“It's Just a Lot of Work”: Adolescents’ Self‐Presentation Norms and Practices on Facebook and Instagram

Abstract

We explored adolescents' (12- to 18-year-olds; n = 51) awareness of their audience and subsequent self-presentation practices on Facebook and Instagram through focus group discussions. Findings suggest that teens, who are developmentally able to perceive a situation from the third-person perspective and who value peer approval, purposefully share content to appear interesting, well liked, and attractive. Some teens invested great effort into posting by these norms, even asking their friends to help; however, this was more common among girls. Older teens especially discussed taking the perspective of their audience when deciding what to post, which is consistent with the finding that perspective taking continues to develop throughout adolescence. These findings suggest that perspective taking skills and need for peer approval influence self-presentation online.

How Can Adolescents Benefit from the Use of Social Networks? The iGeneration on Instagram

“…Nevertheless, the regression models showed a decrease of self-acceptance on Instagram in the case of female adolescents, and in participants who edited photos. This data is consistent with the descriptive data that female adolescents are those who edit photos more often, and the results of a focus group study involving teens, which showed that girls were more likely to report expecting their close friends to like their posts on Facebook and Instagram, and asking for likes if their friends had not yet done so [ 74 ]. Barker [ 3 ] found a higher collective self-esteem in women.…”

See, Like, Share, Remember: Adolescents’ Responses to Unhealthy-, Healthy- and Non-Food Advertising in Social Media

“…Adolescents are particularly susceptible to social effects as they are motivated to interact with their peers [26] and, in social media, to connect with and view friends' profiles [8]. Sharing social media content with friends serves a number of psychological incentives including self-expression and connecting with others [27]. Adolescents give careful consideration to the image they present online, conveying a socially acceptable self-image to others by sharing content popular with friends [28].…”

“…Theories of social norms of eating can be nested within this model and these indicate that social groups establish norms for appropriate foods [59]. In social media, social norms of food are displayed, disseminated and reinforced, as young people do not just see food advertising but can also choose to share it with their 'imagined audience' of peers [27], and in turn can also assess their peers based on such content. Thus, the identity and self-presentation-based normative goals of the adolescent years [27] are interwoven in social media with food advertising.…”

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“…Por otro lado, se observará cómo tras una investigación realizada entre jóvenes adultos se logró determinar que con el uso de Instagram este grupo que ha sido catalogado como el más solitario de la generación logra reducir sus niveles de soledad y sus niveles de felicidad y satisfacción con la vida se incrementan paulatinamente (Pittman & Reich, 2016). Si en cambio, analizamos las conductas de adolescentes durante sus interacciones en Instagram, logramos determinar que algunos ellos buscan la aprobación de sus pares y comparten contenidos con el fin de parecer atractivos e interesantes y previo a la publicación de fotografías en Instagram deben seguir según su parecer "normas" para lo cual en ciertos casos se ven en la necesidad de pedir ayuda (Yau & Reich, 2018).…”