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Tan, Y. Social Construction of Adolescence and Social networking Sites. Encyclopedia. Available online: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/24396 (accessed on 15 May 2024).
Tan Y. Social Construction of Adolescence and Social networking Sites. Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/24396. Accessed May 15, 2024.
Tan, Yue. "Social Construction of Adolescence and Social networking Sites" Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/24396 (accessed May 15, 2024).
Tan, Y. (2022, June 23). Social Construction of Adolescence and Social networking Sites. In Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/24396
Tan, Yue. "Social Construction of Adolescence and Social networking Sites." Encyclopedia. Web. 23 June, 2022.
Social Construction of Adolescence and Social networking Sites
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This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/adolescents2020023

Social networking sites (SNS) allow adolescents to post online representations of themselves and exert symbolic (content) and practical (access) control over their online presence. This empowerment in socialization and relation-building capacity has made SNS increasingly popular among adolescents worldwide.

adolescents news framing attribution of responsibility

1. Introduction

The potential negative effects of social media on such users, particularly their social relationships, have raised concerns among researchers, educators, regulators, parents, child welfare professionals, and the general public. Parental mediation has limited effects for social media, particularly if parents lack ICT (information and communication technology) skills, while the mobility of smartphones [1][2] and children’s unwillingness to accept their parents’ friend requests on Facebook [1][3] are also contributing factors.
An increasing number of parents and researchers have begun expecting schools and the government to share these responsibilities, either by enforcing school rules or government regulations to restrict the industry [1][4]. Kelly [5] deems discourses on at-risk youth as “politics of risk” that seek to individualize institutionally structured risks and assign new forms of responsibility to young people and their families. According to Owen [6], news media and experts are (re)producing a “moral panic” among the public and offering new sites for political and economic governance in the neoliberal countries of the Global North. As social networking sites (SNS) is a new technology, the risks faced by the youth have become a battlefield of competing values and conflicting interests.
However, whether the public supports school and government interventions remains unclear. Public understanding of the risks adolescents face, as well as the causes and solutions, are critical areas of inquiry.

2. Social Construction of Adolescence and News Frames

Adolescence is a transitional stage from childhood to adulthood [5]. While it is a biological process like childhood, the conceptions of adolescence have been socially constructed by adults [5][7]. They are considered to be “at-risk” if their life circumstances threaten normative developmental experiences necessary to perform healthy adult functions, such as securing employment and starting a family [5]. The center of the social construction of childhood is children’s nature, agency, best interests, and needs [8][9].
Media frames are aspects of perceived reality that the mass media selects and emphasizes “to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation” [10]. Frame analysis can elucidate the societal perceptions of key issues [11]. Identifying the causes underpinning media frames will provide insight into the treatments for the problems and predict their likely effects [10]. News frames usually build on social norms and cultural values [11][12], as journalists unconsciously rely on commonly shared frames [13].
The literature on youth and the Internet has been framed using the concepts of risks and opportunities [14]. Davidson and Martellozzo [15] refer to online risks as online behaviors that may damage the mental and physical health of children. Adolescents’ engagement in such online behaviors is indicative of victimization [16]. In line with the above definition, online opportunities are behaviors that may benefit children’s mental and physical health, such as receiving, downloading, and distributing useful information.
However, Livingstone and Helsper [17] admit that the definition of risks and opportunities accords with the “approved” definition of adults in policy debates. The problematization of social media is largely legitimized by an authoritative voice, such as those of academics and experts [18]. Many of the risk behaviors listed by adults are positive in nature and are perceived as opportunities by teenagers (e.g., making new friends online, giving out personal information, or even viewing pornography).
In fact, benefits and damages are subjective and are based on the understanding of children’s best interests and needs, which are also socially constructed [8]. Although the social psychology of adolescence emphasizes the importance of a social network of peers for adolescents, in modern societies, the parental fear of strangers has incrementally reduced unsupervised public spaces for adolescents [19]. Stern and Odland [20] found that the news media consistently defines adolescents’ use of social media as dysfunctional, unhealthy, and dangerous, with little discussion on self-expressive, creative, and communicative practices.
Nevertheless, recent studies on adolescents’ use of social media have begun recognizing their needs in developing, maintaining, and presenting both self and subcultural identities within the virtual world via social media [21]. Recent years have also seen increased academic attention toward the role of social media in adolescents’ exploration of sexuality, construction of sexual identity, and development of romantic and sexual relationships with peers [22]. 

3. The Cultural Construction of Adolescents’ Nature

The social construction of adolescents’ nature has been reflected in three types of media discourses as follows: good, evil, and “blank” [23]. The good-nature discourse claims that children are innocent and pure, whereas evil ones suggest that children have inherently sinful and deviant natures and need training and discipline [24]. However, in the study of children’s use of ICT, the good nature discourse portrays child computer users mainly as “victims” who are innocent, ignorant, and inadvertently exposed to online risks [25]. This discourse surrounds adolescents’ use of social media and, particularly, sexting and cyberbullying [18][26].
The evil nature discourse depicts child computer users with the image of being “dangerous” [25][27]. They are described as active and aggressive users who are always at the risk of harming both themselves and others. Since their nature is deviant, hedonistic, and lacking learning motivation, they are empowered in undesirable and anti-social ways by ICT [28].
Echoing the long history of youth-related concerns, substantial empirical research discusses the negative outcomes of adolescents’ use of social media on physical and psychological well-being [29]. 

4. The Cultural Construction of Adolescents’ Agency

The social construction of children’s agency addresses questions about children’s activities and abilities to choose and control events around them [9]. Research on social media and the youth largely focuses on control and resistance in parent–child power relations [14]. Modern constructivist paradigms, a new alternative perspective, highlight the role of children as social actors and meaning makers. Under this perspective, children are seen as active and independent participants in their physical and social environment [7][9]. To this effect, social media is considered a tool that empowers young people to harness discursive agency and social mobility in peer relationships [26]. The Internet has decentralized parental control by allowing children to freely enter the traditionally denied information world [19]. The wide adoption rate of smartphones has further liberated adolescents from parental control.
However, the traditional and dominant construction of children’s agency emphasizes the role of social and familial structures in shaping children’s lives [7]. From this viewpoint, children are often defined as incomplete, vulnerable, and passive, and are said to have limited control over their family and school lives. As a result, they are in need of protection and must obey adults [5][6][8][19][24]. Traditional Confucian cultures also emphasize parental control, family duties, and obedience to parents’ authority and demands [30].
Past research classifies the media framing of responsible stakeholders into the following four categories: adolescent users, their parents, larger social institutions, such as schools, and the government [27][31][32]. Kim and Telleen [31] find that victims and their families are most often cited as causes of bullying at school. Young et al. [32] note that schools are often attributed to the blame for bullying. Here, it separates the framing of responsibility between adolescents because, in the social construction literature, adolescents differ by nature from their parents, who are fully-grown adults.
Research has extensively explored factors contributing to adolescents’ risky online behavior. Notten and Nikken [16] classified these factors into the following three categories of characteristics: individual (e.g., sensation seeking and digital skills), familial (e.g., parents’ education, household composition, and parental mediation), and societal (e.g., Internet adoption rate and cultural differences). These three categories coincide with how the media frames who is responsible for online risks, that is, youth users, their parents, schools, and the government.

5. Consequences of the Frame-Setting Effects

The attribution of responsibility is a form of social knowledge that shapes individuals’ opinions and political attitudes toward policy solutions [33]. The causal diagnosis and treatment functions of an individual’s frame should be logically consistent. Diagnosing the causes of media frames entails the identification of forces creating the problem and logically linked remedies for media frames offering and justifying treatments for the problems, as well as the prediction of their likely effects [10]. When the responsibility falls on individual actors involved in the problem (e.g., adolescents and their parents), the social issue is expected to be resolved through individual-level changes rather than larger social conditions or public policies [34]. Therefore, the media framing of responsibility plays an important role in generating public expectations of solutions for online risks.
As previously mentioned, the characteristics of adolescent users (i.e., age, gender, and personality), lack of Internet skills, and inappropriate coping strategies for online risks are causes of online risks typically considered in the context of users [17]. Additionally, ineffective parental mediation results in families being held responsible. Finally, the lack of mediation policies, teacher training, school funding to effectively address online risks, risk-mitigation legislation, and law enforcement, among others, are often cited in reference to schools and the government. Focusing on four major solution areas—adolescents’ copying skills, parental mediation, school regulations, and government interventions.

6. The Frame-Setting Effects of News Media

Media frames with commonly shared cultural roots help produce frame-setting effects on audiences. Framing effects tend to go unnoticed as a result of the shared nature and cultural familiarity [13]. Cultural roots can increase the applicability of media frames. Rooted in attribution theory and applicability effects, framing effects manifest better among audiences with a schema that matches a given framing, which agrees with people’s tendency to detect patterns consistent with pre-existing cognitive schemes [35].
Frame-setting studies discuss the impact of media frames on audiences [36]. Theories of framing effects are particularly used to examine the influence of news content at the individual level [35]. Iyengar [33] examines the influence of television news on viewers’ responsibility attributions about political issues. It was suggested that if news articles emphasize the actions of private rather than government actors, the audience would demonstrate individualistic attributions of responsibility for national problems, such as poverty and terrorism, which weakens the accountability of elected officials.

References

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