The Politics of Worrying about Young Lives on Social Media Ysabel Gerrard(1), Debbie Ging(2), Craig Haslop(3), Jessica Ringrose(4), Devina Sarwatay(5) 1: University of Sheffield, United Kingdom; 2: Dublin City University, Ireland; 3: University of Liverpool, United Kingdom; 4: University College London, United Kingdom; 5: City, University of London, United Kingdom
As Gruenberg explained in 1935, each ‘invasion’ of a new technology finds adults feeling ‘unprepared, frightened, resentful, and helpless’ on behalf of youth (in Orben, 2020:1144). It is therefore no surprise that tensions between young people’s risks and rights on social media dominate headlines, policy priorities across sectors (including the tech industry), and public debates in many places around the world (Livingstone and Third, 2017). But these social concerns are contextual: as Banaji (2015, 2017) reminds us, what one person considers to be a pressing issue may not be an immediate hazard elsewhere. The aim of this roundtable is therefore to critically interrogate social concerns around youth and social media, paying close attention to differences in worries across, for example, age-range, social class, geography, and individual and community identities. This roundtable will take a case study approach, with each scholar delivering a five-minute talk focused on one aspect of their research to facilitate a broader discussion of the tensions between risk and rights in relation to youth social media engagements. Participants will discuss: the enduring usefulness of moral panic theory for understanding youth and social media (Gerrard), how mass-mediated worries about Andrew Tate may deflect from more complex and urgent issues concerning male youth (Ging), how understanding the risks and rewards of ‘banter’ for boys and young men can help with tackling harmful online gender norms (Haslop), how we can prevent tech facilitated and image based sexual harassment and abuse and better support young people (Ringrose), and how young people bargain social media access to negotiate with adult anxieties induced by technopanics (Sarwatay). Through our conversations, we will ask: Why do we worry? Whose interests do worries serve? And how might we harness the power of worry?
