Anytime Anyplace Identities and Relationships: Teenagers’ Social Media Use via Mobile Devices

• In Event: The Role of Social Media in Adolescent Identity and Relationship Development

Abstract

Contemporary teenagers increasingly use social media applications on mobile devices. These applications include mobile versions of traditional internet-based social media (e.g., mobile Facebook) and dedicated mobile social media, such as location-based SNSs (e.g., Foursquare). Drawing from the extant literature on mobile media use, I argue that there are three major areas in which these mobile social media applications affect teenagers’ identity work and relationship formation. First, they impact teenagers’ autonomy by enabling anytime and anyplace management of identities and relationships. Second, they enable a state of ‘perpetual contact’ between teenagers and their network via near-synchronous exchanges of content. Third, the ‘personalness’ of the devices enables the exchange of highly personal (and even self-destructing) content under the radar of parents/authority figures in the here and now. Both the benefits and challenges of these three affordances inherent in mobile social media applications are discussed. Particular attention goes out to locational information.

Author

• Mariek Vanden Abeele, Tilburg U