Adolescent Identity Development on Social Media

In a recent theoretical review, Granic et al. (Reference Granic, Morita and Scholten2020) suggested that, in order to understand the impact of digital media on adolescents’ mental health, it is essential to consider their core developmental concern: identity development. For decades, developmental psychologists have studied the challenging transition adolescents are expected to make in order to become functional members of society – that is, moving past identifying with the roles and values of others and toward making social commitments that are in accord with their own interests, aptitudes, and values (Erikson, Reference Erikson1968; Kroger, Reference Kroger2004). Whether or not adolescents successfully make this transition has important implications for their mental health (e.g., Azmitia et al., Reference Azmitia, Syed and Radmacher2013; Kuiper et al., Reference Kuiper, Kirsh and Maiolino2016). Since a considerable proportion of identity development processes is now taking place on social media, it is important to examine how the use of social media affects these processes.

A Model of Adolescent Identity Development

To present a model of adolescent identity development, we build on the theoretical framework proposed by Granic et al. (Reference Granic, Morita and Scholten2020). In this framework, progression toward (a) commitment to person–society integrated values and (b) the construction of a coherent life story constitutes adolescent identity development. The framework specifies key factors at intrapersonal, interpersonal, and cultural levels that shape adolescent identity development. Key factors at the intrapersonal level are psychological needs that drive adolescents to uphold and unite personal and social values and form a coherent life story. Key interpersonal factors are the characteristics of narrative partners that affect how adolescents construct and develop stories about themselves. Finally, key cultural factors are cultural values, norms, and narratives that set the boundaries within which adolescents explore and make commitment choices. This chapter focuses on processes at the interpersonal level, where intrapersonal and cultural factors intersect, as these processes are most pertinent to social media. Specifically, we discuss narrative and dialogical processes as an interpersonal mechanism of identity development (Hammack, Reference Hammack2008; McLean & Pasupathi, Reference McLean and Pasupathi2012). Through sharing self-stories with others, individuals encounter various perspectives, reflect on and learn about themselves, and consolidate or change their commitments, values, and narratives. Furthermore, we clearly differentiate between the subjective and objective aspects of identity by drawing on McAdams’s (Reference McAdams, Westenberg, Blasi and Cohn1998) exposition of the self-as-subject (meaning-making process) and the self-as-object (product of the meaning-making process). We explain how the two aspects of identity develop together through narrative and dialogical processes (see Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1 The dual aspect of adolescent identity development and narrative and dialogical processes

Chapter Overview

We begin by describing the subjective aspect of identity development: changes in commitments and values.¹ We explain how conventional commitments change to self-evaluated commitments during adolescence and the key role of introspection in this transition. We then describe the objective aspect of identity development: changes in a self-story, or narrative identity. We explain the process of constructing a coherent life story during adolescence and the function of narrative partners in this process. After the description of each aspect of adolescent identity development, we discuss how the use of social media may facilitate or hinder the key processes involved. Since the field of identity development is just beginning to incorporate social media in its research, our discussion will consist mainly of hypothetical links between social media use and adolescent identity development. However, the paucity of research in this area also means there are many avenues for future research. Therefore, the chapter concludes with future directions for studying the impact of social media use on adolescent identity development.

The Formation of Self-Evaluated Commitments in Adolescence

Identity development is a lifelong process. Throughout life, identity undergoes qualitative changes (Kroger, Reference Kroger2004). However, particular attention has been paid to the type of identity that is thought to mark the entrance to adulthood. According to Erikson’s (Reference Erikson1968) theory of the life cycle, childhood is a period in which individuals learn the roles of adults around them and focus on becoming skillful at preparatory tasks provided by their family, school, and community. Children are therefore identified with the roles and values of others in the immediate environment. In adolescence, psychological needs and social demands drive individuals to explore different occupations and ideologies in the larger society and commit to occupations and ideologies that match their own interests, aptitudes, and values to find their niche in society. This serves as the foundation for adulthood.

It is now widely recognized that identity exploration and commitment are iterative processes (Bosma & Kunnen, Reference Bosma and Kunnen2001; Grotevant, Reference Grotevant1987; Kerpelman et al., Reference Kerpelman, Pittman and Lamke1997; Luyckx et al., Reference Luyckx, Goossens and Soenens2006). For example, Luyckx et al. (Reference Luyckx, Goossens and Soenens2006, Reference Luyckx, Klimstra, Duriez, Van Petegem and Beyers2013) suggested that identity formation involves two cycles. The first one consists of exploration in breadth and commitment-making. In this cycle, individuals explore various values and goals and make initial commitments. The second cycle consists of exploration in depth and identification with commitment. Specifically, current commitments are continually re-evaluated through self-reflection and interpersonal dialogue, and if individuals feel confident about their commitments, they identify with them.

A similar developmental sequence can be found in Loevinger’s (Reference Loevinger1976) ego development theory: progression from the Conformist stage to the Conscientious stage via the Self-Aware stage. At the Conformist stage, social belonging is of paramount importance, and most effort is put into gaining acceptance by a social group. Individuals at this stage conform to the norms and values of their social groups, which are based on external characteristics (e.g., physical appearance, outward behavior). Thus, they seek social acceptance and recognition by trying to look or behave in a socially desirable manner. At the next, Self-Aware stage, individuals begin to explore inner aspects of themselves, and conformity starts to become less rigid. When the next, Conscientious stage is reached, individuals have gained a rich understanding of their motives and personality traits. Individuals at this stage therefore evaluate and commit to social values based on their internal characteristics (i.e., the formation of self-evaluated commitments; Loevinger, Reference Loevinger1987). Although ego development was conceptualized independently of chronological age, research has shown that the progression from the Conformist stage toward the Conscientious stage commonly takes place during adolescence (Syed & Seiffge-Krende, Reference Syed and Seiffge-Krenke2015; Westenberg & Gjerde, Reference Westenberg and Gjerde1999).

In sum, the transition from conventional commitments to self-evaluated commitments constitutes the subjective aspect of adolescent identity development. This transition is marked by changes in the mode of commitment – from conformity to self-evaluated commitment – and the nature of commitments – from external to internal characteristics.

Identity Exploration and Introspection

Exploration to gain an understanding of one’s environment and oneself is considered a key mechanism of identity development (Grotevant, Reference Grotevant1987). Erikson (Reference Erikson1968) emphasized the importance of psychosocial moratorium, the period during which adolescents explore different ideologies and occupations in society and find suitable ones. Such exploration entails introspection to find out one’s own interests, values, and aptitudes. In Loevinger’s (Reference Loevinger1976) ego development, we have seen that progression from the Conformist stage to the Conscientious stage goes through the Self-Aware stage, where individuals begin introspection to gain a deeper understanding of their internal characteristics. In order to move on from rigid conformity, individuals must shift their focus from external to internal aspects of themselves to understand their own interests and values, which they can then use to evaluate and choose social values to commit to. Indeed, introspection was found to be the most common factor in identity development (Kroger & Green, Reference Kroger and Green1996).

The capacity for introspection begins to develop in adolescence (Sebastian et al., Reference Sebastian, Burnett and Blakemore2008), making it a sensitive period for cultivating the capacity. Counseling, psychotherapy, and educational programs have been used to aid adolescents’ identity exploration (Kroger, Reference Kroger2004). Marcia (Reference Marcia1989) suggested that it is important to create an open and safe environment that encourages free exploration and serves as a safety net if adolescents’ choices go awry. Indeed, it has long been noted that open and accepting relationships are crucial in facilitating self-exploration (Rogers, Reference Rogers1961). As we discuss later in the chapter, identity exploration and introspection often happen during or following interpersonal dialogue, and the characteristics of conversational partners greatly affect the extent to which individuals engage in self-exploration and gain insights into themselves.

A Playground for Identity Exploration

Social media provides the opportunity for people to try out different versions of themselves and see what feels right (Casserly, Reference Casserly2011). When asked about who they are on social media, people often report that they have different personas depending on the platform (Zhong et al., Reference Zhong, Chang, Karamshuk, Lee and Sastry2017). This may be because different platforms tend to attract different audiences by virtue of their design and functionality. For example, Instagram may be well suited to expressing people’s artistic side and therefore popular among artists, while Reddit may cater to their contemplative, intellectual side and attract curious minds and experts. The beauty of social media is therefore that all platforms taken together serve as a playground in which individuals can explore different aspects of themselves. However, there is also the downside of a plethora of options: Too many options can create paralysis and lead to ruminative exploration, keeping adolescents from completing the cycle of identity formation (Beyers & Luyckx, Reference Beyers and Luyckx2016). As we have discussed, successful adolescent identity development requires not only exploration of commitment options but also introspection to evaluate whether these options fit one’s personality. Therefore, social media platforms that provide space for identity exploration as well as self-reflection may be more conducive to identity development than those that provide space for the former only.

Potent Social Norms and Values

While social media offers plenty of opportunities for identity exploration, the large scale of social media also enables potent social norms and values, potentially making it more difficult for adolescents to move on from conformity. Most adolescents in the pre–social media era are likely to have negotiated with trends and conventions that manifested themselves in a relatively small social group, at most on a national scale. With social media, however, adolescents now have the possibility to observe trends on a much larger global scale, likely experiencing greater pressure to conform to these trends. Indeed, norms and values on social media may have stronger influence than those offline because they are more widely shared and more readily accessed (Nesi et al., Reference Nesi, Choukas-Bradley and Prinstein2018).

Social attitudes that currently prevail in Western cultures and may be magnified by social media are anti-mainstream sentiments (Vinh, Reference Vinh2021). Those who follow counterculture movements are usually called hippies or hipsters, going against what – in their eyes – everyone else is doing. One reflection of this trend is the popularity of prank videos on social media, in which people violate social conventions and norms for entertainment. The anti-mainstream sentiments have appealed to so many people that they themselves have become the norm and the source of conformity. Thus, social media can spread and magnify trends rapidly to create potent social norms and values, including those that espouse anti-mainstream sentiments.

Inescapable Past Selves

An essential condition for identity development is the freedom to leave behind old identities and explore new ones. Unfortunately, such freedom is not always guaranteed on the Internet. What people say and do on the Internet is permanently recorded and often remains on the Internet for future generations to unearth (Eichhorn, Reference Eichhorn2019; Nesi et al., Reference Nesi, Telzer and Prinstein2020). This permanence of information on the Internet, especially on social media, can be problematic for identity development (see Davis & Weinstein, Reference Davis, Weinstein and Wright2017). Traces of old identities on social media can mislead others into thinking that the old identities still hold true and make it difficult for individuals to change or to fully embrace the change. There is the increasing occurrence of people being criticized or getting fired for what they said or did on the Internet in the past even though these views or deeds no longer reflect them (e.g., Arora, Reference Arora2021). Accordingly, there are signs of adolescents and young adults erasing their social media posts for fear of repercussions (Davis & Weinstein, Reference Davis, Weinstein and Wright2017; Jargon, Reference Jargon2020; Smith, Reference Smith2013). These privacy issues therefore seem to be making it difficult for individuals to free themselves from the past and move forward.

However, reminders of one’s past selves may also benefit identity development. In adolescent years, individuals may go through many different phases. For example, an adolescent may experience the “goth” phase from age 15 to 16 years, reflected in a series of photos of a black-clothed self with plaid skirts and chains. From age 17 to 18 years, this adolescent may be absorbed in environmentalism, reflected in posts and photos depicting community efforts and environmental protests. Transition between such phases may sometimes feel fluent and smooth and may be easily forgotten. Snippets of social media content and interactions in the past can help individuals recall parts of their past selves that they may otherwise have forgotten. Being reminded of past selves can also help individuals reflect on the development they have gone through and understand that identity is never permanent and continues to change over time (Pasupathi et al., Reference Pasupathi, Mansour and Brubaker2007). It is nonetheless important that the right to social media data belong to users so that they can access their past data when they want to and they can erase them if they deem them harmful to their current identity.

A Tool for Distraction or Introspection?

One of the concerns that social media has generated is that it may act as a distraction from oneself (The School of Life, n.d.). Social media is filled with information about people’s lives and world events, and passive usage of social media (e.g., reading news feeds) is more common than active usage (e.g., posting status updates; Verduyn et al., Reference Verduyn, Lee and Park2015). The implication is that people are focused mainly on other people’s lives on social media, leaving little room to reflect on their own lives and gain insights into themselves. Furthermore, information overload on social media, which has been shown to lead to “social media fatigue” in some (Bright et al., Reference Bright, Kleiser and Grau2015; Dhir et al., Reference Dhir, Kaur, Chen and Pallesen2019), may deplete cognitive resources necessary for digesting information and integrating it into a sense of self. Indeed, Misra and Stokols (Reference Misra and Stokols2012) found that individuals who experienced an overload of digital information spent less time on contemplative activities such as self-reflection.

Nevertheless, social media has some functionalities that could help people gain insights into themselves. For example, Facebook’s “Year in Review” posts provide users with a chance to reflect on their life experiences in the past year. Such reflection may bring people insights into what kind of things they value and are interested in and what they are good at. Furthermore, as we discuss later, social media significantly increases the chance to receive feedback about oneself from others (e.g., boyd & Heer, Reference boyd and Heer2006), thereby deepening self-understanding.

Emphasis on Appearance

Another important issue to consider is the extent to which social media promotes preoccupation with appearance. Although social media can be used for a variety of purposes, posting pictures of one’s physical appearance (i.e., selfies) is popular among adolescents, and many adolescents are preoccupied with how others perceive their physical appearance on social media (Boursier & Manna, Reference Boursier and Manna2018; Choukas-Bradley et al., Reference Choukas-Bradley, Nesi, Widman and Galla2020). The increasing use of clickbaits to attract followers on social media may also be contributing to their perceived importance of appearance and superficial impressions. Preoccupation with appearance on social media is associated with a number of negative mental health indices among adolescents (Choukas-Bradley et al., Reference Choukas-Bradley, Nesi, Widman and Galla2020). While having a healthy body image is important, adolescent identity development entails a shift in the source of self-esteem from external to internal attributes. Therefore, social media is likely to be harmful to adolescents to the extent that it makes them fixated on appearance.

The design and affordances of social media platforms may affect the degree to which adolescents focus on external aspects of themselves. For example, photo-based social media platforms such as Instagram may attract those who are concerned with physical appearance, and consequently social values and norms that revolve around physical appearance may be more prevalent on these platforms. Therefore, the use of photo-based platforms may put adolescents at higher risk of being influenced by appearance-based values and norms. Furthermore, given that individuals can explore and express their internal characteristics more easily using concepts and words rather than images, text-based platforms such as Reddit and Tumblr might be more conducive to introspection and the expression of inner qualities. It is nonetheless important to note that the nonverbal expression of internal characteristics is possible (e.g., an expression of creativity in dancing), and photo-based platforms can also serve as a place for more mature expressions of identity.

The Construction of a Coherent Life Story in Adolescence

As adolescents’ commitments change from conventional to self-evaluated commitments, corresponding changes likely occur in their narrative identities. During adolescence, a narrative identity changes from relatively disjointed descriptions of roles and habits to an autobiographical narrative, which demonstrates more complex reflective thinking and a causal understanding of one’s life experiences (Habermas & de Silveira, Reference Habermas and de Silveira2008; McAdams, Reference McAdams, Westenberg, Blasi and Cohn1998). Specifically, adolescents’ narrative identities increasingly take the form of a life story, which tells how the past self has grown into the present self, which may then become an envisioned future self (McAdams, Reference McAdams2018; McAdams & McLean, Reference McAdams and McLean2013). Their past, present, and future become clearly differentiated and yet causally connected to form a temporally coherent life story (Habermas & Bluck, Reference Habermas and Bluck2000; Pasupathi et al., Reference Pasupathi, Mansour and Brubaker2007). In addition to temporal coherence, there is another type of coherence that likely emerges in adolescents’ narrative identities: person–society coherence (Syed & McLean, Reference Syed and McLean2016). This type of coherence shows alignment between individuals’ personal attributes and their social contexts. As discussed earlier, adolescent identity development is progression toward commitment to social values that match personal interests, values, and talents. Therefore, narrative identities likely exhibit temporal and person–society coherence toward the end of adolescent development, weaving together the past self that was identified with the roles and values of others, the present self that commits to person–society integrated values, and the future self that will fulfill these values.

Besides these structural changes, adolescent identity development is likely to be accompanied by related changes in the theme of a narrative identity. Granic et al. (Reference Granic, Morita and Scholten2020) suggested that the dynamics of the needs for agency and communion shift during adolescence and that this shift may be reflected in the relative prominence on agency versus communion themes in a narrative identity. Specifically, as adolescents start to engage in self-exploration and gain better insight into their own interests and values, a predominance of communion themes may give way to a predominance of agency themes (see Van Doeselaar et al., Reference Van Doeselaar, McLean, Meeus, Denissen and Klimstra2020, for some indirect support for this). Toward the end of adolescent identity development, when the needs for agency and communion become more balanced, agency and communion themes may become relatively equalized and united in a narrative identity.

Another theme that is relevant to adolescent identity development is external versus internal focus. As discussed earlier, the nature of commitments changes from external to internal characteristics during adolescence. Therefore, the theme of adolescents’ narrative identities is likely to change from that of trying to look good and behave properly to that of cultivating their inner traits.

Dialogue and the Function of Narrative Partners

Storytelling is inherently a social activity and therefore usually involves dialogue (Hammack, Reference Hammack2008; Hermans, Reference Hermans2004). A narrative identity expressed in storytelling can be affirmed or challenged, which may in turn consolidate, weaken, or change commitments and values (McLean & Pasupathi, Reference McLean and Pasupathi2012; Thorne, Reference Thorne2000; see Figure 3.1). Thus, storytelling and dialogue are an important mechanism of identity development. Whether storytelling and dialogue contribute meaningfully to identity development depends heavily on the characteristics of their narrative partners (McLean et al., Reference McLean, Pasupathi and Pals2007; Pasupathi & Hoyt, Reference Pasupathi and Hoyt2009). There are three essential functions that narrative partners serve: (a) elaboration, (b) grappling, and (c) attention and validation (Granic et al., Reference Granic, Morita and Scholten2020).

First, narrative partners help people elaborate on their stories (Fivush et al., Reference Fivush, Haden and Reese2006; Pasupathi et al., Reference Pasupathi, Mansour and Brubaker2007). To construct a meaningful and coherent life story from past experiences, you must derive meaning from these experiences, and a simple recounting of past experiences is often insufficient (Blagov & Singer, Reference Blagov and Singer2004; Singer et al., Reference Singer, Blagov, Berry and Oost2013). Therefore, narrative partners’ requests for elaboration are essential. Blagov and Singer (Reference Blagov and Singer2004) specified four dimensions of self-defining memories, which have implications for elaboration requests. Specifically, elaboration requests are likely to be especially helpful if they use a time frame most conducive to meaning-making in a given situation (e.g., “Tell me exactly what happened in that moment”; “How did you change during your college years?”) and ask about affect, or more specifically, emotional valence and intensity (e.g., “How did the experience make you feel?”; “How much impact did the experience have on you?”), content, or the relevance to values and goals (e.g., “Why is the experience important to you?”; “How does the experience help you achieve your goals?”), and meaning, or learning and growth (e.g., “What did you learn from the experience?”; “How did the experience change you as a person?”).

The second important function of narrative partners is “grappling”, which is an act of supporting identity exploration in a dialogue while maintaining an attitude of open-mindedness and patience (Granic et al., Reference Granic, Morita and Scholten2020). Engaging in dialogue with others is essentially identity exploration because different people uphold different values and you are encouraged to take others’ perspectives in dialogue (Hermans, Reference Hermans2004). Your values and narratives may sometimes be challenged in the process, and listening to alternative views may bring new insights and weaken or change your values and commitments. However, such a challenge is likely most fruitful when it is done in an open and accepting relationship (Rogers, Reference Rogers1961). Moreover, it is important that narrative partners remain patient despite unexpected perspective changes and contradictions, which are due to occur during identity exploration (Granic et al., Reference Granic, Morita and Scholten2020).

Finally, narrative partners provide attention and affirmation. When narrative partners listen attentively and affirm your life story, your values and goal endeavors are reflected back to you and become consolidated (McLean & Pasupathi, Reference McLean and Pasupathi2012; Pasupathi & Rich, Reference Pasupathi and Rich2005). Those who show interest and give you affirmation are usually the ones who share your values and commitments. As discussed earlier, adolescent identity development is considered complete when they find their niche in society, where like-minded others share the interests and values that adolescents have discovered through self-exploration (Erikson, Reference Erikson1968). Therefore, finding narrative partners who share personal values and aspirations is important especially toward the end of adolescent identity development.

Dialogue with Diverse Groups of People

Social media emerged with the advent of the Web 2.0, a dramatic change of the Internet from a place for passive consumption to active participation, interaction, and collaboration (Peters, Reference Peters2020). Anyone who has access to the Internet can express and share their views and stories on social media, and there are usually others – sometimes hundreds and thousands of people – who validate or reject their views and stories. Storytelling and dialogue in such a large, interconnected social environment have never existed before. Social media has made it easy to have dialogue with people who come from different cultures and backgrounds, thus significantly increasing the chance of encountering different perspectives. Since taking different perspectives during social interaction is essential for identity development (Hermans, Reference Hermans2004; Kroger, Reference Kroger2004), social media can be a great tool for adolescents’ identity development. While there is some concern about the increasing frequency of conflicts resulting from the increased contact with diverse groups of people, conflicts can be meaningful experiences and contribute to identity development, especially if they are managed with understanding (Rogers, Reference Rogers1961). Therefore, the presence of moderators who are discerning but also empathetic would be valuable.

Censorship

There has been growing concern and controversy surrounding censorship on social media (Heins, Reference Heins2014). Social media platforms such as Twitter and YouTube recently came under fire after deleting posts or banning users and channels that express certain ideological views (e.g., BBC News, 2020; Zaru, Reference Zaru2021). Social media companies have long suggested that their platforms provide a space for the free exchange of views and ideas. However, it has become apparent that these platforms are not neutral public platforms, but rather, just like traditional media, they promote certain content and suppress others according to their interests and ideologies (Lewis, Reference Lewis2021). Although social media companies began to acknowledge such editorial actions, it remains largely unclear how they are curating content. As we have just discussed, dialogue with diverse groups of people plays an essential role in identity development. Therefore, if social media platforms exercise editorial power, it is important that they make their decisions transparent so that people can make informed decisions about which platforms to use for a meaningful dialogue.

Narrative Elaboration on Social Media

Social media platforms generally support the elaboration of narratives as they provide comment sections and encourage dialogue between users. However, the unique affordances of social media platforms may affect the extent to which users elaborate on their stories. For example, Twitter sets a strict character limit for posts and comments and may therefore hinder the elaboration of narratives and deep dialogue compared to platforms like Facebook, Reddit, and Tumblr. Indeed, in an in-depth interview with activists, Comunello et al. (Reference Comunello, Mulargia and Parisi2016) found that the activists perceived platform affordances as having a significant impact on their ability to express themselves, with one of them reporting that the possibility to write longer texts allowed him to better articulate his opinions. Misunderstandings between users may be more common on platforms that restrict the length of posts and comments because short posts and comments do not easily allow clarification of meaning. Such platforms might predispose users to insult each other instead of asking each other questions to elaborate on their self-stories.

Attention and Validation on Social Media

Social media offers unprecedented opportunities to be listened to and validated by others. Before social media, individuals whose values and beliefs deviated from the norm had difficulty finding someone who would listen to or affirm their views (e.g., Gray, Reference Gray2009). It is now much easier to find like-minded others because social media platforms such as Facebook and Reddit enable people to search for various communities. This is, for example, reflected in online activism by various groups of people (Bennett, Reference Bennett2014; Buell Hirsch, Reference Buell Hirsch2014; Sandoval-Almazan & Gil-Gracia, Reference Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia2014). However, the downside of such diverse and specific communities is that they can create echo chambers and shun interaction outside the communities (Singer, Reference Singer2020). An optimal social media environment may therefore be that which makes it easy to find like-minded people while encouraging communication and interaction between diverse groups.

Attention and validation are most effective if they come from close people (Carr et al., Reference Carr, Wohn and Hayes2016). Hayes et al. (Reference Hayes, Carr and Wohn2016) found that people experienced more personal support on platforms that allowed them to easily narrow their audience and share posts with close friends (e.g., Snapchat). Therefore, adolescents who are in the phase of identity consolidation may benefit more by using platforms that make it easy to target posts to close friends.

Peer Influence in Digital Realms

Susceptibility to peer influence peaks during the adolescent years (Steinberg & Monahan, Reference Steinberg and Monahan2007), due to an increased importance of peer relationships and status during this period (Prinstein & Dodge, Reference Prinstein and Dodge2008), as well as neurological development (Sommerville, Reference Somerville2013; Steinberg, Reference Steinberg2008). Adolescents look to their peers as informative models for what behaviors are considered acceptable and desirable (injunctive norms), and to assess the how frequent various behaviors are (descriptive norms; Kallgren et al., Reference Kallgren, Reno and Cialdini2000). Due to the highly public nature of many social media platforms, adolescents are able to spend hours examining the posted lives of their close friends and more distant peers. Because adolescents’ social media feeds display the content produced by their wide social networks, this could also serve to blur the line between proximal norms (their immediate friends) and more distal or global norms (peers in general). A great deal of research on peer influence has focused on how it can affect the development of problematic behaviors such as substance use (Geusens & Beullens, Reference Geusens and Beullens2017a, Reference Geusens and Beullens2017b). Adolescents who believe that their friends and peers are using substances (or hold positive views of substance use) are more likely to engage in this behavior themselves. Depictions of substance use are viewed on social media by both adolescents (Boyle et al., Reference Boyle, Earle, LaBrie and Ballou2017; Carrotte et al., Reference Carrotte, Dietze, Wright and Lim2016) and college-aged adults (Moewaka Barnes et al., Reference Moewaka Barnes, McCreanor, Goodwin, Lyons, Griffin and Hutton2016; Morgan et al., Reference Morgan, Snelson and Elison-Bowers2010), and these depictions in turn relate to individuals’ perception of injunctive norms (Boyle et al., Reference Boyle, LaBrie, Froidevaux and Witkovic2016; Yoo et al., Reference Yoo, Yang and Cho2016) and their own substance use (Geusens & Beullens, Reference Geusens and Beullens2017b). Substance use presentations on social media likely influence adolescents by changing their perception of the acceptability and prevalence of these behaviors. In one study, viewing peers’ posts about substance use improved the perceived desirability and positive expectancies of substance use behaviors (Huang et al., Reference Huang, Unger and Soto2014). Another study found that viewing friends’ substance use posts on social media predicted elevated drinking one year later, and this relationship was mediated by more positive injunctive peer norms about alcohol (Nesi et al., Reference Nesi, Rothenberg, Hussong and Jackson2017).

However, social media does not only influence adolescents by allowing them to observe their peers, but also permits adolescents to be observed by their peers as well. Adolescents are heavily influenced by the notion (accurate or inaccurate) that their activities are being viewed and judged by peers. Although the impact of the imaginary audience has been discussed for decades (Elkind, Reference Elkind1967), recent fMRI studies support the neurological underpinnings for this influence process. Simply being in the presence of peers increases adolescents’ susceptibility to peer influence by increasing functioning in the regions of the brain responsible for social cognition and reward seeking (primarily the amygdala, striatum, and prefrontal cortex; Somerville, Reference Somerville2013; Steinberg, Reference Steinberg2008). This increased focus on reward seeking in turn leads to greater risk-taking behavior (Chein et al., Reference Chein, Albert, O’Brien, Uckert and Steinberg2011; O’Brien et al., Reference O’Brien, Albert, Chein and Steinberg2011). In offline contexts, peer presence is a fairly objective variable (for both adolescents themselves and inquiring researchers), but many of the features of social media outlined in the transformation framework (Nesi et al., Reference Nesi, Choukas-Bradley and Prinstein2018a) may amplify this experience. The availability and the publicness of social media means that peers can be “present” even when the adolescent is physically alone. Furthermore, the quantifiability of these networks, with a numeric quantity of followers and likes, could intensify peer influence. Recent fMRI studies have found that the neurological activation patterns underpinning peer influence when peers are physically present (Chein et al., Reference Chein, Albert, O’Brien, Uckert and Steinberg2011, Steinberg, Reference Steinberg2008) also occur when peers are “present” via Instagram (Sherman, Hernandez, et al., Reference Sherman, Hernandez, Greenfield and Dapretto2018; Sherman et al., Reference Sherman, Payton, Hernandez, Greenfield and Dapretto2016), and the impact of digital peer influence is stronger for adolescents compared to young adults (Sherman, Greenfield, et al., Reference Sherman, Hernandez, Greenfield and Dapretto2018).

The studies highlighted above suggest that social media can extend the reach of peer influence beyond physical presence and interaction with peers. Future research can leverage the networked data available on these platforms to better understand the role of proximal and distal peers in influencing adolescents’ behavior, and to operationalize different levels of peer connection and degrees of separation from each other in more detailed ways. For example, frequency of communication with a peer or even frequency of viewing a peer’s posts might objectively and accurately assess proximity to that peer. Alternatively, metrics used in social network analyses such as network closure and centrality can be used to more clearly define proximal and distal peers (Hanneman & Riddle, Reference Hanneman, Riddle, Scott and Carrington2011). This would allow researchers to go beyond simply asking adolescents to identify and rate their friends and peers, to directly assess with whom an adolescent digitally interacts and is connected. Directly assessing interactions (and observation) at the network level could greatly enhance our understanding of peer influence for a variety of important variables such as mental health, academic performance, and body image issues.

Social Connectedness and Isolation via Social Media

The role of social media in promoting (or inhibiting) social connectedness has received increasing research interest over the past several years. Social connectedness and a feeling of belonging is one of the primary benefits of peer relationships during adolescence, promoting positive psychosocial outcomes (Bradley & Inglis, Reference Bradley and Inglis2012) and protecting against both externalizing and internalizing problems (Newman et al., Reference Newman, Lohman and Newman2007). As social media and digital communication increased in popularity, there was a great deal of speculation about whether these technologies would foster intimacy and connection with peers, or if the reductions in face-to-face interaction would actually diminish adolescents’ sense of belongingness with peers (Allen et al., Reference Allen, Ryan, Gray, McInerney and Waters2014). Some proposed that specific features of social media would provide opportunities to better connect with peers. In a series of interviews conducted with adolescents, Davis (Reference Davis2012) identified that frequent communication with friends through a variety of digital platforms promoted a sense of closeness with these peers. The ability to connect with peers despite physical distance is identified by adolescents as one of the primary benefits of digital communication (Ling, Reference Ling, Harper, Palen and Taylor2005). Indeed, adolescents exchange a great deal of emotionally supportive communication via social media (Siriaraya et al., Reference Siriaraya, Tang, Ang, Pfeil and Zaphiris2011), using these platforms to reach out to peers in times of need (Ehrenreich et al., Reference Ehrenreich, Beron, Burnell, Meter and Underwood2020).

Beyond using social media to directly interact with peers, there is also some evidence that posting broadly to social media platforms without directly connecting with a specific peer (such as a tweet or a status post on Facebook) can reduce loneliness in undergraduate samples (große Deters & Mehl, Reference große Deters and Mehl2013; Lou et al., Reference Lou, Yan, Nickerson and McMorris2012). These findings highlight that the availability of the peer network that social media affords adolescents translates into increases in connection and belongingness, and reductions in loneliness. Indeed, a meta-analysis examining 63 studies found that social media use was positively correlated with perceived social resources from peers (Domahidi, Reference Domahidi2018). Interestingly, a recent study examining specific features of social media platforms found that image-based platforms in particular (e.g., Instagram and Snapchat) reduced users’ loneliness (Pittman & Reich, Reference Pittman and Reich2016). The authors speculate that the emphasis on images facilitates the sense of a “social presence” with peers that is better able to promote connection, aligning with the perspective that the visualness of social media (Nesi et al., Reference Nesi, Choukas-Bradley and Prinstein2018a) may be an important feature for subsequent research into the role of social media in connection.

In contrast to the potential benefits of social media on adolescents’ peer connection, a separate body of research has suggested that smartphones and social media use are actually reducing social connection and well-being, and account for overall increases in social isolation and loneliness among adolescents (Twenge, Reference Twenge2019). Population-level studies have indeed identified increasing trends in both suicidality and depression over the past decade (Mojtabai et al., Reference Mojtabai, Olfson and Han2016) that coincided with similar rises in cellphone ownership and social media use (Twenge et al., Reference Twenge, Joiner, Rogers and Martin2018). One meta-analysis found that social media use does indeed correlate with perceived loneliness (although the authors suggest that loneliness predicting social media use is the most likely direction of effect; Song et al., Reference Song, Hayeon and Anne2014). One large-scale cross-sectional study of young adults found that social media usage was a significant predictor of social isolation (Primack et al., Reference Primack, Shensa and Sidani2017), and a micro-longitudinal study also found that time spent on social media predicts momentary feelings of social isolation (Kross et al., Reference Kross, Verduyn and Demiralp2013). Furthermore, a few experimental studies have also supported the hypothesis that social media causally predicts maladjustment. College students who were instructed to limit their social media use to no more than 30 minutes per day reported lower levels of depression and loneliness compared to the control group (Hunt et al., Reference Hunt, Marx, Lipson and Young2018). Similarly, individuals randomly assigned to abstain from Facebook for one week reported being happier and less depressed by the end of the week (Tromholdt, Reference Tromholt2016).

Although the immediate and constant connection that social media provides is appealing to adolescents (Davis, Reference Davis2012), there is concern that time spent on these digital platforms comes at the cost of more intimate and socially valuable face-to-face time (Kraut et al., Reference Kraut, Patterson, Lundmark, Kiesler, Mukophadhyay and Scherlis1998). The conflicting evidence on the role of social media in supporting or inhibiting social connection likely reflects methodological limitations for disentangling direction of effect (but see George et al., Reference George, Beron, Vollet, Burnell, Ehrenreich and Underwood2021 and Twenge, Reference Twenge2019 for contrasting perspectives on this). However, it also likely reflects the reality that the way adolescents are using these technologies may be more important than the overall time spent online. In particular, it appears passive social media use (time spent scrolling through peers’ posts without actually interacting or engaging with peers) may be especially harmful for adolescents’ well-being and sense of connection, compared to actively engaging with peers via social media. Time spent passively viewing peers’ social media content indeed predicts reductions in perceived peer support (Frison & Eggermont, Reference Frison and Eggermont2015), increases in social loneliness (Amichai-Hamgurger & Ben-Artzi, Reference Amichai-Hamburger and Ben-Artzi2003; Matook et al., Reference Matook, Cummings and Bala2015) and a sense of disconnection from peers (Amichai-Hamgurger & Ben-Artzi, Reference Amichai-Hamburger and Ben-Artzi2003) that likely grows out of feelings of envy and negative social comparison (de Vries et al., Reference de Vries, Möller, Wieringa, Eigenraam and Hamelink2018; Vogel et al., Reference Vogel, Rose, Okdie, Eckles and Franz2015; Weinstein, Reference Weinstein2017).

In contrast to the consistently negative correlates of passive social media use, active social media use (posting and directly interacting with peers) appears to have much more positive outcomes. Adolescents’ public Facebook posts elicit positive feedback from peers, which in turn increases the perception of peer support (Frison & Eggermont, Reference Frison and Eggermont2015). Similarly, experimentally increasing the frequency of posting publicly on Facebook reduced loneliness among college students (große Deters & Mehl, Reference große Deters and Mehl2013). Social media can also facilitate more private, dyadic interactions among peers, which in turn predicts social connection and support (Frison et al., Reference Frison, Bastin, Bijttebier and Eggermont2019; Frison & Eggermont, Reference Frison and Eggermont2015). It is not surprising that the opportunities for actual peer interaction (active use) promote feelings of connection and support among adolescents; indeed this was identified by adolescents as a primary benefit (Davis, Reference Davis2012). However, the conflicting findings between social media contributing to connection versus isolation highlights the importance of how adolescents are using these media. Future research must continue to focus on the specific online behaviors and usage patterns that foster connection, rather than simply assessing the amount of time spent using these platforms. The transformational framework model (Nesi et al., Reference Nesi, Choukas-Bradley and Prinstein2018a) may be especially useful in disentangling the conflicting findings that have emerged in this research area. By focusing on the specific features of social media platforms that may be shaping peer interactions in these contexts, researchers can better understand what promotes a sense of connection and peer support, and what may undermine it.

Popularity and Social Status

Because of its highly public nature and constant availability, social media may be especially important in shaping adolescent social status (Nesi & Prinstein, Reference Nesi and Prinstein2019). Although social status has always been an important component of adolescent peer relationships (Harter et al., Reference Harter, Stocker and Robinson1996), social media both intensifies that importance and salience of peer status, and also provides new tools for managing and promoting status (Nesi et al., Reference Nesi, Choukas-Bradley and Prinstein2018b). The quantifiability of social networks makes social media especially important for adolescents’ perceptions of status. Adolescents are highly aware of a variety of social media metrics assessing popularity (e.g., number of friends, number of likes or retweets; Madden et al., Reference Madden, Lenhart and Cortesi2013).

Indeed, the preoccupation with popularity on social media may have reframed adolescents’ traditional desire for popularity into aspirations for fame and stardom. Content analysis of movies and television viewed by adolescents has found that fame is increasingly portrayed as an important – and achievable – goal (Uhls & Greenfield, Reference Uhls and Greenfield2012), and adolescents who use social networking sites more frequently report a greater emphasis on the value of fame (Uhls et al., Reference Uhls, Zgourou and Greenfield2014). This emphasis on fame is somewhat attributable to the rise in popularity of reality television, wherein “ordinary people” ostensibly become famous for simply living their day-to-day lives (Rui & Stefanone, Reference Rui and Stefanone2016). But adolescents are also highly cognizant of the potential to achieve celebrity simply by acquiring enough social media followers (e.g., “Instagram famous”; Marwick, Reference Marwick2015).

Although social media has made peer status and popularity much more salient, it has also provided a variety of tools adolescents can use in their attempt to improve their status. Prior to the advent of social media, many adolescents no doubt spent their free time envisioning moving up the social hierarchy. However, with the help of smartphones and social networking sites, adolescents can actively work toward improving their number of friends, and curating their self-presentation at all times. Adolescents are quite strategic in leveraging social media to promote a positive and popular image. Many adolescents go to great lengths to ensure that their self-presentation on social media receives positive peer response, including taking numerous photos to select the best image for posting (Yau & Reich, Reference Yau and Reich2019), heavily editing photos to present an attractive image (Bell, Reference Bell2019), curating the activities they disclose to create a fun and glamorous identity (Fardouly & Vartanian, Reference Fardouly and Vartanian2016), and timing posts to maximize peer likes (Nesi & Prinstein, Reference Nesi and Prinstein2019). Indeed in her analyses of adolescents’ digital presentations, Marwick (Reference Marwick2013) suggests adolescents are engaging in “self-branding,” designed to market themselves using techniques similar to consumer products.

Although social media may provide a variety of new tools for managing one’s social status, that does not mean that all adolescents leverage social media to achieve higher status. Using social media in ways that will promote one’s social status requires a significant amount of social competence (Reich, Reference Reich2017) and a great deal of effort (Yau & Reich, Reference Yau and Reich2019). Popular adolescents are more likely to engage with their peers in ways that will promote their existing status, including both positive and aggressive behaviors. Furthermore, popular adolescents who are better able to self-monitor and regulate the online interactions are less likely to be the target of cybervictimization (Ranney & Troop-Gordon, Reference Ranney and Troop-Gordon2020).

Studies in Early Life and Childhood

While early childhood screen and digital media exposure is a widely researched topic, only a handful of studies have deployed noninvasive brain imaging methods in the effort to illuminate potential interrelationships with brain development. Perhaps the earliest developmental glimpse comes from MRI and EEG studies conducted in preschoolers (Hutton et al., Reference Hutton, Dudley, Horowitz-Kraus, Dewitt and Holland2020; Zivan et al., Reference Zivan, Bar, Jing, Hutton, Farah and Horowitz-Kraus2019). One MRI-based diffusion tractography study (Hutton et al., Reference Hutton, Dudley, Horowitz-Kraus, Dewitt and Holland2020) found that, already by preschool (ages 3–5), screen time exposure is associated with widespread reductions in white matter integrity, a sign that these children have less well-developed structural connections between brain regions. While several tracts (pathways) exhibited this association, those associated with executive function, multimodal association, visual processing, and language were especially implicated. The same research group also conducted an EEG study of children aged 4–6 (Zivan et al., Reference Zivan, Bar, Jing, Hutton, Farah and Horowitz-Kraus2019), which found that six weeks of exposure to screen-based, digitally recorded, stories, compared to live human storytelling, resulted in weaker attentional gains and a resting-state EEG pattern characteristic of attentional disruption (increased theta/beta power ratio). Meanwhile, a study exploring screen-based media habits in a group of older children (aged 8–12; Horowitz-Kraus & Hutton, Reference Horowitz-Kraus and Hutton2018) indicated that increased media exposure might be associated with decreased resting-state connectivity between both cognitive control and language regions of the brain and the visual word form area, a region known to be important in the acquisition and execution of reading skills. The authors speculated that this pattern might have arisen because substantial screen time disrupts the normal development of the regions that support reading skill in the brain. Recently, Horowitz-Kraus and colleagues (Reference Horowitz-Kraus, DiFrancesco and Greenwood2020) followed up on this discovery to investigate whether functional connectivity patterns in this age range might also relate to the ratio of time that children spend in front of screens versus reading; this time considering these relationships for both typical readers and children with reading difficulties. The two reading ability groups exhibited similar screen-to-reading time ratios but, selectively for the children with reading difficulties, a relatively greater proportion of screen time activity was related to increased functional connectivity in the salience and executive control networks. The authors suggested that this pattern might reflect inefficient engagement of control processes when reading (and presumably when engaging in other cognitively challenging tasks), which might ultimately lead these children to greater screen dependency (though see Y. Ophir et al., Reference Ophir, Tikochinski and Rosenberg2020). Through we still only have correlational evidence from these studies, the findings are at least consistent with the idea that screen time exposure, particularly during earlier stages of dynamic brain growth and development, might be intertwined with the processes supporting self-regulatory control, especially among those with existing developmental deficits.

Paulus and colleagues (Reference Paulus, Squeglia and Bagot2019) recently reported findings from the first large-scale investigation aimed at relating screen media activity to structural brain characteristics in prepubescent youth (ages 9 and 10 at recruitment), using the structural imaging and survey data from a 4,277-participant subset of the first cross-sectional release of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study (Volkow et al., Reference Volkow, Koob and Croyle2018). The authors characterized and quantified screen media activity via multivariate analyses of survey responses provided by parents and youth. Overall, these analyses produced significant but complex patterns of relationship between structural brain indices (cortical thickness, sulcal depth, and gray matter volume) and screen media activity. In particular, the factor accounting for the most variance in screen media activity showed that greater screen involvement was linked to widespread cortical thinning and gray matter volume reductions (along with greater levels of externalizing psychopathology and lower crystallized intelligence). Interestingly, this pattern held for regions supporting both early sensory processing and higher order functions. However, the specific pattern of relationship was also found to depend on the type of screen media behavior (e.g., social media vs. gaming) – for instance, greater exposure to gaming-related activities was associated with thinner cortex, but also larger regional volume (e.g., OFC) and higher crystallized intelligence. Moreover, other latent factors capturing variance in the screen media activity data suggested disparate patterns of relationship between screen activity and brain structure. In light of this diversity of findings, the authors cautioned that screen media activity cannot be reduced to being simply “good” or “bad” for brain structure and function.

Studies in Adolescents

There is a widely observed rise in digital media involvement during adolescence. With adolescence, pubertal processes advance the brain into a period characterized by rapid change in both the midline dopaminergic reward system and in the extended network of brain regions involved in social information processing (Blakemore, Reference Blakemore2008, Reference Blakemore2012). It is, accordingly, tempting to speculate that the changes taking place in these brain systems might explain the escalation of digital media use during this period, and earlier in this chapter we presented some relevant and corroborative findings (e.g., Cascio et al., Reference Cascio, O’Donnell, Bayer, Tinney and Falk2015; Sherman et al., Reference Sherman, Payton, Hernandez, Greenfield and Dapretto2016; Tymofiyeva et al., Reference Tymofiyeva, Yuan and Kidambi2020; Yuan et al., Reference Yuan, Qin and Wang2011). Unfortunately, much of the additional literature on brain-to-digital-media relationships during “adolescence” has involved either very late adolescent cohorts, or participant samples spanning a wide age range that may include some younger adolescents but also extends into young adulthood (i.e., participants in their early to mid- twenties; F. Lin et al., Reference Lin, Zhou and Du2012; Moisala et al., Reference Moisala, Salmela and Hietajärvi2016, Reference Moisala, Salmela and Hietajärvi2017; Von der Heide et al., Reference Von der Heide, Vyas and Olson2013; H. Wang et al., Reference Wang, Jin and Yuan2015). Thus, it can be difficult to draw meaningful developmental conclusions from this corpus of work.

The few studies using somewhat more constrained age cohorts (i.e., including only adolescents aged 18 or under) produce intriguing, but varied outcomes. One study, for instance, observed that internet gaming habits among a group of 14- to 17-year-olds related to disrupted blood flow patterns (as measured by MRI-based arterial spin labeling) in a large number of brain areas, including some linked to reward-relevant processing (e.g., amygdala) (Feng et al., Reference Feng, Chen and Sun2013). Using functional connectivity methods, another study found that a group of gaming addicts, aged 12–17, also evince relatively increased connectivity between the posterior cingulate cortex and several other social- and reward-relevant regions, including the precuneus and the nucleus accumbens (Ding et al., Reference Ding, Sun and Sun2013). However, more recent work (Chun et al., Reference Chun, Choi and Cho2018) on excessive smartphone use among adolescents aged 12–18 found that smartphone usage intensity related to significantly weaker intrinsic resting-state connectivity within the reward network (OFC to VS) and between the control and reward systems (OFC to mACC), with weakened OFC–VS functional connectivity also found to be predictive of the severity of smartphone withdrawal symptoms reported by the group. Thus, evidence on the relationship between digital media behaviors and functional connectivity across regions of the reward and social processing networks appears to be nuanced, and difficult to align neatly with specific theories of development.

Sexual Exploration

One of the most commonly reported motivations for adolescents’ sexual engagement with digital media is the need to explore one’s sexuality and emerging sexual feelings (Cooper et al., Reference Cooper, Quayle, Jonsson and Svedin2016). Particularly, heightened levels of arousal and sexual curiosity characterize adolescence and are the predominant reasons for using online pornography and engaging in sexting. Gender differences are relevant in this context as boys are more often driven by arousal, pleasure, and sexual curiosity than girls (Cooper et al., Reference Cooper, Quayle, Jonsson and Svedin2016; Grubbs et al., Reference Grubbs, Wright, Braden, Wilt and Kraus2019).

Apart from arousal and curiosity, adolescents share a desire to learn about sexual practices as many of them are still inexperienced. Adolescents frequently turn to sexually oriented digital media stimulated by the need for information about sexual activities (e.g., how to initiate intercourse) (Pascoe, Reference Pascoe2011). This information-seeking need is especially relevant in terms of adolescents’ online pornography use as this type of digital content explicitly shows how to engage in different types of sexual activities. Moreover, pornographic content can even be used as a source of inspiration for novel sexual behaviors (e.g., learning about different sexual positions) (e.g., Grubbs et al., Reference Grubbs, Wright, Braden, Wilt and Kraus2019).

The need to construct one’s sexual and gender identity is further considered to be a key motivator of adolescents’ uses of sexually oriented digital media. Specifically within the online environment, adolescents feel more secure and less prejudiced when exploring and, even, expressing their own sexuality and gender identity (e.g., Pascoe, Reference Pascoe2011). On social media, adolescents are exposed to varying types of sexual content (e.g., sexy selfies) shared by peers and other significant actors (e.g., influencers). This content offers insights on how adolescent girls and boys behave and present themselves sexually (e.g., Kapidzic & Herring, Reference Kapidzic and Herring2015; Shafer et al., Reference Shafer, Bobkowski, Brown and Dill2013). These self-presentations stimulate adolescents to explore their own sexuality (van Oosten et al., Reference Van Oosten, Peter and Boot2015). Online sexual self-presentations express different sexual beliefs, preferences, and behaviors whilst simultaneously negotiating peer approval and acceptance. For heterosexual boys and girls, these self-presentations often reflect traditional gender stereotypes. Girls are more invested in portraying themselves as sexually attractive and seductive, whereas boys’ self-presentations are more varied (e.g., pictures of oneself practicing hobbies) (Kapidzic & Herring, Reference Kapidzic and Herring2015). Indeed, the longitudinal study of van Oosten et al. (Reference Van Oosten, Vandenbosch and Peter2017b) shows that adolescents who hold more gender stereotypical beliefs present themselves online more in a sexy way and, at the same time, are also more exposed to sexy self-presentations.

Further, scholars point to the experimental nature of consensual sexting by which adolescents can establish their sexuality. Adolescents are motivated to experiment with different sexual experiences whilst expressing their own sexual preferences (e.g., Dir et al., Reference Dir, Coskunpinar, Steiner and Cyders2013). Also, through the uses of online pornography, adolescents are exposed to different types of sexual activities that allows them to explore their sexual preferences freely. This exploration of one’s sexual preferences facilitates the acceptance and establishment of, for example, one’s sexual orientation (Grubb et al., Reference Grubbs, Wright, Braden, Wilt and Kraus2019).

Relationship Initiation and Maintenance

One frequently reported motivator of digital media uses is the ability to initiate a romantic relationship and even maintain this relationship. Adolescents use social media and sexting in order to flirt with someone, ask someone out for a date, or even ask someone to be their boyfriend/girlfriend (Young et al., Reference Young, Len-Ríos and Young2017). For sexual minority groups, relationship initiation through digital media is particularly convenient. These groups often experience difficulties forming romantic relationships offline as they have fewer potential romantic partners and experience stigmatizations or even physical harm (Williams et al., Reference Diamond, Savin-Williams, Lerner and Steinberg2009). Within the online environment, sexual minority groups can experience less harassment and feel more secure when establishing a romantic relationship (Korchmaros et al., Reference Korchmaros, Ybarra and Mitchell2015).

Further, in order to maintain one’s romantic relationship, adolescents also turn to digital media. Particularly, when a relationship is established, adolescents can advertise the relationship status on Facebook (i.e., “in a relationship” or “engaged”), which can be seen as an important step in their romantic relationship (Van Ouytsel et al., Reference Van Ouytsel, Van Gool, Walrave, Ponnet and Peeters2016b). Also, instant messaging tools on social media allow romantic partners to stay in contact while being physically distant (Utz & Beukeboom, Reference Utz and Beukeboom2011). Scholars even suggest that digital communication is now an integral part of adolescent couple functioning (Blumer & Hertlein, Reference Blumer, Hertlein and Breuss2015). In order to maintain a more intimate bond with one’s romantic partner, adolescents often use sexting (Cooper et al., Reference Cooper, Quayle, Jonsson and Svedin2016). Consensual sexting is considered a normal and contemporary form of sexual expression and intimate communication within relationships (Burkett, Reference Burkett2015; Parker et al., Reference Parker, Blackburn, Perry and Hawks2013). Further, sexting can initiate offline sexual behaviors with romantic partners. For adolescents who are physically separated or cannot engage in sexual activities with their romantic partners (e.g., because this is forbidden by their religion), sexting can take place as a means of sustaining a level of intimacy (Cooper et al., Reference Cooper, Quayle, Jonsson and Svedin2016).

Pressure

Similar to offline sexual behavior, online sexual behavior can also be motivated by external factors such as peer and partner pressure. Peers become increasingly important in the lives of adolescents as they are experiencing elevated need for autonomy from one’s parents and, at the same time, seek out approval from their peers (Lerner et al., Reference Lerner, Boyd, Du, Weiner and Craighead2010). Such dynamics are also relevant when considering sexually oriented digital media uses. Particularly, studies consistently demonstrate that the need to conform to peer norms and even the experience of peer pressure are significant motivators for adolescents’ posting of sexy selfies on social media (i.e., mostly among girls) (de Vaate et al., Reference de Vaate, Veldhuis, Alleva, Konijn and van Hugten2018; Mascheroni et al., Reference Mascheroni, Vincent and Jimenez2015), online pornography use (i.e., mostly among boys) (Chen et al., Reference Chen, Leung, Chen and Yang2013; Vanden Abeele et al., Reference Le, Temple, Peskin, Markham, Tortolero, Weins and Hiestand2014), and sexting (Dake et al., Reference Dake, Price, Maziarz and Ward2012; Maheux et al., Reference Maheux, Evans, Widman, Nesi, Prinstein and Choukas-Bradley2020).

Scholars emphasize that sexting can also be initiated after experiencing pressure from a partner. Especially girls experience such (implicit) pressure from partners (Walrave et al., Reference Walrave, Heirman and Hallam2014). Girls often believe that they need to send self-produced sexual images to their partners in order to maintain a good relationship. Boys, on the other hand, experience more pressure from other peers as the ability to chat to girls and negotiate access to seeing their bodies proves their dominant sexual status (Crofts et al., Reference Crofts, Lee, McGovern, Milivojevic, Grealy, Driscoll and Hickey-Moody2018). Sexual activities with girls (e.g., receiving girls’ sexual pictures and forwarding these pictures without their consent) can thus help boys to gain peer status and popularity (Burén & Lunde, Reference Burén and Lunde2018; Ringrose et al., Reference Ringrose, Harvey, Gill and Livingstone2013). At the same time, more moral responsibility is attributed to girls for sending a sexting picture than for boys forwarding such pictures without consent. As such, regardless of whether they engage in sexting or not, girls’ behavior seems to be consistently evaluated in terms of sexist norms (Lippman & Campbell, Reference Lippman and Campbell2014; Ringrose et al., Reference Ringrose, Harvey, Gill and Livingstone2013).

Sexual Coercion

A growing body of literature indicates that the uses of sexually oriented digital media can also take place in a context of abusive dating behaviors (Van Ouytsel et al., Reference Van Ouytsel, Ponnet, Walrave and Temple2016a). Reed and colleagues (Reference Reed, Tolman and Ward2017) distinguished three different types of digital dating abuse among adolescents: digital monitoring and controlling, direct aggression, and sexual coercion. Digital monitoring/controlling is the most frequently reported digital abusive behavior. This particular type of abusive behavior entails the intrusion of a partner’s privacy via controlling their online activities and relationships (Dracker & Martsolf, Reference Draucker and Martsolf2010). Girls have reported a higher frequency of digital monitoring than boys (Reed et al., Reference Reed, Tolman and Ward2017).

Further, digital direct aggression toward one’s romantic partner or dating interest can also be a motivation for adolescents’ engagement with digital media. Such direct aggression can, for example, be expressed by posting a hurtful public/private message or the threat to physically harm one’s partner (Borrajo et al., Reference Borrajo, Gámez-Guadix and Calvete2015).

Lastly, scholars stress the occurrence of digital sexual coercion among adolescents. This behavior encompasses the use of sexually oriented digital media to pressure someone to send intimate pictures, redistributing intimate pictures without consent, and even threatening with sexual harm (Hellevik, Reference Hellevik2019). Boys engage more regularly in digital sexual aggression and coercion (Reed et al., Reference Reed, Tolman and Ward2017, Reference Reed, Ward, Tolman, Lippman and Seabrook2018). In terms of digital sexual coercion, the previous section has already addressed partner pressure being a detrimental motivator for, mostly girls’, sexting behaviors. When addressing sexting behavior in adolescents and its problematic motivators, it is especially crucial to emphasize the occurrence of grooming. This online behavior is often considered a criminal offence and entails a process in which an adult manipulates a minor via digital media in order to obtain sexual materials from them or to sexually abuse them (Machimbarrena et al., Reference Machimbarrena, Calvete, Fernández-González, Álvarez-Bardón, Álvarez-Fernández and González-Cabrera2018). For instance, 16.6% of adolescents indicated that they had experienced grooming online (Machimbarrena et al., Reference Machimbarrena, Calvete, Fernández-González, Álvarez-Bardón, Álvarez-Fernández and González-Cabrera2018).

Sexual Self-Development Outcomes

Attitudinal Outcomes

Relationship Quality Indicators

Behavioral Outcomes

Africa

Quantitative research in Nigeria suggests that social media reshapes core values of respect for old age, traditional ways of dress, and language use (Asemah et al., Reference Asemah, Ekhareafo and Olaniran2013). The authors argue that Facebook, Twitter, and 2go are “potent tools of cultural imperialism” (Asemah et al., Reference Asemah, Ekhareafo and Olaniran2013, p. 67), for they encourage Nigerian youth to pattern their lives after foreign culture and drive the loss of traditional values. Yet the authors also highlight the potential utility of these social media in promoting traditional Nigerian values among youth. Certainly, digital media are powerful tools of globalization insofar as they reduce the distance between practices, values, and people from geographically distant world regions. Yet digital media may also encourage localization (the counterforce of globalization) by encouraging the maintenance and even expansion of local values and practices (Hermans & Dimaggio, Reference Hermans and Dimaggio2007) in rapidly changing cultural contexts.

In Ethiopia, Hansen and colleagues’ quantitative work points to continuity and change in cultural values with the experimental introduction of laptops. In one study, Hansen et al. (Reference Hansen, Postmes, van der Vinne and van Thiel2012) found that after one year of laptop use, adolescents more strongly endorsed individualistic values, yet there was no reduction in collectivistic value endorsement. In another study, Hansen et al. (Reference Hansen, Postmes, Tovote and Bos2014) found that children and adolescents – particularly in rural regions – who were given laptops became significantly more positive about gender equality over time than those without laptops. Those with laptops also endorsed other “modern” cultural values (e.g., achievement, self-direction, universalism). Interestingly, though, they found that traditional values (i.e., religion, family) were also strengthened by the introduction of laptops. The effects of internet and social media use were not assessed in these studies because the laptops given were not connected to the Internet, but it is telling that even the use of offline laptops alter the cultural values endorsed by Ethiopian youth.

Asia

Although digital media are marketed as giving youth power and agency, Pathak-Shelat and DeShano’s (Reference Pathak-Shelat and DeShano2014) qualitative research illustrates that traditional Indian values of obedience to elders are also reinforced by rural Indian adolescents’ internalization of parental moral panic about media as risky. They do so by modeling their digital media use around parental concerns ranging from interacting with strangers to developing cancer from new media technologies. Yet adolescents also subtly (re)negotiate age-based hierarchies and power by, for instance, friending those with whom they are unfamiliar (engaging in “risky” behavior) and not friending distant relatives (not respecting familial ties). Importantly, adolescents in this rural Indian context experience media as peripheral rather than central to their lives. Rural Indian youth have less access to mobile phones and computers with internet access (Pathak-Shelat & DeShano, Reference Pathak-Shelat and DeShano2014); they also use digital media in ways that are distinct from youth in urban India – where media use reshapes adolescent cultural practices such as clothing and music choices (Rao et al., Reference Rao, Berry, Gonsalves, Hastak, Shah and Roeser2013).

Research in Thailand, too, points to gaps in media use across rural and urban contexts. The second author’s mixed-methods study found that urban-dwelling Thais spend more time on digital media than rural-dwelling Thais, and that adolescents spend more time on digital media than their parents (McKenzie et al., Reference McKenzie, Castellón, Willis-Grossmann, Landeros, Rooney and Stewart2022). The media-based opportunities and challenges experienced across generation and geographic location speak to continuity in cultural values. Rural and urban adolescents and parents alike perceive connecting with proximal others (e.g., friends, children) as a key technological affordance. That urban adolescents – who spend the most time on digital media – emphasize collectivistic goals illustrates that media are used in ways that align with and promote traditional cultural values. Yet the media-based challenges highlighted point to digital media paradoxes among those who spend the most time online. Urban adolescents simultaneously experience social media as expanding their presence in the world and restricting real-world experiences, and as enabling connections with, and fostering rejection from, friends. Their parents experience media both as tools for achieving closeness with their children and as endangering family bonds by cheapening time spent together.

In urban Thailand, qualitative research indicates that adolescents’ media expertise renders them cultural brokers for their parents (McKenzie et al., Reference McKenzie2019). Adolescents in this society traditionally marked by deference to elders train their parents to use digital technologies, which reshapes traditional power dynamics and hierarchical family relationships. It is noteworthy, though, that parents reassert their position of authority (e.g., by mobilizing their children’s technological desires as opportunities to teach culturally salient lessons about necessity) and that adolescents use their digital media expertise to assist and serve their parents. This points to continuity of Thai values for age-based hierarchy, moderation, and filial piety, even in the face of rapid technological change.

Latin America/Caribbean

The work of Ferguson and colleagues highlights the influence of digital media on adolescent values and identity in Jamaica. Across two studies, they found that roughly one-third of urban Jamaican adolescents were remotely acculturated to American culture (Ferguson & Bornstein, Reference Ferguson and Bornstein2012, Reference Ferguson and Bornstein2015). One key avenue through which this remote acculturation occurs is indirect intercultural contact with the United States via media – including social media. Their quantitative research indicates that, compared to their “traditional Jamaican” counterparts, “Americanized Jamaican” adolescents are more affiliated with European American identity, hold weaker beliefs about family obligations, and experience greater conflict with their parents.

The first author’s mixed-methods research with young adults in a Maya community in Mexico indicates that cultural values shape how young people think about the benefits and risks of information communication technologies (ICTs) (Manago & Pacheco, Reference Manago, Pacheco and McKenzie2019). Examining indigenous beliefs about ICTs shortly after the installation of a communication tower, the study found that a commonly discussed ICT benefit was enabling frequent family communication and family closeness and that a commonly discussed ICT risk was their danger in drawing attention away from the family. That ICTs are perceived as promoting and hindering family relationships underscores the role of traditional, collectivistic values in shaping youth perspectives of digital media. ICT benefits also highlighted – particularly among those with higher educational attainment – values of stimulation and self-expression, which involve seeking new information and exploring outside of traditional community structures. Here we see the influence of exposure to Western values of individualism, which are spread via ICTs.

Middle East

For each of the preceding world regions discussed, it was possible to highlight research on adolescent media use and values in nations experiencing dramatic digital media expansion. Though the Middle East includes high-income nations with relatively long-standing digital media integration and low-income nations with dramatic digital media expansion in recent years (Internet Usage in the Middle East, 2022; World Bank Country and Lending Groups, n.d.), most relevant research focuses on the former. Mixed-methods research in high-income Israel, however, points to the role of digital media in reshaping cultural values and family relationships.

Abu Aleon et al. (Reference Abu Aleon, Weinstock, Manago and Greenfield2019) assessed values among three generations of Bedouins with vignettes that involved a disagreement between two characters: one that endorsed traditional values (family obligation, interdependence, and gender hierarchy) and other that endorsed modern Western values (individual achievement, independence, and gender equality). They found that younger generations of Bedouins were more likely to endorse gender equality than were older generations, and that females were a generation ahead of males in endorsing gender equality and independence. Importantly, time spent on the Internet and watching television were identified as “motors of change” toward Western value endorsement. Mesch’s (Reference Mesch2006) quantitative examination of Israeli adolescent internet use points to how adolescent internet use affects family cohesion. They found that the more time adolescents spent online, the less time they spent with their parents, and that the purpose of adolescent internet use mattered where family conflict is concerned. While adolescent internet use for social purposes was positively associated with intergenerational family conflict, internet use for educational purposes was not.

Summary

Cultural values influence how digital media are used and the effects of digital media. On the one hand, adolescents use and perceive digital media in ways that align with cultural values. On the other hand, adolescent digital media use reshapes cultural values and interpersonal relationships. The research discussed also illustrates how risks and opportunities of digital media are customized by developmental period, generational cohort, and cultural context. In emerging and developing world regions where technological change is particularly rapid, risks include the potential loss of traditional cultural values and an emergent cultural gap between adolescents and parents. Opportunities include emergent adolescent agency in shaping their development and in reshaping cultural values deemed incongruent with their lived 21st-century realities.

Considering adolescent well-being as it intersects with cultural values, digital media may act as a double-edged sword. The psychological task of encountering and reconciling diverse value systems likely facilitates adolescent perspective-taking and the development of multifaceted, dynamic thinking that is adaptive in our multifaceted and dynamic world. Yet the task of coherently integrating local and global value systems likely presents unique challenges for adolescents (McKenzie, Reference McKenzie2020). The difficulties associated with knitting together potentially incompatible value systems and identities may render adolescents more at risk of developing bifurcated or differentiated selves (McKenzie, Reference McKenzie2019), thereby threatening the development of an integrated self – a key task of adolescence (Erikson, Reference Erikson1963).

The effects of digital media in world regions experiencing rapid technological growth in some ways mirror the effects in the culturally diverse USA. As explained in this section, adolescent digital media use reshapes cultural values and parent–child power dynamics in India and Thailand. Among rural teenage girls in the Midwestern USA, especially rural girls of color, social media is used to gain and assert power and control, which is perceived as lacking in their offline lives (Rickman, Reference Rickman2018). Like Thai adolescents who act as media-based cultural brokers for their parents, lower-socioeconomic-status American youth frequently assist their parents with technology (Rideout & Katz, Reference Rideout and Katz2016) – likely renegotiating parent–child power dynamics in the process. Also highlighted in this section is that adolescent media use does not completely unroot traditional cultural values. From Nigeria and Ethiopia to India, Thailand, and Mexico, media are avenues for localization and local value reassertion. This aligns with Latino families in the USA, who often use digital media in ways that center collectivism (e.g., collaborative father–son searches, sister and brother producing media together) (Levinson & Barron, Reference Levinson and Barron2018). Research explicitly addressing the overlapping consequences between and within cultural communities would sharpen the cultural study of adolescent digital media use.

The Mobility Narrative

Western theories regarding the consequences of communication technologies for human social relations often reflect a mobility narrative (Hampton, Reference Hampton2016). In this narrative, industrialization, transportation systems, urbanization, and communication technologies have brought about greater migration, occupational specialization, and shifts in social structures away from permanent, tight-knit groups grounded in shared geography, to impermanent, heterogenous, and expansive person-centered networks spread across various contexts (e.g., Greenfield, Reference Greenfield2009; Rainie & Wellman, Reference Rainie and Wellman2012). Mobile devices and social media amplify historical trends toward increasing individual mobility by introducing new affordances into social life such as communication at a distance and asynchronous one-to-many (masspersonal) communication that allow people to transcend the limitations of time and space to construct looser networks of associations (Donath, Reference Donath2008; Wellman, Reference Wellman, Tanabe, van den Besselaar and Ishida2002). Digital communication technologies also extend individuals’ capacities to connect through shared personal interests, rather than ascribed relationships such as kinship, and to overcome the constraints of social bonds while still deriving social resources from them (Rainie & Wellman, Reference Rainie and Wellman2012).

The mobility narrative is useful for explaining certain patterns in the international social media research literature. In the West, Facebook has facilitated more extensive webs of associations with social resources for personal exploration and self-expression (Brandtzaeg, Reference Brandtzaeg2012; Ito et al., Reference Ito, Baumer and Bittanti2009; Manago et al., Reference Manago, Taylor and Greenfield2012). Bridging social capital resources such as nonredundant information and novel perspectives are more abundant in social structures with many weak ties (Granovetter, Reference Granovetter1973; Williams, Reference Williams2006) and studies have shown positive associations between social media use, network size, and bridging social capital among US college students (Ellison et al., Reference Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe2007; Mariek et al., Reference Mariek, Vanden and Marjolijn2018), adolescents in Australia (J. Y. Lee et al., Reference Lee, Park, Na and Kim2016), and early adolescents in the Netherlands (Antheunis et al., Reference Antheunis, Schouten and Krahmer2016). Similar associations have also been found outside the West, among university students in Karachi, Pakistan (Raza et al., Reference Raza, Qazi and Umer2017), South Africa (Johnston et al., Reference Johnston, Tanner, Lalla and Kawalski2013), Beijing, China (Liu et al., Reference Liu, Shi, Liu and Sheng2013), and adolescents in South Korea (J. Y. Lee et al., Reference Lee, Park, Na and Kim2016). In Manago’s field site in the Maya community of Zinacantán, emerging adults who began using the Internet after a communication tower was installed in 2010 constructed social networks through a paper and pencil mapping activity (Antonucci, Reference Antonucci1986) comprising greater proportions of nonpermanent social connections (nonkin) compared to emerging adults who did not have access to the Internet (Manago & Pacheco, Reference Manago, Pacheco and McKenzie2019).

Nevertheless, some patterns in the research literature are not well understood through a mobility narrative. The degree to which young people use social media to build large networks of bridging social capital varies around the world and depends on other relational structures in their cultural contexts. Research has shown that in social contexts outside the USA where it is less normative to sever old ties and form new ones such as in France (Brown & Michinov, Reference Brown and Michinov2017), Japan (Thomson et al., Reference Thomson, Yuki and Ito2015), South Korea (Cho, Reference Cho2010), and among Palestinians in Israel (Abbas & Mesch, Reference Abbas and Mesch2015), adolescents and emerging adults tend to use social media to construct smaller and more intimate networks based on their face-to-face relationships. The problem of “context collapse” identified in the West as the mixing of multiple, distinct, and even unknown audiences on social network sites leading to the disintegration of contextual cues for self-presentation (boyd, Reference boyd2008; Vitak, Reference Vitak2012) is a nonissue in southeast Turkey, where people use Facebook to construct multiple closed groups for social interaction and make extensive use of the private chat feature (Costa, Reference Costa2018). Even adolescents and emerging adults in the USA and UK who construct large online networks tend to use social network sites to maintain connections with existing face-to-face contacts, rather than to meet new people and expand social horizons (Livingstone & Sefton-Green, Reference Livingston and Sefton-Green2016; Manago et al., Reference Manago, Taylor and Greenfield2012; Subrahmanyam et al., Reference Subrahmanyam, Reich, Waechter and Espinoza2008).

Additionally, a networked structure of social ties is not endemic to the design of social media. On Renren in China and Cyworld and Kakaostory in Korea, relationships are organized in closed structures of concentric circles, and norms of reciprocity and mutual obligations are central to activities on the site (Hjorth, Reference Hjorth2010; J. Y. Lee et al., Reference Lee, Park, Na and Kim2016; Li & Chen, Reference Li and Chen2014). As social media continue to evolve and proliferate, youth are increasingly alternating between different platforms and tools to manage different kinds of relationships in an integrated environment of affordances, what Madianou and Miller (Reference Madianou and Miller2013) call “polymedia” environments. For example, US college students use Twitter and Instagram to generate bridging social capital, Facebook for family, and Snapchat to increase intimacy with close others (Phua et al., Reference Phua, Jin and Kim2017; Shane-Simpson et al., Reference Shane-Simpson, Manago, Gaggi and Gillespie-Lynch2018) while Chinese international students use Facebook as a tool for generating bridging capital and Renren for maintaining connections to home life (Li & Chen, Reference Li and Chen2014).

Alternatives to a Mobility Narrative

Hampton (Reference Hampton2016) proposes that meta-modernity is a better narrative metaphor for understanding social media and social structures in contemporary times. In his view, both individual mobility and social accountability are becoming amplified with social media. Communicative affordances for persistent contact and pervasive awareness are reinstating some preindustrial relational structures that counteract growing individual mobility. Mobile devices and social media amplify social obligations and commitments, making people constantly accessible in the present and to people of the past, connecting us more permanently across lifespans and generations. Indeed, studies with adolescents in Europe (Mascheroni & Vincent, Reference Mascheroni and Vincent2016) and college students in the USA (Hall & Baym, Reference Hall and Baym2012) exemplify how mobile phones have increased norms for perpetual communication, creating new pressures that promote dependence and satisfaction with close others but also feelings of overdependence and dissatisfaction. In addition, one-to-many forms of asynchronous communication via status updates on social media supply everlasting streams of social information that persist and scale (boyd, Reference boyd and Papacharissi2010), recreating the passive informal watchfulness of small, tight-knit communities where the audience is ambiguous and the watchers are also being watched (Hampton, Reference Hampton2016; Marwick, Reference Marwick2012). Pervasive awareness can be found in the ways youth often exhibit heightened conformity to community expectations for gender in their photographs on social media, whether those expectations involve carefully curating sexually attractive selfies in the south of Italy (Nicolescu, Reference Nicolescu2016) or upholding modesty and family honor in New Delhi (Mishra & Basu, Reference Mishra and Basu2014), rural China (McDonald, Reference McDonald2016), and southeast Turkey (Costa, Reference Costa2016).

Another theoretical perspective is scalable sociality, posited by Miller and colleagues (Reference Miller, Sinanan and Wang2016) in a multivolume series of ethnographies on social media use in southeast Turkey, south Italy, northern Chile, south India, rural China, industrial China, emergent Brazil, an English village, and Trinidad. These authors argue that social media have “colonized a space of group sociality between the private and the public” (Miller et al., Reference Miller, Sinanan and Wang2016, p. 286), introducing new structures of relations and genres of communication at various points on continuums from small groups and intimacy to large groups and publicness. To illustrate, Miller et al. show how 11- to 18-year-olds in the English village use dyadic mobile phone messages to talk to their best friends, Snapchat to develop trust in small groups, WhatsApp to communicate with classmates (often same-sex groups discussing other-sex classmates), Twitter to engage in school-wide banter, Facebook to interact with groups outside school such as family, neighbors, and workmates, and Instagram to entertain strangers with visual images. Sociality can also be scaled within a single platform through various functionalities (e.g., use of privacy settings) or through communication strategies themselves (e.g., social steganography – embedding private, hidden messages in public communication, Marwick & boyd, Reference Marwick and boyd2014). Connecting the idea of scalable sociality back to cultural tools, we can see how social media would extend adolescents’ capacities to develop skills for social relations at various scales of interaction.

Importantly, the consequences of social media for adolescent development depend on what is being scaled relative to youths’ social contexts. Just as Facebook in the USA and QQ in China have scaled public broadcasting (e.g., TV, newspapers, radio) down to individuals contributing to large groups, WhatsApp in Latin America and WeChat in China have scaled intimacy up from face-to-face interactions and the telephone (Miller et al., Reference Miller, Sinanan and Wang2016). In some cases, mobile devices and social media have intensified intimacy by creating new genres of intimate romantic relations, particularly in cultures with greater family mediation in romantic partnering such as south India (Venkatraman, Reference Venkatraman2016), rural China (McDonald, Reference McDonald2016), Muslim southeast Turkey (Costa, Reference Costa2016), and in Zinacantán, Mexico (de Leon-Pasquel, Reference de León-Pasquel2018). Intimacy and mobility can also be scaled together as is the case with social media facilitating reinforcement of emotional bonds in cross-national families in Trinidad (Sinanan, Reference Sinanan2017), allowing families to stay connected when miners are absent for long periods of time in Chile (Haynes, Reference Haynes2016), and helping migratory industrial workers maintain stable connections in industrial China (Wang, Reference Wang2016). Social media also introduce new opportunities to reinforce and scale traditional social structures, such as in south India where symbolic kinship structures of extended families in caste traditions have become a metaphor for how youth arrange contacts on social media (Venkatraman, Reference Venkatraman2016). Counter to the linear direction of cultural change toward individualism in the mobility narrative, new scales of sociality may have unexpected consequences for psychological development. For example, Miller and colleagues (Reference Miller, Sinanan and Wang2016) found a new kind of openness to strangers with the introduction of social media in rural China but wariness of strangers through social media in Italy and England.

Summary

A mobility narrative may not be comprehensive enough to capture the multifaceted structures of community that are evolving with the spread of digital tools. Digital tools afford customizable sociality and mobility, but also introduce new kinds of communities, as well as social pressures and constraints at different scales of interaction. Moreover, the ramifications of digital media for adolescent development depend on what is being scaled relative to youths’ everyday lives, which is quite different across the globe and across groups in a multicultural society such as the USA. For example, social media create new opportunities for community and critical consciousness raising among racial and ethnic minority youth (Tynes et al., Reference Tynes, Garcia, Giang and Coleman2011) but also new capacities for racial and ethnic discrimination to occur (Lozada et al., Reference Lozada, Seaton, Williams and Tynes2021). For LGBTQ+ youth, social media are new avenues for intimacy (Marston, Reference Marston2019) and also public visibility (Rubin & McClelland, Reference Rubin and McClelland2015). As adolescents negotiate risks and opportunities at various scales of sociality they are learning new kinds of social skills adaptive for digitally mediated societies that contribute to their identity development and well-being.

Is Social Media an Identity Playground?

The popular New Yorker cartoon published in 1993, “on the internet nobody knows you’re a dog,” cleverly illustrates early perspectives in the USA regarding the Internet’s impact on identity. Research at this time suggested that the disembodied nature of computer-mediated communication (i.e., reduced social cues, asynchrony, and geographical distance) would facilitate anonymity, pretense, exploration, and transcendence of offline limitations in self-presentations (McKenna & Bargh, Reference McKenna and Bargh2000; Rodino, Reference Rodino1997; Turkle, Reference Turkle1997). But as the social media landscape evolved, becoming more visual and less anonymous (e.g., Facebook’s real-name policy), concerns shifted to adolescents’ self-disclosures and risks to their personal privacy (Livingstone, Reference Livingstone2008; Tufekci, Reference Tufekci2008). Research also began to emphasize how authenticity in combination with positive curation in online self-presentations generated audience support and greater self-regard (Marwick & boyd, Reference Marwick and boyd2011; Yang & Brown, Reference Yang and Brown2016). Other studies, both in the USA and Europe, showed that the presentation of false selves online was an indication of lower degrees of identity synthesis (Michikyan et al., Reference Michikyan, Dennis and Subrahmanyam2015) or a response to offline dysfunction, occurring at higher rates among lonely adolescents (Valkenburg & Peter, Reference Valkenburg and Peter2008) and those with poor social skills and social anxiety (Harman et al., Reference Harman, Hansen, Cochran and Lindsey2005).

Ethnographic approaches during this period of time documented more nuanced combinations of authenticity and experimentation happening among adolescents online. Fieldwork in the USA (boyd, Reference boyd2014) and the UK (Livingstone & Sefton-Green, Reference Livingston and Sefton-Green2016) captured the polymedia nature of adolescents’ lived experiences with social media and how they were learning to express different sides of themselves depending on affordances for visibility and privacy in various social milieus. For example, Livingstone and Sefton-Green described how teenagers in a London secondary school used Tumblr to explore emerging facets of the self anonymously while using Facebook to perform “civil” selves that conformed to expectations of the school community and that engendered shallow social acceptance. Case studies of adolescents in the USA have also depicted different genres or conventions of participation across platforms including “hanging out,” “messing around,” and “geeking out” – the latter of which involves in-depth identity exploration of niche interests (Ito et al., Reference Ito, Baumer and Bittanti2009).

A different story of the digitally mediated self has emerged in South Korea and Japan. In South Korea, the first country in the world where widespread use of a social networking site (Cyworld) occurred among youth, digital self-presentation has not been about the exploration of new horizons but about the mundane (Hjorth, Reference Hjorth2007; D. Lee, Reference Lee2010). In her ethnographic research with university students in Korea in the early 2000s, Hjorth found Cyworld was used to create reels of everyday lived content that could be shared, mimicking the gift-giving in Korean culture that reinforces social ties. Youth used digital tools to capture the ordinary and thus deeply personal aspects of themselves to overcome, rather than exploit, the lack of social presence in computer-mediated communication. This finding is similar to studies with Japanese youth at this time who used early forms of social media to foster a new kind of co-presence and shared perspective of daily life, akin to the intimacy of being together without having to say anything (Ito & Okabe, Reference Ito, Matsuda and Okabe2005). The greater emphasis on tethering in these studies is also present in the language for digital tools; in contrast to the term “mobile phone” in the West that means a device that travels, the term “keitai” in Japan signifies a device connected to the body as an appendage, the emphasis on attachment (Ito et al., Reference Ito, Matsuda and Okabe2005). Similarly in Singapore, the term is “hand phone,” suggesting alternative social constructions of self in relation to digital media that may reflect broad differences between Eastern and Western cultures.

A cross-cultural perspective on mobile devices and social media reveals how these tools are not generally used to escape social norms for self-representation but to conform to them. Kim and Papacharissi (Reference Kim and Papacharissi2003) analyzed US and Korean Yahoo! Geocities home pages and found US virtual actors were more likely to present themselves with text-based communication and to describe themselves directly (i.e., stating personality traits) – a reflection of low-context communication in which independent selves transmit explicit and direct messages that can be separated from the context without loss of meaning. Korean virtual actors tended to communicate their identities through more ambiguous multimedia imagery – a reflection of high-context communication where interdependent selves are less direct and more implicit, relying on contextual factors to transmit meaning (see also Gudykunst et al., Reference Gudykunst, Matsumoto, Ting-Toomey, Nishida, Kim and Heyman1996). A departure from individualistic self-presentation norms of the USA has also been documented more recently in Turkey. Comparing Turkish and American adolescents’ self-presentations on Facebook, researchers found adolescents in the USA were more likely to use promotion strategies in their self-representations, conforming to ideals for exalting the self, while those in Turkey tended to conform to Turkish ideals by presenting themselves through exemplification strategies that demonstrated their moral principles (Boz et al., Reference Boz, Uhls and Greenfield2016).

Conformity to gender norms on social media is widely observed in the research literature and further demonstrates how cultural expectations for self-presentation are projected to screens. Some researchers have interpreted consistent international gender differences in Facebook profiles (e.g., men present objects to convey status, women present family photos) as due to biology and natural selection (e.g., Tifferet & Vilanai-Yavets, Reference Tifferet and Vilnai-Yavetz2014). However, this interpretation fails to recognize historical formations of the patriarchal arc that has spread east and west from the invention of the plow in the Middle East, and through colonization, shaping hierarchical gender relations in particular ways (Quinn, Reference Quinn, Mathews and Manago2019). Within the patriarchal arc there are also cultural differences in gender that are translated into digitally mediated contexts. One content analysis comparing photos of US and Chinese athletes at the 2016 Rio Olympics on Twitter and Sina Weibo found that Chinese female athletes were more likely to incorporate smiling and a tilted head position compared to their Chinese male counterparts; US female athletes were more likely to depict themselves posed on a knee or body arched compared to their male counterparts, who tended to post photos of themselves upright (Xu & Armstrong, Reference Xu and Armstrong2019). This study also found evidence of greater egalitarianism in US photos compared to Chinese photos, which could be due to the ongoing influence of Confucian ideals for male dominance in China and the attenuating effects of Title IX on male dominance in US sports.

Research on gender self-presentation via digital media reveals cultural continuity but also cultural change. Studies on Facebook use in Muslim cultural contexts show how young women resist traditional constraints such as sexual purity and responsibility for family reputation by segmenting their audiences on social media (Al-Saggaf, Reference Al-Saggaf2011; Shen & Khalifa, Reference Shen and Khalifa2010). One interview study with Muslim university students in New Delhi found that young women negotiated multiple audiences on Facebook, presenting themselves as “nice” and virtuous to uphold their family’s honor but also using privacy settings to restrict surveillance and judgment from more conservative parts of their kin networks and express themselves outside traditional norms (Mishra & Basu, Reference Mishra and Basu2014). Similarly, ethnographic research in South Korea describes how young women presented themselves on their Cyworld mini-homepages to achieve conventional patriarchal definitions of submissive female beauty in South Korea; yet, in the process of framing, editing, manipulating, and curating their images, the young women also took control of the gaze, which opened up new experiences of power in their identity development (D. Lee, Reference Lee2005).

Is the Selfie Narcissistic?

A variety of studies have found associations between narcissistic personality traits and social media use, mostly among college students on Facebook but also among social media users in China, Japan, Europe, Australia, and Russia (see meta-analysis by McCain & Campbell, Reference McCain and Campbell2018). The assumption in the framing and interpretation of these studies is that posting photos and status updates on social media is ultimately self-promotional and therefore cultivates an unrealistic, self-serving, entitled, and inflated sense of self as special and unique (Gentile et al., Reference Gentile, Twenge, Freeman and Campbell2012). The so-called selfie, a photo taken by the self of the self, has been an emblem of this assumption, construed as an indication of vanity and often employed to accuse young women of self-indulgence, triviality, and attention-seeking (Burns, Reference Burns2015).

International research has brought to light the existence of alternative paradigms surrounding the selfie that likely have very different consequences for youth self-development. In a favela of Brazil, adolescents post selfies on Facebook to reflect on themselves and the violence in their neighborhoods and to send a signal to their parents (who regularly check the site) that they are safe as they navigate daily life (Nemer & Freeman, Reference Nemer and Freeman2015). Selfies in this context are not fostering narcissism but instead helping youth contest the power and surveillance of local drug lords. The banal self-portraits that Japanese and South Korean youth exchanged in early iterations of social media created ongoing togetherness in daily life, not inflated sense of selves (Hjorth, Reference Hjorth2007; Ito & Okabe, Reference Ito, Matsuda and Okabe2005; D. Lee, Reference Lee2010). However, relational selfies are not just found outside of WEIRD contexts. American and British university students also use selfies relationally when they exchange unedited and disappearing images on Snapchat as a form of intimate conversation; as one participant in a study said, “I’ve literally had a ten-minute conversation with my friend just doing facial expressions” (Katz & Crocker, Reference Katz and Crocker2015, p. 1869). Katz and Crocker report that Chinese university students used WeChat in similar ways but instead of facial expressions, animations symbolizing emotions and actions were used to maintain visual conversations. It is impossible to disentangle whether this observed difference is due to the alternative affordances via Snapchat versus WeChat or due to cultural differences in ideals for emotional expression (see Tsai, Reference Tsai2017).

Understandably, selfies in more public social media contexts tend to involve greater deliberation and curation. But does crafting favorable social impressions through selfies in more public contexts equate to an unrealistic and inflated sense of self? In their compilation of international ethnographies, Miller and colleagues (Reference Miller, Sinanan and Wang2016) show that, indeed, posting idealized versions of the self occurred throughout their field sites; yet what the ideal looks like and what it means to people vary widely. While young factory workers in industrial China posted aspirational photos of economic wealth and consumption on the platform QQ, their counterparts in rural China posted photos of family life that combined collectivistic (gratitude to elders) and individualistic (romantic love) aspirations. Selfies among evangelicals in their Brazilian field site showcased material wealth to signify one’s religiosity, and in Trinidad, to demonstrate the virtue of hard work. Sometimes the ideal self, such as those presented in selfies in Chile and in an English village, was about demonstrating authenticity through conformity to the ordinary. The authors describe the “footsie” version of the selfie that was popular in Chile where photographers take photos of their feet in a lounging position watching television or playing video games. The footsie is curated to communicate authenticity out of casualness. The footsie would not travel well to Chinese selfie celebrity culture, where photoshopping is an expected and normative courtesy such that not using software editing applications to enhance one’s images and those of one’s friends is considered impolite (see Fan, Reference Fan2017).

Summary

This section illustrates that social media are not generally used to escape norms and construct an inflated sense of self but instead, to construct a self in line with cultural norms and ideals. Universal claims about the impacts of digital media on adolescent self-development are problematic because norms and ideals for online self-presentation differ across cultures. In a multicultural society such as the USA, race, class, and gender shape how adolescents present themselves through social media and how those self-presentations are interpreted and evaluated (e.g., Daniels & Zurbriggen, Reference Daniels and Zurbriggen2016; Kapidzic & Herring, Reference Kapidzic and Herring2015). Senft and Baym (Reference Senft and Baym2015) argue that although selfies are an expression of human agency, they are also “created, displayed, distributed, tracked, and monetized through an assemblage of nonhuman agents” (p. 1589). Once an image is digitized, it takes up space in the “digital superpublic” and persists outside of the context in which it was first produced, shared, and viewed. As adolescents negotiate online self-presentations and make decisions about who they are and how they want to appear, they contribute to the cultural artefacts circulating in their communities.

Cultural Challenges

Popular discourse and research articles alike are awash with broad claims about how digital and social media affect teens (e.g., Crone & Konijn, Reference Crone and Konijn2018; Schrobsdorff, Reference Schrobsdorff2016; Twenge, Reference Twenge2017), without adequately attending to how culture shapes media use and its effects. When culture is attended to by media scholars, it is often treated as synonymous with “nation.” This treatment of nations as monolithic cultural entities is problematic for media studies, as significant within-nation heterogeneity exists in media access and use, and in its effects on adolescents (McKenzie et al., Reference McKenzie, Castellón, Willis-Grossmann, Landeros, Rooney and Stewart2022; Sheldon et al., Reference Sheldon, Herzfeldt and Rauschnabel2020). Although within-culture variation sometimes exceeds between-culture variation (Sheldon et al., Reference Sheldon, Herzfeldt and Rauschnabel2020), digital media research that takes culture into account typically ignores variations within cultural groups (Cardon et al., Reference Cardon, Marshall and Choi2009). In our increasingly multicultural world, we must go beyond investigating the influence of national culture to examine the roles of ethnicity, race, religion, generation, and geographic location in adolescent digital media use and its consequences. With globalization, we must also consider processes of remote acculturation that may increasingly apply to European-American youth (i.e., the rising popularity of K-pop in the USA) and the unique perspectives of immigrant and bicultural youth, who are negotiating multiple worldviews across different social media platforms (Bae, Reference Bae and Mazzarella2010; Bae-Dimitriadis, Reference Bae-Dimitriadis2015).

Another cultural challenge is that adolescent digital media use is typically examined in wealthy nations with more established digital media integration. Findings from these populations tend to be interpreted in terms of a universal biologically governed individual, which masks the way that culture is operating in the West. Moreover, a significant gap exists in our understanding of digital media use and its influence on adolescents in poorer nations experiencing a rapid rise in digital media integration. For example, adolescent media use studies in the Middle East overwhelmingly focus on Israel (e.g., Abu Aleon et al., Reference Abu Aleon, Weinstock, Manago and Greenfield2019; Mesch, Reference Mesch2006), a high-income economy with a 451% internet growth rate from 2000 to 2021; far less is known about media use in low-income Yemen (with a staggering 52,592% internet growth rate during that time) and in middle-income Iraq and Iran (with 196,100% and 31,135% internet growth rates during that time, respectively) (Internet Usage in the Middle East, 2021). In nations with a dramatic rise in digital media integration, such as Yemen, Iraq, and Iran, we are likely to see cultural clashes between values promoted by digital media (e.g., individualism, self-expression, and stimulation) and indigenous cultural values. Such clashes, in turn, likely reshape adolescent development, well-being, and intergenerational relationships in these nations in rather profound ways. Alternatively, adolescents in these regions may be using social media as cultural tools to reproduce and reshape culture. These possibilities should be of great interest to adolescent media scholars, as an estimated 84% of the world’s population reside in low- and middle-income countries experiencing a rapid rise in digital media use among youth (Ortiz-Ospina, Reference Ortiz-Ospina2017; Silver et al., Reference Silver, Smith, Johnson, Jiang, Anderson and Rainie2019).

Finally, cultural and cross-cultural adolescent media scholars are tasked with prioritizing youth perspectives. Though helpful, survey-based research typically enters with a priori assumptions about what constitutes risk and opportunity, what identity development looks or should look like, what friendship looks like, what well-being looks like, and so on. But conceptions of risk and opportunity are culturally constructed (Manago & Pacheco, Reference Manago, Pacheco and McKenzie2019; McKenzie et al., Reference McKenzie, Castellón, Willis-Grossmann, Landeros, Rooney and Stewart2022); so too are pathways of identity development (e.g., Sugimura, Reference Sugimura2020), definitions of and meanings ascribed to friendship (e.g., French, Reference French and Jensen2015), and conceptions of well-being (Weisner, Reference Weisner, Ben-Arieh, Casas, Frønes and Korbin2014). Tuning ourselves to the meanings that adolescents themselves ascribe to these concepts is a critical starting point in furthering our understanding of digital media use and its consequences across diverse cultural communities. Doing so will push us to particularize our claims about how digital and social media affect adolescents and ensure that our research aligns with the lived realities of those we aim to represent.

Future Directions

To address the challenges raised above, media scholars must work to understand how culture operates in the lives of adolescents, and how culture structures their digital media use and perspectives of digital media. To be sure, experimental, survey-based, and quantitative approaches to cross-cultural studies of adolescent media offer important insights. The work of Hansen and colleagues, for example, illustrated that cultural panic about the eradication of traditional values with the integration of new media are not entirely founded, as traditional Ethiopian values are not threatened by (Hansen et al., Reference Hansen, Postmes, van der Vinne and van Thiel2012) and even increase with (Hansen et al., Reference Hansen, Postmes, Tovote and Bos2014) the introduction of laptops. This begs an important question, though: Why is this the case? In order to understand the processes whereby cultural values change via, and are maintained through, media use, ethnographic research that foregrounds culture and works to understand how it interacts with digital and social media in the lives of young people will provide invaluable insights.

Cultural foregrounding at each stage of studying adolescent media use – including study design, data collection instruments and procedures, and interpretation – is also essential. This requires that researchers calibrate to, and design measures and materials that are grounded in an understanding of local cultural norms, which may be in flux. Such cultural attunement may require that qualitative data collection methodologies (e.g., interviews, focus groups, social network mapping) be used in place of surveys. This is likely to be especially important when researchers are interacting with marginalized populations in multicultural societies, such as racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender minority youth who may operate on a different set of assumptions from researchers. Such methods are also generally useful for cross-cultural examinations of adolescent digital media use, given the potential for cross-cultural differences in survey response styles to be mistakenly interpreted as cultural differences in the measures being compared (Johnson et al., Reference Johnson, Shavitt, Holbrook, Matsumoto and Van de Vijver2010). This cultural foregrounding is promising in deepening our understanding of the diverse experiences adolescents have with digital media.

Conversely, we must consider how cultural change is inhibited – and adolescent development is controlled – by governments through digital and social media. This is achieved by way of broad-scale internet bans, censorship, and mass surveillance. In North Korea, for example, the government allows only tightly controlled domestic intranet (King, Reference King2019). In Iran, government-issued internet blackouts aim to quell internal unrest and protest (Wolff, Reference Wolff2019). It is also achieved by denying and controlling the use of certain social media platforms. Iran, China, and North Korea have a 100% ban on Facebook (Frenkel, Reference Frenkel2018; King, Reference King2019; Leskin, Reference Leskin2019); China further bans Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, Pinterest, YouTube, and Google (Leskin, Reference Leskin2019). Finally, it is achieved by using digital media to surveil its citizens and reassert cultural values. Egypt, for instance, has come under international spotlight in recent years for police use of dating apps to locate, imprison, and torture LGBT citizens (AP News, 2020; Culzac, Reference Culzac2014) – thereby limiting sexual expression and exploration and enforcing homophobia. China’s “social credit” system also restricts freedom of expression by using social media surveillance to reassert cultural values of collectivism, conformity, and reputation maintenance (Chen & Zhou, Reference Chen and Zhou2019; Wong & Dobson, Reference Wong and Dobson2019). In 2019, 23 million Chinese citizens were banned from traveling due to poor social credit scores (Reisinger, Reference Reisinger2019). Also in the West, digital algorithms encode and perpetuate racial inequalities (Benjamin, Reference Benjamin2019) while media companies are increasingly exploiting personal data for profit, trading on human behavioral futures in what Zuboff (Reference Zuboff2019) calls “surveillance capitalism.” Each example provided here serves to limit or deny intercultural and intracultural contact, thereby inhibiting cultural change and limiting youth agency over their own development.

We set out in this chapter to explore how digital media are cultural tools in adolescent social development. In bringing together alternative cultural perspectives on digital media use and adolescents’ values, social ties, and self-development, we have begun to shed light on cultural processes in digital media use that often go unacknowledged in developmental psychology research with WEIRD samples. By examining international research and questioning dominant Western paradigms, we hope to inspire more contextual and critical approaches to understanding the effects of social media for adolescent development.

Risk for Racial-Ethnic Minority Youth

Racial-ethnic differentiation inherently creates opportunities for discrimination and negative stereotypes of minoritized groups to become perpetuated through digital media, which is a well-documented stressor and risk factor for poorer outcomes (Berry, Reference Berry2000; Trent et al., Reference Trent, Dooley and Dougé2019). As offline risk factors are shown to be mirrored online (Przybylski & Bowes, Reference Przybylski and Bowes2017), discrimination on digital media, and especially social media, has increased stress during an already dynamic time of development. Racial-ethnic discrimination online comes in many forms and may include racial slurs or jokes, negative stereotyping such as “criminals” or “thugs,” body shaming of skin tone or body figure, and even threat of harm, simply due to racial-ethnic profiles. Tynes and colleagues (Reference Tynes, English, Del Toro, Smith, Lozada and Williams2020) conducted the first study of its kind to investigate the mental health implications of online discrimination among Black and Latinx adolescents (6th–12th grade) over time. This novel study reveals that increases in experienced individual and vicarious online racial discrimination among Black and Latinx adolescents increases risks for higher levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms. Uniquely, older Black adolescent males were more likely to report high exposure to online discrimination at a younger age with decreasing discrimination over time compared to Latinx adolescent males. Yet, those who experienced high and stable vicarious online discrimination and those who were exposed to high levels of individual racial discrimination online at an early age experienced worse psychological outcomes over time, regardless of gender. This example shows the distinct experience of racial-ethnic online discrimination risks of Black and Latinx adolescents. In our work at the Youth, Media, & Wellbeing Research Lab, we demonstrated that Black and Latinx adolescents (5th–9th grade) adopt social media younger than their White peers, further exposing them to behavioral health difficulties such as sleep disruption due to screen content they were exposed to (Zhai et al., Reference Zhai, Jordan, Reeves-Miller, Xiao and Charmaraman2020).

Much like the historical contexts of racial-ethnic discrimination against Black and Latinx populations in the USA, individuals of Asian heritage have been subjected to severe historical discrimination (Gee et al., Reference Gee, Ro, Shariff-Marco and Chae2009). Despite having the highest reported accessibility to the Internet and social media (Spooner, Reference Spooner2001), Asian American youth still remain underrepresented in the literature around digital media and well-being. Asian Americans are often subject to stereotypes such as the “model minorities,” “honorary Whites,” or even the perpetual foreigners (Kiang et al., Reference Kiang, Witkow and Champagne2013, p. 1714), which may have damaging effects on the racial-ethnic exploration among youth. For instance, Asian Americans in later adolescence (18–24 years) are more likely to be cyberbullied compared to White or Hispanic counterparts (Charmaraman et al., Reference Charmaraman, Chan, Chen, Richer and Ramanudom2018). At the same time, Asian Americans are the least likely to report negative occurrences on social media in order to reduce “losing face” and maintain a positive image to the external world. Studies have demonstrated that Asian Americans experience stigma and shame when it comes to their mental health problems and treatment (Surgeon General, 2001; Wang et al., Reference Wang, Barlis and Do2020), with cultural stereotypes implying that seeking professional help is a sign of weakness, lack of self-discipline, or may cause shame to the family name (Uba, Reference Uba1994). Thus, it is unsurprising that Asian American youth would withhold their emotional turmoil from the public eye on social media platforms.

A more recent example of Asian Americans feeling targeted is through the current implications of the global pandemic, which has caused a rapid resurgence of hate and racial profiling among the Asian American communities (Croucher et al., Reference Croucher, Nguyen and Rahmani2020). According to the Integrated Threat Theory (Stephan & Stephan, Reference Stephan, Stephan and Oskamp2000), this poses a realistic threat and generalized out-group stereotypes of this given event has driven the increases in discriminatory behaviors against Asian Americans, specifically Chinese Americans. Asian American adolescents are among those with highest access to the Internet and social media that leads to early exposures to these racial-ethnic discriminations online. There is emerging evidence indicating that a strong racial-ethnic and/or immigrant identity can protect against the negative effects of online harassment and depression in early adolescence (e.g., Hernandez & Charmaraman, Reference Hernandez and Charmaraman2021).

Indigenous and Native American adolescents are heavy consumers of digital media (Rushing & Stephens, Reference Rushing and Stephens2011) but are also a population vastly affected by mental health problems such as substance abuse and suicide (Park-Lee et al., Reference Park-Lee, Lipari and Bose2018). Racial-ethnic identity exploration among current Indigenous youth is often met with an internal conflict of relating immediate relevant experiences with historical cultures and traumas (Wexler, Reference Wexler2009, p. 272) that contributes to outcomes of well-being. Among Indigenous adolescents, it has been shown that perceived discrimination and historical oppression of Native American populations have been strong indicators of poor mental health outcomes such as alcohol abuse and depression (Cheadle & Whitbeck, Reference Cheadle and Whitbeck2011). Taking into consideration that offline discrimination is likely to be transferred online (Przybylski & Bowes, Reference Przybylski and Bowes2017), it can be hypothesized that exposure to racial-ethnic discrimination on digital platforms such as social media may also amplify the risk of poor mental health outcomes among Indigenous adolescents. Yet research remains extremely limited in the digital media domain for the population and should be further explored.

Resilience for Racial-Ethnic Minority Youth

As the counternarrative to risks, there is a growing body of literature focused on protective mechanisms of social technologies for youth of color. Among a cohort of racial-ethnic minority adolescents (i.e., Black, Latinx, Asian, and multiracial), research has shown a stronger sense of racial and ethnic identity centrality among Black and Latinx adolescent females showing greater identity centrality compared to males (Charmaraman & Grossman, Reference Charmaraman and Grossman2010). This is consistent with the theoretical groundwork of the phenomenological and ecological framework (PVEST) that has been applied to race and ethnic identity formation (Spencer et al., Reference Spencer, Dupree and Hartmann1997). A scoping review by Williams and Moody (Reference Williams and Moody2019) uses the PVEST framework to understand the role of identifying as a Black and female youth and its impacts on well-being in the digital age. Young Black girls are among the highest consumers of social media, and their identities are being supported in ways that are mirrored among other non-Black youth, such as elevating self-esteem and peer affirmations. But because of a long-standing history of stereotypic media portrayal of the young Black female (e.g., nurturing, aggressive, hypersexualized), these messages and stereotypes have translated onto social media that makes identity exploration increasingly complex. This exemplifies that exposure to an online space helps to amplify marginalized youths’ voices, but also amplifies the systemic issues surrounding the Black community today that plays a significant role in racial identity exploration.

A developmental consideration during adolescence is the prioritization of social connectedness, and this connectedness through shared heritage, culture, and histories can be strengthened by digital connection. Despite the systemic risk factors related to race and ethnicity that exist in the USA, there is a shift in focus away from deficit-based approaches and toward recognizing the assets and strength within these communities, especially among young people, which help them thrive in a difficult system. In terms of combating the isolation that many adolescents feel, our Youth, Media, & Wellbeing Research Lab demonstrated that Black and Latinx youth aged 11–15 were more likely than White and Asian adolescents to join online groups that made them feel less lonely and isolated (Zhai et al., Reference Zhai, Jordan, Reeves-Miller, Xiao and Charmaraman2020). These online communities included group chats on Snapchat, House Party, WhatsApp, Discord, anime fandom, and sports or hobby-related groups. In addition, Black youth preferred YouTube video content that was about relationships or friendships, whereas Latinx youth were more likely to seek opportunities to learn how to cope with stress and anxiety and to use social media to stay in touch with family and relatives compared to White youth.

Another powerful example of racial-ethnic based online communities is the Black Twitter culture that erupted in 2015. This online culture was a profound way that millions of Black community members came together to share experiences, but more importantly to create a form of resistance to the marginalization that has long-standing impacts to justice and well-being in the Black community (Florini, Reference Florini2014). A more recent study highlighted that Black adolescents are among the vast users of these online spaces to increase their social capital, but also to facilitate connections to such identity-based communities while amplifying their voices and representation online (Borough et al., Reference Borough, Literat and Ikin2020).

Latinx adolescents often feel the need to suppress the expression of their culture on social media due to potential discrimination or not enough affirmation (e.g., “likes”) compared to when they post more “Americanized” cultures like Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday posts (Borough et al., Reference Borough, Literat and Ikin2020). Despite this finding, Latinx adolescents still sought out positive aspects of expanding social capital on social media platforms that supported the prospects of job and education opportunities, which is an important factor tied to identity and well-being outcomes for this marginalized group. Another example of the strength in racial-ethnic identity in the digital age for Latinx youth is ethnic identity exploration, such that expressing higher levels of connectedness to the culture via the exploration of their identity is a protective factor against problematic externalizing and internalizing behaviors related to online racial-ethnic discrimination (Umaña-Taylor et al., Reference Umaña-Taylor, Tynes, Toomey, Williams and Mitchell2015).

There are still limited accounts of research that emphasize the opportunities and experiences of Asian American and Indigenous adolescents’ racial-ethnic identity exploration, especially during early (ages 10–13) and mid-adolescence (ages 11–17), and the role that social media and other digital ecosystems play in this process. In a mixed-method study among older adolescents (ages 18–25), Asian Americans reported using social media as a way of seeking out social support during difficult times in more privatized online channels, which is thought to be a way of navigating the stigma around mental health and impression management that reigns as a priority in many Asian cultures (Charmaraman et al., Reference Charmaraman, Chan, Chen, Richer and Ramanudom2018). Recent findings in response to the rise in racism among Asian Americans have shown online spaces to be a space of demonstrating comradery and resistance to such discrimination, similarly seen in Black Twitter, thus preventing harmful outcomes (Abidin & Zeng, Reference Abidin and Zeng2020). While this work has yet to be shown in the adolescent developmental period, this is another exemplar of the power of collective racial-ethnic identity in an online community.

Among Indigenous youth and resiliency online, while empirical work is vastly minimal, the work of an online space WeRNative to support Native teens exemplifies the unique affordances digital media can have to support the identities and well-being with a greater reach than before (Rushing et al., Reference Rushing, Stephens and Dog2018). To support Indigenous youth during a conflict in ethnic identity, there is an opportunity for digital technologies to bridge the gaps between historical contexts and current experiences to enhance the connection to the heritage of Indigenous communities. Work with Indigenous youth in content creation to address health literacy via digital media (e.g., videos) shows that this not only promotes healthy behaviors, but is also a mechanism to address stressors related to culture and ethnic identity (Stewart et al., Reference Stewart, Riecken, Scott, Tanaka and Riecken2008). Indigenous teens and emerging adults have taken to social media as a means for creative expression of the Native racial-ethnic identity and solidarity, which is said to be a way of reconnecting with the heritage and reaching a broader population of youth in this community (Monkman, Reference Monkman2020; Noor, Reference Noor2020). Such strength in racial-ethnic identification among a high-risk group of youth is imperative for support of well-being, and the expanded reach and social capital that social media provides can be vastly beneficial for developing Indigenous adolescents.

It is evident that there are risks associated with online discrimination exposure for youth of color, yet there are vast opportunities through social capital, connectedness, and empowerment that youth of color experience with social technologies. Mirroring of risks in online and offline environments can be taken into consideration when building a digital ecosystem that supports diverse groups of adolescents during this time of identity development.

Risk for Sexual/Gender Minority Youth

Existing scholarship on LGBT+ populations’ activity online has identified the Internet as a space where youth can be exposed to harassment, discrimination, and other forms of bullying that may be easier to perpetrate in online spaces. Multiple studies have found that LGBT+ youth are more likely to be harassed online than non-LGBT+ youth (Palmer et al., Reference Palmer, Kosciw, Greytak, Ybarra, Korchmaros and Mitchell2013; Ybarra et al., Reference Ybarra, Mitchell, Palmer and Reisner2015). Cyberbullying is perpetrated against LGBT+ youth in a variety of ways, including verbal victimization, relational victimization, and electronic actions, all of which are often combined with in-person harassment (Varjas et al., 2013). These distinctions highlight the variety of modes through which the cyberbullying of LGBT+ youth can occur, including sexual harassment, the use of slurs, purposeful social exclusion, and the targeting of social media content using viruses. It is also notable that, in a sample that did not include gender minority youth, several instances were identified in which the LGB adolescents interviewed were themselves perpetrators of bullying, including online verbal harassment (Varjas et al., 2013); this finding complicates the assumption that sexual minority youth are solely victims in their online interactions.

The effects of online harassment include increased depression and suicidality among LGBT+ youth (Schimmel-Bristow & Ahrens, Reference Schimmel-Bristow, Ahrens, Moreno and Radovic2018), dangers that are especially salient given that LGBT+ youth are particularly vulnerable to cybervictimization, since revealing their experiences to parents may mean that they risk coming out or losing access to digital technologies (Cooper & Blumenfeld, Reference Cooper and Blumenfeld2012). However, it is possible that the role of cyberbullying in LGBT+ adolescents’ digital landscape may be shifting. Data collected in the fall of 2019 by our Youth, Media, and Wellbeing Lab, for instance, found no difference between the amount of heterosexual and sexual minority youth who reported experiencing cyberbullying online. Our sample included children under 13, of which 25% experienced nonheterosexual attraction (Charmaraman, Hodes, & Richer, Reference Charmaraman, Grossman and Richer2021). However, there are several indicators that sexual minority youth today may experience more social isolation online than their peers do. These youth tended to have fewer friends on social media, and were less likely to use social media to engage positively with friends, including sharing content that was comedic or that they enjoyed. They also were less likely to be friends with family members, peers, or acquaintances on their social media networks, indicating that the links between in-person and online communities may be weaker for LGBT+ youth than other adolescents. Sexual minority youth also reported feeling isolated more often than heterosexual youth. Therefore, there is reason to be concerned that even when young LGBT+ populations are not directly attacked online, they still experience victimization via structural exclusion from the heteronormative social circles that make up their real-world contacts.

As a consequence of context collapse, LGBT+ youth also often find themselves at heightened risk when they share personal information online. Our Youth, Media, and Wellbeing Lab found that sexual minority youth were less likely to have private settings on their social media accounts (Charmaraman, Hodes, & Richer, Reference Charmaraman, Grossman and Richer2021), and Varjas et al. (2013) discussed sexual minority teenagers’ willingness to share personal information with those they talked to virtually as a possible drawback of online activity. Panizo (Reference Panizo2018), in a study of teenagers aged 14–19 in Spain who identified as gay, also noted the recurrence of anecdotes in which teenagers’ disclosure of their sexual orientation online was discovered by relatives, forcing them “out of the closet indirectly and involuntarily” (p. 67). While these results are open to further interpretation, they do imply that LGBT+ youth place themselves at higher risk when sharing information about themselves through digital media due to the stark division that sometimes exists between their expression of identity online and offline.

Finally, Youth, Media, and Wellbeing Lab data shows that sexual minority youth report seeing more content related to self-harm on social media and are more likely to have actually attempted self-harm (Charmaraman, Hodes, & Richer, Reference Charmaraman, Grossman and Richer2021). These sexual minority youth were also found to have higher depressive scores. These findings are in line with concerns about the potential of specific sites, like Tumblr, to foster dangerous subcultures that correspond with social isolation and poor mental health outcomes (Cavalcante, Reference Cavalcante2019).

Resilience for Sexual/Gender Minority Youth

Despite its documented risks, digital media use often provides numerous ways for LGBT+ youth to build resilience. Many forms of online resilience-building are closely related to the process of identity formation. Hillier and Harrison (Reference Hillier and Harrison2007) were among the first to argue that internet communities constitute safe spaces for LGBT+ youth who face hostile environments at home or school. In their study of same-sex attracted Australian youth aged 14–21, they assert that in digital spaces, anonymity and the lack of geographic boundaries provide the ideal practice ground for constructing coming out narratives, engaging with a communal gay culture, experimenting with nonheterosexual intimacy, and socializing with other same-sex-attracted youth. Sexual minority youth have been found to perceive their online friends as significantly more socially supportive than their in-person friends, and LGBT+ youth are more likely to have friends they only know online. Despite the finding that youth across sexual and gender identities feel relatively safe online, researchers note that strong online social support still does not appear to reduce the likelihood of online or in-person harassment and victimization (Ybarra et al., Reference Ybarra, Mitchell, Palmer and Reisner2015). The Youth, Media, and Wellbeing Lab also found that sexual minority youth they surveyed were more likely to join an online group in order to reduce social isolation or feelings of loneliness (Charmaraman, Hodes, & Richer, Reference Charmaraman, Grossman and Richer2021), which similarly implies that LGBT+ youth have been able to engage with social media networks in supportive and fortifying ways.

Hillier and Harrison (Reference Hillier and Harrison2007) also note that accessing resources pertaining to sexual orientation, sexual health, and sexual identity can be a critical form of internet use for same-sex-attracted youth, a utility that is echoed in other studies of LGBT+ adolescents. Fox and Ralston (Reference Fox and Ralston2016) reported that participants used online resources to educate themselves about terminology related to sexual orientation and gender identity, to learn about gender transition, and, in a crossover with their offline context, to identify LGBT+ spaces in physical proximity to them. The Internet can also be a useful tool to identify LGBT+-friendly physicians, therapists, and other care providers (Schimmel-Bristow & Ahrens, Reference Schimmel-Bristow, Ahrens, Moreno and Radovic2018).

A final form of resilience-building, also with its roots in identity development, is the use of online platforms as springboards for LGBT+ activism. Education nonprofit GLSEN reported that LGBT+ youth aged 13–18 were about twice as likely as non-LGBT+ youth to participate in civic engagement activities, and 77% had been part of an online community in support of a social cause (Palmer et al., Reference Palmer, Kosciw, Greytak, Ybarra, Korchmaros and Mitchell2013). Connection to online community fosters sexual citizenship, which occurs when one’s politicized identity prompts one to engage in social activism (Robards et al., Reference Robards, Churchill, Vivienne, Hanckel, Byron, Aggleton, Cover, Leahy, Marshall and Rasmussen2019). Thus, social media often serves as a tool for LGBT+ youth to communicate about social issues that impact them, and allows them to build strengthened connections to both their immediate and virtual communities.

Ultimately, it is clear that despite the potential of facing victimization, LGBT+ youth wield considerable agency in their online interactions. Much of the time, their vulnerabilities coexist with a demonstrated ability to navigate digital space, in ways that positively supplement or contrast with their offline environments.

Role of Digital Media in the Development of Other Marginalized Youth Identities

In this section, we explore how digital media influences the identities, risk, and resilience of youth from other marginalized backgrounds, ranging from those living in disadvantaged neighborhoods to homeless and neurodiverse youth.

In the case of youth in disadvantaged neighborhoods, Oldenburg (Reference Oldenburg1989) argues that high levels of poverty, decreased employment prospects, and the lack of safe gathering spaces without threat of violence or drug activity lead to a problem of place. These urban youth often have a dilemma of geographic identity – at once proud and connected to one’s neighborhood but needing a third space to feel safe and secure to hang out. Soukup (Reference Soukup2006) articulated a “digital third space” wherein online communities are key to developing one’s neighborhood identity and can be located within a local geographic area, allowing participants to be fully immersed in a computer-mediated environment contributing to a sense of connectedness and sense of refuge.

Homelessness is often an invisible identity that is intentionally hidden from outsiders such as classmates at school or future employers (Whitbeck & Hoyt, Reference Whitbeck and Hoyt1999). The majority of research on the digital media use of homeless youth focuses on health information seeking (Eyrich-Garg, Reference Eyrich-Garg2010) and less on social connections with others. Prior research on nonhomeless youth suggests that having a cell phone in one’s possession increases feelings of safety and security while on the move, and merely owning a cell phone makes youth feel socially connected (Wei & Lo, Reference Wei and Lo2006). This may be a particularly salient part of homeless youths’ identities – having a lifeline to a networked world may be more critical to maintain those connections they most value.

Prior research has demonstrated that social media has provided people with intellectual disabilities an opportunity to express their preferred personal and social identities (Caton & Chapman, Reference Caton and Chapman2016), which may include reflections on their identities as neurodiverse, but also serves as an online space where they can be just like everyone else. For instance, in a study with people with Down syndrome, online profiles were places to be vocal about their thoughts, feelings, and needs (Seale, Reference Seale2007). Studies have shown those with intellectual disabilities publicize their disability in blogs, even when these online venues provided space to focus on other aspects of their lives (McClimens & Gordon, Reference McClimens and Gordon2008). Other research has observed that some individuals with intellectual disabilities prefer to not mention the label of intellectual disability in an online profile, providing a chance to escape the identity stigma associated with these disabilities (Löfgren-Mårtenson, Reference Löfgren-Mårtenson2008).

Risk of Other Marginalized Youth

Adolescents from lower-income households have been found to spend on average an hour and a half more on screens than their higher-income peers (George et al., Reference George, Jensen and Russell2020). They are also more likely to be passively viewing content and less frequently using screens for research and learning (OECD, 2016). In the new digital divide of remote learning (Odgers & Robb, Reference Odgers and Robb2020), lower-income households not only have less digital access but also fewer adults who can scaffold digital support, which is critical given the increased risk for mental health symptoms.

In a study by VonHoltz and colleagues (Reference VonHoltz, Frasso, Golinkoff, Lozano, Hanlon and Dowshen2018), individuals who do not have easy access to the Internet, such as may be the case with youth experiencing homelessness, demonstrate the need to be more purposeful when using public computers. For instance, using the Internet for social media is limited when other basic needs are not being met, such as housing, food, and unemployment. When youth do not have easy access to health care or resources to understand their health ailments, they turn to the Internet to self-diagnose, often finding the terminology and sheer volume of information to be too complex. In terms of being connected with others online, young homeless women have been found to be less likely to stay in touch with friends and less likely to post public messages, signaling a weaker social network to rely on and a greater likelihood of social isolation (Guadagno et al., Reference Guadagno, Muscanell and Pollio2013).

Prior research on social technology use among adolescents with physical or intellectual health conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder, have focused on their unique challenges in understanding social situations and managing peer relationships. This can lead individuals with disabilities to turn to technology as a less threatening way of interacting with others (Davidson, Reference Davidson2008). Unfortunately, having a noticeable or visible disability increases the chances of being a victim of cyberbullying, particularly for those who use the Internet more frequently and are already bullied in person (Kowalski et al., Reference Kowalski, Morgan, Drake-Lavelle and Allison2016). People with intellectual disabilities have also been found to disclose more personal information about themselves and photos online, increasing the potential for financial, sexual, and personal safety threats (Holmes & O’Loughlin, Reference Holmes and O’Loughlin2014). Adolescents with a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been shown to not only be likely victims but also perpetrators of cyberbullying peers. Those with ADHD who were victimized reported higher incidents of loneliness and lower levels of self-efficacy and social support compared to nonvictims (Heiman et al., Reference Heiman, Olenik-Shemesh and Eden2014).

Resilience of Other Marginalized Youth

Digital media and mobile technology access may be especially difficult for homeless youth who are also at increased risk for behavioral and mental health problems associated with substance abuse and violence, compared to housed youth (Rice et al., Reference Rice, Milburn, Rotheram-Borus, Mallett and Rosenthal2005). Despite the barriers, studies have dispelled the myth of a digital divide for homeless youth, such that around 85% of the homeless population access the Internet at least once a week and 62% of homeless youth had a cell phone, mostly related to instrumental purposes, such as looking for jobs or staying connected with social workers trying to track them down (Rice et al., Reference Rice, Lee and Taitt2011). Besides using their personal devices, homeless youth are accessing the Internet through social service agencies (60%), public libraries (54%), and internet cafes (14%) (Pollio et al., Reference Pollio, Batey, Bender, Ferguson and Thompson2013). Only 9% of homeless youth indicated that they did not have a social media profile (Young & Rice, Reference Young and Rice2011). Rice and colleagues (Reference Rice, Lee and Taitt2011) found that homeless youth are most likely to stay in touch via cell phones with friends they knew before they were homeless, followed by siblings, parents, and street-based peers, which underlines the critical social network that friends can provide for these youth. Besides studies on digital access and seeking health-related information, there is limited research examining what homeless youth actually communicate about on their social media sites. These studies have found that youth discussed both risk-taking behaviors such as having sex with someone they met online or drug use, but also prosocial discussion topics such as school, family, work, setting goals, and even their homelessness (Barman-Adhikari et al., Reference Barman-Adhikari, Rice, Bender, Lengnick-Hall, Yoshioka-Maxwell and Rhoades2016).

Studies focused on youth with intellectual or socioemotional disabilities are almost always centered on cyberbullying and the promise of technology-facilitated interventions (Schimmel-Bristow & Ahrens, Reference Schimmel-Bristow, Ahrens, Moreno and Radovic2018), rather than how these young people use social media in resilient ways. A recent review suggested that potential benefits of social media use in young people with intellectual disabilities include increased opportunities to make and maintain relationships, decreased loneliness (Kydland et al., Reference Kydland, Molka-Danielsen, Balandin and Fallmyr2012), increasing self-confidence and self-esteem through learning new technical skills, and having fun (Caton & Chapman, Reference Caton and Chapman2016).

Moving Beyond Differential Access

Researchers have recently made a call to action on moving away from quantity of time spent on digital technologies, and more toward understanding the quality of experiences online that may have larger impacts to youth well-being (Ito et al., Reference Ito, Odgers and Schueller2020; Odgers & Jensen, Reference Odgers and Jensen2020). In doing so, the research will be able to provide evidence for how the most pervasive forms of digital media in the current moment is impacting the lives of adolescents, especially those who are marginalized and understudied. In the case of youth who are homeless, access to digital technologies (e.g., mobile phones and public computers) and being able to keep in touch with loved ones is a primary concern for both the research participants and the researchers who study them. However, little is known about which social media platforms are being accessed by this vulnerable population and for what purposes, how often, etc.

Hard to Reach and Hidden Subpopulations

Racial-ethnic identity formation during adolescence is met with many challenges and opportunities in the digital age, especially among the growing diversity in the population. While we have only scratched the surface of the possible implications that this identity development process can have in online and social media spaces, there is still much to be explored. A major challenge that research has going forward is accounting for the wide range of races and ethnicities within the USA, and accounting for bi- and multiracial-ethnic identities. There are also many approaches to mapping out the racial-ethnic identity development during this critical period of adolescence, and prior research has had a stronger focus on the identity commitment during late adolescence and young adulthood (e.g., college samples). As digital media and social media adopters are becoming younger at a rapid rate, we must further explore how the pervasive nature of constant exposure and use affects racial and ethnic identity development in the earlier stages of adolescence. Parents and educators might consider discussions with youth from marginalized backgrounds to prepare for biased language and to arm them with the tools to be proactive with learning about and/or establishing their social identities online.

Despite the fact that some youth may identify as LGBT+ at ages as young as 9 (Calzo & Blashill, Reference Calzo and Blashill2018), research about LGBT+ adolescent behavior online is extremely limited for populations under 18 years old. Information about the digital media use of LGBT+ children under 13 years old is virtually nonexistent, and the Youth, Media, and Wellbeing Lab’s data is among the only to date that include children in middle school. Much of the existing research also fails to include transgender youth in its samples, or frames its analyses of this population as secondary to findings about LGB individuals. Thus, future research on LGBT+ social media use has an opportunity to focus on each of these vulnerable populations. As children gain access to social media earlier in middle school, and even in late elementary school, information about how they begin to develop LGBT+ identity or learn about gender and sexuality can provide important context for parents and teachers. Transgender youth, meanwhile, face unique barriers to positive identity formation throughout their developmental years (Palmer et al., Reference Palmer, Kosciw, Greytak, Ybarra, Korchmaros and Mitchell2013); therefore, research devoted to the mental health impacts of transgender digital media use, especially as compared to other members of the LGBT+ community, is a valuable area for future exploration.

Adolescent development may also be compounded with intersectional identity formations. In a diverse mixed-method study of adolescents and young adults aged 12–25, Charmaraman and colleagues (Reference Charmaraman, Chan, Price, Richer, Tassie and Brown2015) found that girls and women of color participated in more online blogs and were more likely to report revealing their stress on social media compared to both White and male participants. The unique issues faced by LGBT+ youth who are racial minorities or have other marginalized identities are also understudied, such that race overlaps with terms used and content posted about sexuality (e.g., Wargo, Reference Wargo2016). More expansive qualitative and mixed-method research is necessary to understand how particular experiences of sexual orientation and gender are racialized differently online. GLSEN also suggests that lack of internet access for LGBT+ youth living in rural areas merits future investigation, since many of these adolescents are already isolated from any form of LGBT+ community (Palmer et al., Reference Palmer, Kosciw, Greytak, Ybarra, Korchmaros and Mitchell2013).

Social Media Site Affordances/Hindrances

As noted in earlier sections, it is shown that collective online spaces for interactive and passive use such as social media platforms (e.g., Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok) have proven to be a space of racial-ethnic empowerment for young people and a way to promote the social capital needed to support well-being during adolescent development. Despite the dark side of the online ecosystems related to racial discrimination and injustices in the algorithmic makeup of these social media spaces, there are vast opportunities for these tools to be utilized to support historically marginalized racial and ethnic youth to navigate and build their identities to promote mental well-being. For instance, Facebook conspicuously does not allow users to define their race on their profiles, but users can display their cultural background through their photos or interests. The opportunities must also be promoted by the industry by deviating away from a color-blind and utiopic cyberspace approach, which often further perpetuates the visual classification of other and hampers empowerment of cultural identities (Grasmuck et al., Reference Grasmuck, Martin and Zhao2009). More collaborative research with tech industry user experience teams will improve evidence-based decisions around marginalized youth who are primary users of these apps.

LGBT+ activity on newer social media sites, and the ongoing evolution of these communities’ online presence, also provide fertile ground for future research. For instance, the video-sharing app TikTok has experienced a surge of popularity among adolescents and corners of the app are primarily devoted to LGBT+ social support and resource sharing (Carey, Reference Carey2020; Ohlheiser, Reference Ohlheiser2020). At the same time, several sites, including Tumblr and YouTube, have received criticism for implementing guidelines that, while intended to prevent youth from seeing pornographic content, restrict access to LGBT+ media and resources (Romano, Reference Romano2019; Sybert, Reference Sybert2021); these actions could significantly impact LGBT+ engagement on these platforms. Simpson and Semaan (Reference Simpson and Semaan2020) have detailed the affirming yet fraught relationship many LGBT+ users form with TikTok specifically, and the platform’s potential for algorithmic exclusion. Finally, certain platforms provide researchers with the opportunity to gather data that is more representative of LGBT+ populations, as demonstrated by Salk et al. (Reference Salk, Thoma and Choukas-Bradley2020); their methodology, in which transgender youth were recruited via targeted social media advertising, has exciting implications for investigators committed to more effectively understanding the unique factors that impact LGBT+ young adults’ digital media use.

Across all of the marginalized populations in this chapter, there are untapped research avenues regarding identity work in online spaces. It is worth recognizing, like many other vulnerable youth communities, offline risk factors such as bullying, victimization and behavioral problems spill over into online spaces, which reinforces heightened risks for negative experiences on social media. It is critical that researchers and technology developers recognize the potential amplification of risks tied to one’s identity of being a part of this particular vulnerable adolescent population (Odgers, Reference Odgers2018). Moving beyond the deficits-based discourse, future research and practice can capitalize on assets-based and empowerment approaches to positive minority youth development in digital spaces. Being a member of a group that is overlooked or faced with discrimination can galvanize individuals with a sense of purpose, tackling a mutual goal of collective sense-making and more authentic visibility, which, in turn, can promote healthy youth development (Wexler et al., Reference Wexler2009). Partnerships with educators, families, clinicians, and the sociotechnical industry can further increase understanding about how to design inclusive online environments and circumstances that can lead to a digital ecosystem that ultimately supports identity development and emotional well-being.