Abstract
As youth grow up in an ever more connected world with evolving media and social media landscape, how will the ubiquitous use of these media affect their sense of self and others? Consider the adolescent doing homework on a laptop with headphones on listening to music, texting friends on a smartphone, updating a status on Facebook or Instagram using a tablet, while the TV is playing in the background. Such scenarios have become commonplace. Indeed, media and social media play an important role in the daily lives of young people (Lenhart, 2015), and have become important contexts for development among adolescents and young adults (see Michikyan & Subrahmanyam, 2012; Subrahmanyam & Šmahel, 2011, for a review). Youth are not merely influenced by their digital world; they are the creators—actively and interactively constructing and reconstructing their identities; establishing, re-connecting, or “de-friending” relationships; as well as challenging and transforming cultural norms in online and offline contexts (Galarneau, 2011, 2012; Rutledge, 2013).
As developmental research on youth social media use continues to accumulate, a more nuanced picture of adolescents and young adults, and their digital world, is needed. Extant developmental research suggests that adolescents and young adults use social media for self-presentation and self-disclosure, and these behaviors are linked to their identity and intimacy development and well-being (see Bartsch & Subrahmanyam, 2015; Michikyan & Subrahmanyam, 2012; Subrahmanyam & Šmahel, 2011, for a review).
Identity—a central developmental task—may be facilitated by the opportunities afforded to young social media users. These online spaces provide diverse groups of youth opportunities to reveal and express different characteristics of themselves—including aspects of their real, ideal, and false selves (Michikyan, Dennis, & Subrahmanyam, 2014), as well as their multiple and intersecting identities (Michikyan & Suárez-Orozco, 2016; Michikyan, Subrahmanyam, & Dennis, 2015). For an adolescent who is questioning her or his gender and sexual identities, there must be a certain comfort in knowing that online spaces—anonymous or less anonymous—exist that enable them to construct a narrative of the self, which gives meaning and some order to her or his complex life.
Intimacy—another key developmental task—may be fostered via online social interactions. Social media provide several opportunities for youth to access a diverse group of peers (Tynes, Garcia, Giang, & Coleman, 2011). As youth experience emotional fluctuations in their quest for identity and intimacy, they may turn to peers online to make meaning of their personal and shared-experiences. In showcasing their relationships—familial, friendships, and romantic ones online—youth may also disclose various affective states via their status updates, comments, use of emojis, and “liking,” as a way to garner, maintain, and strengthen social and emotional support (Lenhart, Anderson, & Smith, 2015; Manago, Taylor, & Greenfield, 2012; Michikyan et al., 2015). As these online spaces have become culturally diverse, so too should our understanding of the youth who utilize them. For an adolescent who has newly arrived to the United States, there must be a sense of optimism in knowing that he or she can maintain connection with family and friends and country of origin, while acculturating to the host country. However, there is still much to be learned about immigrant-origin youth social media use (Michikyan & Suárez-Orozco, 2016).
Although we have highlighted the more positive aspects of social media use, online social interactions also carry some risks for youth (Lenhart et al., 2015; Michikyan, Lozada, Weidenbenner, & Tynes, 2014; Tynes, Hiss, Ryan, & Rose, 2015). Thus, it is important to consider the developmental implications of young people’s online use for well-being. Research has shown that social media use is linked to depressive symptoms (Moreno et al., 2011), stress (Egan & Moreno, 2011), and social anxiety (Harman, Hansen, Cochran, & Lindsey, 2005; Shaw, Timpano, Tran, & Joormann, 2015). However, the relationship between social media use and well-being is complex. Although some have found frequency of use to be related to social anxiety among young adults (Shaw et al., 2015), others have found online presentation of the false self, not frequency of use, to be associated with social anxiety among adolescents (Harman et al., 2005) and young adults (Michikyan & Subrahmanyam, 2016).
These studies suggest that young people’s online lives are connected to their offline world; they use social media in their exploration and development of identities and intimacy, and well-being. As technologies change, so do their use by youth. To uncover, document, and learn about the media use and digital lives of young people from diverse backgrounds as it relates to their development, we need nuanced research approaches to this work. In this issue, we have three stellar examples of this kind of work.
In “How to Cope With Digital Stress: The Recommendations Adolescents Offer Their Peers Online,” Weinstein, Selman, Kim, White, and Dinakar explore strategies for coping with different experiences of socio-digital stress, including both hostility-oriented issues and digital challenges related to navigating close relationships. In “A Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Internet Addiction: The Role of Conscientiousness and Classroom Hostility,” Stavropoulos and Kuss consider the interplay of the interpersonal trait of conscientiousness and the setting characteristic of hostile classroom environments in predicting the development of Internet addiction. Conscientiousness maintained a consistently protective role over time while hostile classroom contexts increased vulnerability over time, particularly for girls. In “Cultural, Media, and Peer Influences on Body Beauty Perceptions of Mexican American Mid-Adolescent Girls,” Romo examines Latina adolescent girls’ perceptions of the role of media more broadly in modeling valued body shapes and sizes of Latino and European American girls; in turn, she explores with her participants how these media cultural representations influence body ideals among Mexican American adolescents and their peers.