Social media’s challenge to the promotion of young people’s sexual health (original) (raw)
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Troubling expertise: social media and young people’s sexual health
Social media are integral to young people’s everyday lives, and sexual health promotion strategies seek to capitalise on this. Drawing from recent health promotion research and digital media ethnographies, this article considers research discourses of social media use by young people and health professionals. While health promotion commonly engages with social media as a ‘setting’ for the dissemination of static information, this neglects the participatory aspects of social media and overlooks young people’s digital media competencies. Focus groups with young people further highlight these competencies, the centrality of friendship in social media, and the stigma of sharing formal sexual health information. Considering these literature and data, this article draws from post-structural theories of knowledge to consider how formal ‘expertise’ is leveraged through the subjugation of young people’s knowledge, and how this is problematic for sexual health promotion seeking to engage with young people through social media.
Young people, sexual health, and social media
This paper considers the potential for sexual health promotion to engage with young people via social media. Media/cultural studies accounts of social media practices are drawn upon to highlight key difficulties in adapting current health promotion strategies to young people’s digital media cultures. Health interventions often approach social media as an opportunity to reach young people but do not always consider the compatibility of health promotion and social media. This paper proposes a need to re-think the provision of static information to young people in spaces where they interact as media producers rather than observers. I also ask how health promotion might better engage with social media and its central tenet of friendship intimacies. Drawing from ethnographic studies of young people’s digital media practices, I encourage health promoters not to conceive of social media as opportunities to reach young people, but as channels through which to engage with young people. This engagement requires listening and response to concerns and practices of young people, as is typical of these media. Lastly, opportunities that social media offer young people regarding negotiations of sexual safety, such as friendship care and support, should be explored and better supported by health promotion strategies.
Reproductive Health Matters, 2013
In today’s media environment, information is not simply passed from producers to consumers, but is mediated by participants of new media cultures, including information on sexual health. In focus groups held in Sydney and regional Australia in 2011, we asked young people aged 16–22 about the potential for sexual health promotion via Facebook and other social media. Our findings point to the complex ways in which young people use social media, and the unlikelihood of traditional take-home sexual health messages having traction in social media spaces. Five key aspects which emerged were:mthe participatory culture of social network sites; the stigma of sexual health, especially sexually transmitted infections (STIs); young people’s careful presentations of self; privacy concerns; and the importance ofmhumour in sexual health messaging. Fears of bullying and gossip (or ‘drama’) were also likely to prevent the dissemination of sexual health messages in this environment. However, humorous online videos were noted by participants as a significant way to avoid stigma and enable the sharing of sexual health information. The young people in our study were interested in sexual health information, but did not want to access it at the cost of their own sense of comfort and belonging in their social networks. Any sexual health promotion within these sites must be understood as a site-specific intervention.
The Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality, 2017
This chapter considers the recent history and practices of promoting sexual health through social media. It considers dating/hook-up apps such as Grindr and Tinder, and common social media platforms like Facebook. In the past decade, public health researchers have entered these spaces to extend their reach to key populations, particularly the designated 'risk populations' of young people and men who have sex with men (MSM). Through its attention to new media, public health often expands its risk focus beyond the concept of sexual 'risk behaviours', to encompass digital media practices as risky, or as contributing to sexual health risks. This has generated claims that social media users (particularly users of geo-locative dating/hook-up apps) are more likely to engage in sex that puts them at risk of HIV/STI transmission. However, there is disagreement on these claims, and media studies and cultural studies approaches have offered more complex understandings of how risk and safeties are negotiated through digital and social media. This can be seen in accounts of the opportunities and affordances of these media. This chapter will trace some of these tensions within recent public health and cultural/media studies literature.
Young People, Social Media, Social Network Sites and Sexual Health
International Journal of Communication, 2013
Social media and social network sites (SNS) are an evolving area for sexual health communication with young people. They present opportunities and challenges for sexual health professionals and young people alike, such as learning through interactivity and addressing concerns about privacy. In this article, we present and discuss the findings from six rural and urban focus groups with young people in Australia about the use of social media and SNS for sexual health communication. We discuss a number of issues related to the use of social media and SNS for sexual health communication, such as concerns about bullying, privacy, and the stigma attached to sexual health.
AMIA ... Annual Symposium proceedings / AMIA Symposium. AMIA Symposium
Social networks affect both exposure to sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and associated risk behavior. Networks may also play a role in disparities in STI/HIV rates among African American youth. Accordingly, there is growing interest in the potential of social network-based interventions to reduce STI/HIV incidence in this group. However, any youth-focused network intervention must grapple with the role of technologies in the social lives of young people. We report results of 12 focus groups with 94 youth from one economically depressed city with a high STI/HIV prevalence. We examined how youth use information and communication technologies (ICTs) in order to socialize with others, and how this aligns with their communication about sexuality and HIV/STIs. The study resulted in the generation of five themes: distraction, diversification, dramatization, danger management and dialogue. We consider implications of these findings for future development of online, social network-bas...
The Cambridge Handbook of Sexual Development: Childhood and Adolescence , 2019
In this chapter, we argue that a dominant anti-technology narrative in psychological research that informs many popular ideas about technological risk does not reflect the complexities of young people’s experiences with sexuality and social media. We will use research from the fields of gender studies, queer studies, sociology, anthropology, pedagogy, and media studies, as well as our own empirical data to argue for a more nuanced and complex understanding of social media’s impact on youth sexuality. First, we will explore further the dichotomous thinking represented in present-day discourses about youth, sexuality, and social media. After that, we will go into the small, but growing, number of critical, empirical studies that interrogate and challenge these dichotomies by focusing on young people’s own experiences and perspectives, which are much more varied. Building on these studies, we explore our own research findings attempting to broaden the scope of public and academic debates by introducing four different dimensions of online sexuality. For each of these dimensions, we will discuss how young people’s practices and ideas complicate stereotypical, gendered, and heteronormative narratives and dichotomies.
International Journal of Communication
Social media and social network sites (SNS) are an evolving area for sexual health communication with young people. They present opportunities and challenges for sexual health professionals and young people alike, such as learning through interactivity and addressing concerns about privacy. In this article, we present and discuss the findings from six rural and urban focus groups with young people in Australia about the use of social media and SNS for sexual health communication. We discuss a number of issues related to the use of social media and SNS for sexual health communication, such as concerns about bullying, privacy, and the stigma attached to sexual health.
Practicing sexual health: young people, sexual knowingness, and everyday intimacies (PhD thesis)
This thesis presents a discursive analysis of young people’s sexual health in contemporary Australia, engaging with data from health promotion, social sciences, and interviews with young people. Data comprises: Australian sexual health websites for young people (N=3); research papers on young people and chlamydia in Australia, published from 2005-2009 (N=18); and interviews with young people aged 18-25, from Sydney (N=12). Using Michel de Certeau’s theory of everyday practice (1988), I explore young people’s experiences and knowledges of sexual health and how these exceed formal health understandings. I demonstrate how risk-based approaches typically deny young people’s sexual health competencies and dismiss the value of friendship and social networks. I propose revision of this deficit understanding of young people through an everyday practice based approach to sexual health. This differs from behavioural science approaches that can abstract young people’s sex practices from the context of their socio-sexual relations. Considering young people’s competencies and tactics in negotiating sex, I argue that these can inform health promotion strategies, making them more relevant and useful to young people. Early chapters analyse discourses of young people’s experience, risk and knowledge in these data, as key terms that justify young people’s inclusion in Australian sexual health policy. Later chapters explore discourses of pleasure and intimacies, including friendship intimacies. These commonly feature in interview data where participants’ stories highlight the spatial aspects of sex practices and negotiations. These often extend beyond sexual scenarios and into friendships. My thesis demonstrates how young people’s negotiations of safety encompass and exceed formal notions of ‘safe sex’, and draws a parallel between negotiations of safety and pleasure. I argue that a focus on safety is more useful than risk-based approaches, as it incorporates shared values of young people, health promotion, and sexual health research. Young people do not share a deficit understanding of their skills and practices, but are invested in sexual safeties, with common interview discussions of intimacy and its affordances. Finally, a case study of young people’s social media practices is presented, further highlighting friendship’s value to young people’s sexual health negotiations.
Friends, porn and the internet: young people knowing sexual health
Young people’s knowledge of sex and sexual health is informed by multiple narratives, including those from friendships, pornography, and online sources. This paper discursively analyses statements of ‘young people’s knowledge’ from interviews and health websites. Young people’s interview data indicates that friendship, pornography and online sources are parallel and overlapping sites of sexual information. As well as generating new knowledge, these sites can strengthen young people’s friendships, ‘research’ practices, and sexual pleasures. Yet website statements discourage the use of these sources on the basis that they are not accurate or legitimate. This disparity reflects Lyotard’s theory of knowledge as scientific or narrative, where he proposes that, in postmodernity, knowledge is entwined in narrative and less committed to scientific facts. When considered plural, adaptive, and emanating from many sources, knowing is less concerned with facts than ‘know-how’, as demonstrated in young people’s practices of knowing about sex and sexual health.