“I Guess I Can Be Myself There, Instead”: Social Media as a Mediator of Young Women’s Marginality in U.S. Adolescence

• In Event: Life Span Across Communication: Digital Communication Technologies and the Brokering of “Life Stages”

Abstract

Current economic and social conditions have extended the bounds of adolescence, leaving young Americans within a lengthening period of non-adulthood. Drawing off data from a year-long ethnography of adolescent-aged female Facebook and Twitter users, this paper finds teens experiencing high levels of frustration with limited opportunities for visibility in their home communities turning to social media for reprieves from containment and powerlessness.

Teens in this study expressed little hope that their material conditions would or could change. They reported the poor treatment they receive as females and adolescents provoking their involvement in what I term “social media migration” where they travel alone through online social spaces attempting to escape offline insignificance.

While social media promises users greater freedoms, these platforms are observed both assuaging teens’ dissent and benefiting from their disconnection offline. This research locates these digital communication technologies within the larger social project of marginal U.S. adolescence.

Author

• Aimee N. Rickman, California State University, Fresno