices, influence belonging and sociality among deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) people. The emphasis is on DHH adolescents and young adults who may be impacted differently across countries, given state-specific policies regarding the status of sign language and deaf education, and based on different availability, affordability, and accessibility of communication technologies. We introduce different perspectives on deafness, ranging from pathological to cultural, a heuristic on which we build to explore DHH socialities as complex and evolving. We then analytically review ethnographic research on how cochlear implants impact DHH people's belonging to the “deaf world” and/or the “hearing world,” and how they navigate between these worlds. Then we move on to technologies such as text messages and social media, which enable DHH people to extend their socialities beyond local communities. Belonging is a fluid phenomenon, and technologies which are in a constant process of innovation and development may influence it in complex ways. We argue that to explore questions of belonging, identity, and sociality among DHH people, and how they are shaped by technologies, (visual) ethnographic methods are particularly productive.     

S’orienter dans les espaces sociaux en ligne. L’exemple d’un jeu

This study of the social space formed around Mountyhall, an online game, takes as starting point not the distinction between “real” and “virtual” but the concrete circulation of participants. Focus is placed on the “cosmopolitanism” of social webspaces and the alternation between connected/unconnected. Crossing this case study with an analysis of statistics and graphs leads to formulating the notion of “orientation principle” for explaining how participants themselves draw boundaries and label activities. Two “orientation principles” are analyzed: the first one about time in relation to the game and the other about the geography of this online social space.     

“How Edge Are You?” Constructing Authentic Identities and Subcultural Boundaries in a Straightedge Internet Forum

We analyze how participants in an internet forum dedicated to the straightedge subculture articulate and express subcultural identities and boundaries, with particular attention to how they accomplish these tasks in a computer‐mediated context. Through participant observation, “focused discussions,” and interviews, we explore the complexity of identity‐making processes in terms of cyberspace and subculture, conceptualizing identification as occurring at the intersection of biography, subculture, and technology. We find that the internet influences how individuals participate in subcultural communities by analyzing their claims for authenticity and how they position themselves in relation to subcultural boundaries. This article provides insight into the dialectic relationship between participation in a subculture and in an internet community.     

Youth,activism, and social movements

There has been considerable debate over the extent and role of young people's political participation. Whether considering popular hand‐wringing over concerns about declines in young people's institutional political participation or dismissals of young people's use of online activism, many frame youth engagement through a “youth deficit” model that assumes that adults need to politically socialize young people. However, others argue that young people are politically active and actively involved in their own political socialization, which is evident when examining youth participation in protest, participatory politics, and other forms of noninstitutionalized political participation. Moreover, social movement scholars have long documented the importance of youth to major social movements. In this article, we bring far flung literatures about youth activism together to review work on campus activism; young people's political socialization, their involvement in social movement organizations, their choice of tactics; and the context in which youth activism takes place. This context includes the growth of movement societies, the rise of fan activism, and pervasive Internet use. We argue that social movement scholars have already created important concepts (e.g., biographical availability) and questions (e.g., biographical consequences of activism) from studying young people and urge additional future research.     

Priming Sexual and Romantic Representations in Two Media Environments: Sex Encourages and Romance Discourages Sexual Permissiveness … Sometimes

Two experiments (Ns = 314, 447) were used to evaluate the effectiveness of sexual cues in temporarily increasing young adults’ self-reported sexual permissiveness, as well as the effects of romantic cues in temporarily decreasing permissiveness. Participants were exposed to sexual or romantic cues embedded as a theme-defining component of an online game (Study 1) or in advertisements peripheral to the online game (Study 2). Sexual and romantic conditions were compared against a control condition. As hypothesized, participants in the romantic conditions rated themselves lower in sexual permissiveness, compared to participants in the sexual and control conditions, particularly when participants positively evaluated the online game experience. Findings suggest that exposure to entertaining media depictions of two people, as a committed couple, expressing love, as well as lust, for each other might deter young adults from considering engagement in casual sexual encounters indicative of “hookup culture.”