Gaming, YouTube, and celebrities: Associations with male adolescents’ conceptions of masculine gender roles and norms

• In Event: New risks to gender justice? Social media, masculinity and gender norms among adolescent boys and young men

Proposal

Two competing discourses exist around social norms of masculinity. One suggests that narrow assumptions regarding what it means to be a man or a boy are opening up as gender becomes a more fluid and less restrictive concept, especially among young people. The other argues that norms associated with how to be a boy or how to be a man remain stubbornly resistant to change and still value features like toughness or dominance. The media are an important source of socialization, demonstrating through their many depictions what is possible, what is accepted, and what is less so, providing scripts that potentially guide young men’s sense of masculinity. Indeed, adolescents are at a stage in which they tend to be focused on social norms and their own negotiations with those norms. As adolescents’ identities continue to develop and their desire for self-expression takes shape, their media use has the potential to both reflect and shape their sense of who they are or who they want to be.

In this presentation, survey data from 601 U.S. 13- to 17-year-olds who identify as male are used to explore associations between various forms of media use and conceptions of masculine gender roles and norms. Gaming is a vibrant part of adolescent culture and many boys and men follow gamers on social media. Yet games and gaming—especially in particular genres—have been critiqued for their adherence to a narrow form of masculinity characterized by stoic aggression. YouTube is a popular platform for adolescents who encounter and create content with a range of potential implications for masculinities. Social media also allow for feelings of connection with celebrities, and given that such identification is both an indication of one’s own preferences and a potential precursor to media influence, this has important implications, as well.

In this study, the amount of time spent playing video games in general as well as time spent with particular genres is measured, as is amount of time spent on YouTube. The degree to which the survey respondents follow a list of YouTubers, TikTok stars, or other influencers is examined, as well, with the list including some figures identified as reflecting the “manosphere.” Respondents are also asked to list their favorite celebrities and the degree to which they want to be like those figures, and the web content of those celebrities is coded for the presence or absence of markers of “traditional” masculine gender roles and norms. These media variables are tested to see whether they correlate with scores on the Adolescent Masculinity Ideology in Relationships Scale (Chu et al., 2005) and the Masculine Roles and Norms Inventory (Levant et al., 2008) amid statistical controls and exploring differences among those respondents who feel more or less masculine themselves.

Author

• Erica Scharrer, The University of Massachusetts Amherst