Online youth in a networked era

Outside North America, Europe, and Australia, less research has been undertaken on young people’s use of social networks. That which exists, however, suggests that young people around the world use online media for largely similar purposes — to chat with friends, listen to music, play games, browse the news, exchange information, express intimate feelings, or generally goof about. Alongside these broad similarities, however, there are also characteristics particular to specific local and national contexts. Comparing the ways girls from Thailand and the US elaborated their online identities, for example, Narissra Punyanunt-Carter and Jason Smith found the girls’ practices ‘were more similar than different’, though they observed how some notable cultural differences surfaced in the way the young women portrayed themselves, with the Thai girls being more cautious in their degree of self-disclosure and making fewer references to fashion and brands (2010: 88).

Compared to Western youth, Chinese youngsters’ use of the Internet also evidences broad similarities alongside distinctive local features. Jun Fu (2018), for instance, shows how the online practices of Chinese youngsters exhibit many features similar to those of US, European, and Australian youth. Like their global peers, Chinese young people use social media as way of developing social relations and as a space for identity ‘performance’ through posting comments and sharing content. Moreover, as elsewhere, Chinese youngsters’ online identities are rooted in their offline lives, Fu arguing that ‘experiences of online and offline space are mutually constituted rather than a discrete dichotomy’ (140). And, again like young people elsewhere, Chinese youngsters carefully negotiate between the Internet’s ‘private’ and ‘public’ realms. For some

Chinese youth, however, the boundaries separating these spheres are not always the blurry realm experienced by Western youngsters.

Many Chinese youngsters, Fu observes, maintain a consistent identity across their online presence. But some, he argues, employ distinct strategies to adjust their identity performance depending on the sense of privacy afforded by specific platforms. For instance, the mobile text and voice-messaging service WeChat is designed as a private platform, and is a fairly ‘closed’ space where youngsters personally know most of their contacts. WeChat, Fu suggests, is mainly used by young people for sharing ‘happy moments’ (in the form of text, pictures and video clips) with family and friends, and for posting innocuous content suitable for public scrutiny. In contrast, Weibo is a micro-blogging site (similar to Twitter) intended to be a more public space where the majority of other participants are unknown to users in their physical lives. Fu argues, however, that Weibo’s aura of relative anonymity is perceived by many young people as making it ‘a safer, more private space than is available in physical life’ (140). As a consequence, he suggests, Weibo has become a site where young people are more prepared to voice social and political opinions and express their personal values (including arguments for social justice, freedom, and democracy).⁶ The intended uses of WeChat and Weibo, therefore, have been effectively reversed by many young users. Wechat (the ‘private’ platform) is used ‘as a public space to record the public side of their lives’ (135), while Weibo (the ‘public’ micro-blog) has become a site for expressing personal beliefs and values.

The experience Fu outlines, therefore, demonstrates both the degree of global consistency and the dimensions of national variation in youngsters’ use of digital communication. Fit’s account, moreover, also clearly illustrates how online interaction has permeated young people’s lives. As he argues (quoting danah boyd), Chinese youth’s negotiation of identity on social media:

... demonstrates that in a networked era when young people are connected to the Internet at any given time, the binary between online and offline is no longer helpful, a more valid question to ask should be ‘how context, audience, and identity intersect’ in young people’s life.

(Fu, 2018: 140)

The Internet has clearly come to be a key means through which youngsters articulate their identities and maintain social relationships. As a consequence, some theorists suggest that the fabric of modern youth culture has been transformed. As Andy Bennett argues, with the prevalence of social networks and online platforms, it becomes impossible to think of youth cultures as being fixed to a specific locality, or even as being rooted in any corporeal mode of expression. As Bennett puts it:

... we can no longer take it for granted that membership of a youth culture involves issues of stylistic unity, collective knowledge of a particular club scene, or even face-to-face interaction. On the contrary, youth cultures may be seen increasingly as cultures of ‘shared ideas’, whose interactions take place not in physical spaces such as the street, club or festival field but in the virtual spaces facilitated by the Internet.

(Bennett, 2004: 163)

According to some theorists, moreover, these changes have created particularly valuable opportunities for young women. Whereas the physical spaces central to youth culture — for example, the street or the nightclub — are invariably circumscribed by a masculine presence, some researchers suggest this can be less pronounced in the virtual spaces of the Internet. As Justine Cassell and Meg Cramer have argued:

Girls in particular may thrive online where they may be more likely to explore alternate identities without the dangers associated with venturing outside of their homes alone, more likely to be able to safely explore their budding sexuality, and more likely to openly demonstrate technological prowess, without the social dangers associated with the term ‘geek’.

(Cassell and Cramer, 2008: 54)

The Internet and social media may well have provided young women with new avenues for cultural experience and expression. At the same time, however, many studies also point to the way the gendered power structures of the physical world are often reproduced online. For example, British researchers Sarah Handyside and Jessica Ringrose highlight the way that, in online spaces, young women’s bodies are surveilled much more heavily than those of their male peers. Analysing youngsters’ use of the video-sharing app Snapchat, they found a distinct ‘double-standard’ in which young women were more often subjected to derogatory ‘body shaming’ comments, and were more often branded as ‘slutty’ for sharing (public or private) images of themselves (Handyside and Ringrose, 2017). And, in the US, research undertaken by the Pew Research Center demonstrated the high levels of sexual harassment experienced by young women on the Internet, with 21 per cent of women aged 18 to 29 reporting they had being sexually harassed online, and roughly half (53 per cent) reporting they had received unsolicited explicit images (Duggan, 2017: 7).

More generally, online harassment - or ‘cyber-bullying’ — has been identified as a significant problem for many young people. In the US, for instance, the Pew Research Center found that 59 per cent of teenagers had been bullied or harassed online, with 16 per cent reporting they had received physical threats, and 7 per cent reporting that explicit images of themselves had been shared without their consent (Anderson, 2018: 2). Additionally, some studies suggest social media networks can be characterised by a hierarchical monitoring of social approval, with users competing for popularity and self-affirmation by accruing ‘likes’, ‘friends’ and ‘followers’. As Adriana Manago and her colleagues observe, this can lead to envy and disappointment - or ‘FoMO’ (Fear of Missing Out) — when individuals overlook that others may intentionally publicise or enhance the ‘good’ and ‘flattering’ parts of their lives (Manago et al., 2015). Concern has also surrounded the relationship between social media use and levels of anxiety and depression among young people. In Britain for example, several high-profile cases sparked alarm about the possible links between social media and incidents of self-harm and suicide by young people. In response, critics called for companies such as Instagram and Facebook to regulate their content more effectively, while 2020 saw the Royal College of Psychiatrists argue that companies should be forced to release data on how young people were using social media networks (BBC News, 2020).

There may, however, be elements of ‘media panic’ to some of these concerns (see Chapter 5). And, overall, research on the relationship between social media use and mental health among young people has been equivocal. In an overview of existing studies of the issue, Betul Keles and her colleagues concluded that, although existing research suggested an association between significant use of social media and levels of depression and anxiety among young people, further investigation was required. Any relationship that existed, they argued, would inevitably be complex; and the apparent association between social media use and young people’s mental problems was, they stressed, ‘correlational but not conclusively causative’ (Betul et al., 2020: 90). Moreover, while there may be some negative facets to young people’s use of social media, many researchers are at pains to stress the potential benefits. Alice Marwick (2013), for instance, explains how online social spaces can afford feelings of intimacy and friendship, while danah boyd (2014) stresses the feelings of friendship and connectedness young people can derive from being involved in online social networks. And, while Britain’s Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) acknowledged problems such as cyber-bullying, its research also highlighted the many positive experiences youngsters could derive from social media. The society, for example, observed how many young people improved their health literacy through reading blogs or watching vlogs, while social media could be a valuable source of counsel and comfort:

Sharing problems or issues with friends, peers and broader social networks can be met with positive reaction. Nearly seven in 10 teens report receiving support on social media during tough or challenging times.

(RSPH, 2017: 14)