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Representation of Media and Technology in Young Adult Literature

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DOI: 10.1002/9781118978238.ieml0202

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Representation of Media and Technology
in Young Adult Literature
RYAN M. RISH
University at Buffalo (SUNY), USA

Young adult literature as a literary genre is broadly defined as fiction featuring young
adult characters with whom young adult readers can relate. Key characteristics of the
quality and educational value of young adult literature include the extent to which
young adult readers can see themselves reflected in the characters’ experiences and/or
the extent to which young adult readers can empathize with characters who represent
experiences with which they are not familiar (Cart, 2008). These characteristics are
based on a perceived need to engage reluctant readers with stories of interest to them
and to provide young adult readers with an opportunity to grapple with problems and
issues related to adolescence (Goering & Connors, 2014).
As a result, much of the discussion around critiquing the value of particular young
adult literature books for young adult readers is focused on issues of character repre-
sentation and the nature of the problems and issues that characters face. These critiques
have included identifying the lack of and need for diverse characters and experiences
(Curwood, 2013; Glenn, 2012; Miller, 2014), interrogating how adolescence is concep-
tualized and portrayed (Petrone, Sarigianides, & Lewis, 2015), and debating over the
age appropriateness of the problems presented (e.g., Alexie, 2011; Gurdon, 2011).
As the genre of young adult literature has evolved and more titles have been published
and marketed toward young adult readers, media and technology have been variously
represented as elements in the lives of characters, means through which characters
address problems, and focal factors of the problem presented to characters. Working
from broad definitions, media and technology have always been present in young adult
literature as elements in the lives of characters. For example, in the novel The Fault
in Our Stars (Green, 2012), the protagonist Hazel recounts a dinner with her parents,
when her phone “started singing,” but she was not allowed to check it because of a
“no-phones-during-dinner rule” (p. 65). Hazel’s mobile phone is an element in her life
and the inclusion of her mobile phone helps to establish her as a character with whom
young adult readers can relate. Not only is the mobile phone present, but the character’s
actions in relationship to the technology reflect the practices with which it is used in
the temporal setting of the story. One of the challenges presented by the inclusion of
media and technology as an element in the lives of characters is that it serves as a time
anchor that can potentially impact how young adult readers relate to the characters and
the story (Pytash & Ferdig, 2016).
Media and technology have also been represented as means through which charac-
ters solve problems. For example, in the young adult novel The Outsiders (Hinton, 1967),

The International Encyclopedia of Media Literacy. Renee Hobbs and Paul Mihailidis (Editors-in-Chief),
Gianna Cappello, Maria Ranieri, and Benjamin Thevenin (Associate Editors).
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118978238.ieml0202
2 MEDIA A ND T E CH N O L O G Y IN Y O U N G A D U L T L I T E R AT U R E

the characters occasionally use the telephone to share information, which helps to move
the plot forward. After robbing a grocery store, Dallas calls from a phone booth and
informs his friends, the Greasers, that the police are after him. This phone call sets the
Greasers into action to leave the house and go meet Dallas in order to hide him from the
police. In this case, the technology was not only an element in the lives of the characters
but also a means through which Dallas addressed the problem of being pursued by the
police. However, the phone was not the central focus of why Dallas was in trouble with
the police. The phones used in the novel present particular affordances and constraints
in the solving of the problem presented. The phones afford communication across a
distance, as Dallas calls from a phone booth to the house where the Greasers are. How-
ever, the phones also present the constraints of being fixed in particular locations, as
Dallas must find a phone booth, and the Greasers must be in the house to receive his
call. Therefore, the way problems are solved with media and technology are shaped by
their affordances and constraints and the way they are used by the characters.
Some young adult literature has also raised interesting questions about the role of
media and technology in the lives of its characters and how they interact with other peo-
ple and the world around them. In these cases, media and technology are presented as a
focal factor of the problem presented to the characters. For example, in the young adult
novel Little Brother (Doctorow, 2008), the main protagonist Marcus and his friends are
detained, questioned, and later surveilled by the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) as a result of a terrorist attack on San Francisco. Though Marcus and his friends
are not involved with the terrorist attack, media and technology are used by the DHS to
spy on Marcus in the form of a bug in his homemade computer. Marcus uses Xbox hard-
ware and software to create a secure Internet network that the DHS cannot access for the
purposes of communicating with his friends and sharing reports of illegal DHS activity
with other teens across the country. In this example, the affordances of the media and
technology presented both the central problem of the young adult novel (i.e., violation
of civil rights) and the means with which Marcus addressed the problem, in the form of
a hacked Xbox. Marcus used his hacking skills to alter the affordances of the technol-
ogy he uses to “turn government surveillance on its head” and exercise his civil rights
of freedom of speech and movement in order to expose the illegal practices of the US
government (Flanagan, 2014, p. 96).
Young adult literature as a genre of fiction has both reflected the reality of the pres-
ence and use of media and technology specific to particular time periods, and it has
presented imagined realities, in which media and technology play a role, in the form of
dystopic and science fiction. Within these real and imagined contexts, three particular
representations of media and technology have become trends in young adult literature:
digital communication, social media, and surveillance technology.

Digital communication

Because young adult literature as a genre attempts to represent the lives of young
adults in order to appeal to readers of that age, the means with which young adult
characters communicate has changed to reflect the time period of the novel’s setting.
 MEDIA A ND T E CH N O L O G Y IN Y O U N G A D U L T L I T E R AT U R E 3

The circumstances that Dallas faced in The Outsiders of having to find a phone booth to
call his friends are not the same circumstances as Hazel faced in The Fault in Our Stars
of ignoring the mobile phone she brought with her to the dinner table as her friend
was calling, nor are they the same circumstances that Marcus faced in Little Brother of
hacking a game console in order to privately communicate with his friends. Therefore,
the advent of new forms of communication among young adults has informed how the
increasingly digital forms of communication are represented in young adult literature
(Koss & Teale, 2009).
As an element in the lives of characters, digital communication is commonly repre-
sented in young adult literature through e-mail and message conversations with many
novels including writing conventions typically used in those text types (e.g., abbre-
viations, emoticons, emoji, capitalization, and punctuation use). These text types are
used in different ways within the novels. Some young adult novels are written solely as
digital communication, others include digital communication within the body of the
narrative, and others are written as epistolary novels. For example, Lauren Myracle’s
series, The Internet Girls, includes four young adult novels that are written as text mes-
sage transcripts featuring three teenage girls who use digital communication to share
their lives and experiences in high school and freshman year of college across a span
of two years. Young adult novels that feature digital communication often include time
and date stamps of the messages, which anchor the conversations in a timeline and help
the reader understand the significance of digital communication in the lives of teens
along a particular timescale. The digital communication featured within young adult
novels typically focuses on everyday factors in the lives of teens, such as school assign-
ments, social events, friendships and arguments, and romantic relationships (Koss &
Tucker-Raymond, 2010).
As a result, digital communication is also featured as a means through which char-
acters address the problems presented to them. For example in the novel My Life Unde-
cided (Brody, 2010), the protagonist, Brooklyn, posts anonymously to a blog asking
readers for advice about difficulties she is facing in her life (e.g., selecting a prom date,
forgiving a friend). The blog as a form of digital communication allows Brooklyn to
interact with others under the veil of anonymity to receive advice that is particular to
her decision but not personal to her real-life identity. The digital communication serves
in part as the means through which Brooklyn addresses her problems in a way that other
forms of communications available to her do not afford.
Similarly, the novel ChaseR: A novel in e-mails (Rosen, 2002) features digital com-
munication as the primary means through which the main character, Chase, processes
his experiences moving from the city to a rural area. Written as an epistolary novel,
the e-mails feature communication between Chase and his sister, who is away at col-
lege, and his friends back in the city. The e-mails provide him with the digital means
to communicate across the distance between his friends and sister. Chase’s digital com-
munication serves as the primary means through which he processes major changes
in his life related to the move and distance from experiences in the city with which he
is familiar. In both examples, digital communication is featured as a tool used by the
characters to work through problems in their lives.
4 MEDIA A ND T E CH N O L O G Y IN Y O U N G A D U L T L I T E R AT U R E

Digital communication is also featured as a focal factor in problems that the char-
acters are facing. In some cases, the use of digital communication is part of a larger
problem, and in other cases, digital communication is the primary problem the charac-
ter is facing. An example problem that characters face in young adult novels featuring
digital communication is identity formation. In their review of young adult literature,
Koss and Tucker-Raymond (2010) found that among the interpersonal–social identities
represented by the digital communication, characters primarily interacted as “friends
and significant others or to meet new people online” (p. 48). Rarely did the reviewers
find characters interacting with adults in their lives, and in 42% of the novels reviewed,
characters used digital communication to perform a new or different identity. These
identity performances mediated by digital communication serve as sites of problems
presented to characters.
For example, in the novel, The Kingdom of Strange (Klinger, 2008), a female char-
acter uses digital communication in attempt to develop a friendship with an online
classmate she assumes to be a girl. The online classmate does not attempt to correct
her mistake, and the friendship is complicated when their genders are revealed. The
digital communication is a focal factor in the problem of constructing or hiding one’s
identity in online communication and presents complications of privacy and safety
that accompany those communication practices. Another example is Sun Signs (Hrdl-
itschka, 2005) that features a chain of e-mails, in which three online friends have been
lying about their identities to the main character. Because the group of friends know
each other through the digital communication, it serves as the focal factor in the prob-
lem of lying about their identity in the physical world. More than simply the means
through which characters address problems, young adult novels in this category are
distinct because the digital communication presents the problem to the characters, in
part or in whole.

Social media

Another significant form of media and technology in the lives of young adults is social
media. This form of media and technology extends beyond digital communication to
include a persistent, yet ever-changing, performance of identity that is often public or
viewed by many who are connected on a specific social media platform. Social media
in young adult literature may also serve as a featured element in the daily lives of char-
acters, the means through which characters solve problems, and a focal factor in the
problem presented to the characters. Many young adult novels that feature social media
are considered to be cautionary tales by organizations that promote young adult liter-
ature (e.g., Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), The Bookseller). These
novels are promoted as potentially helpful to young readers for avoiding the mistakes
and pitfalls that await teens on social media platforms.
With the advent of new social media platforms and the migration of teens from
one platform to the next (Rickman, 2018), young adult novels across time have fol-
lowed these trends by presenting social media as an element in the lives of teens. For
example, Lobsters (Ellen & Ivison, 2014), a comedic romance story of two teenagers over
 MEDIA A ND T E CH N O L O G Y IN Y O U N G A D U L T L I T E R AT U R E 5

the course of a summer, includes references to Facebook. However, the social media
platform does not factor significantly into how the characters go about working through
the problems they face. The presence of the social media platform as an element in the
characters’ lives helps to establish the time period in which the story is set and make
the characters relatable to contemporary readers. As previously mentioned with specific
forms of digital communication, this temporal reference can work against the relatabil-
ity of a young adult novel once the social platform is no longer in use by a majority
of young adult readers. As a result, the inclusion of particular social media platforms,
such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, may work against the long-term marketabil-
ity of the young adult novel, as readers migrate from one social media platform to the
next. One way authors of young adult authors work around this problem is to use a
generic term for the social media platform (e.g., blog) or invent a fictional social media
platform or application, such as Friendverse and StatusQ in the novel Unfriended (Vail,
2015) or the novels Nerve (Ryan, 2012) and Need (Charbonneau, 2017) which feature
social media platforms that share the title names.
Social media are also represented as a means through which characters address their
online and in-person problems. For example, the young adult novel Girl Online (Sugg,
2014) features social media as a means through which a young adult character works
through her problems. The main character Penny maintains an anonymous blog site
that she uses to write about the problems she is facing in her life. However, the same
social media that are initially presented as a way to write about problems transform into
a problem to be solved, as Penny’s anonymous blog goes viral through the betrayal of
her best friend. Like many novels in the young adult literature genre that feature social
media, the story turns into a cautionary tale as the character’s use of social media is
integral to the plot and serves both as a means to solve the problem and as a problem
to be solved.
In some novels, characters address problems by shutting down parts or all of the
social media they use in their lives. In the novel Unfriended (Vail, 2015), Maddie resorts
to solving her problems by giving up social media and unfriending people online and
in real life. Therefore, the nonuse of the social media platform was the means through
which she addressed her problems in an attempt to protect her loved ones. These
online relationships also extended into her in-person relationships, which she also had
to end in many cases. In this way, social media were used to address both online and
in-person problems, demonstrating how interconnected the two social contexts are for
the teenage characters.
Cautionary tales about the problems presented by social media in young adult
literature are an emerging didactic trope that warns young adult readers about the
perils of coming of age online (Wetta, 2014). A representative example of a young
adult novel that presents a problem in the form of social media is #scandal (Ockler,
2014). The novel’s female protagonist, Lucy, is a savvy teen who fully understands
the importance of privacy and the cautious use of digital communication and social
media. As the story unfolds, a compromising social media post goes viral and leads to
a host of problems that play out in person and online. Unlike some of the cautionary
tales of young adults using social media, Lucy does understand the potential problems
social media present, and yet, she still falls victim to bullying and harassment as a
6 MEDIA A ND T E CH N O L O G Y IN Y O U N G A D U L T L I T E R AT U R E

result of a social media post and the subsequent digital communication. Social media
both present the problem and the means with which Lucy goes about addressing the
problem as she works toward exposing the person who hacked her Facebook account.
Likewise, in many young adult novels that feature social media, typical problems
faced by teens are amplified by the capability of social media to reach large audiences
and to spread beyond the control of the character in the novel. For example in the novel
#16thingsithoughtweretrue (Gurtler, 2014), Morgan works through the embarrassment
of a humiliating video of her that went viral on social media. Through this challenge
and others, Morgan works through issues in her life, such as her mother’s heart
surgery and searching for her birth father, by creating and maintaining casual online
friendships and more substantive friendships in person. These representations of
social media help demonstrate the interrelationship between their online activity and
their interactions with people in person, as problems are presented to them that have
implications in both contexts.

Surveillance technology

Surveillance technology is featured in young adult literature variously as oppressive

surveillance by a government or corporation; as what Poster (1990) refers to as par-
ticipatory surveillance, in which characters are willing participants in the surveillance;
and what Andrejevic (2004) refers to as lateral surveillance, in which characters monitor
each other (Flanagan, 2014). Young adult characters are typically not powerless within
the gaze of these types of surveillance as they often exercise their agency to resist and
circumvent these mechanisms of control (Connors, 2017). Connors explains that this
type of storyline is perceived to be appealing to young adult readers because it works as
a kind of metaphor for adolescence wherein youth experience restrictive environments
and ultimately overcome those restrictions.
An example young adult novel wherein participatory surveillance technology is an
ever-present element in the lives of the characters, Feed (Anderson, 2002) features
characters who are equipped with an implant in their heads that connects to a
central network. Corporations in this dystopian society use the implant to send them
advertisements for material goods and services, in addition to entertainment, such as
shows, music, and movie trailers, that aggregate as a form of propaganda for advancing
the society’s ideology of capitalism and consumerism. Throughout the story, Titus
and Violet make attempts to resist the surveillance gaze and messaging represented
by their implants; however, they both prove ultimately to be unsuccessful, leaving the
young adult reader with a sense that resisting the participatory surveillance technology
is futile. A more agentive portrayal of young adults with participatory surveillance
informing their lives is the novel serafina67 *urgently requires life* (Day, 2010), in
which Sarah interacts with online and in-person friends through a blog that serves as a
form of participatory and lateral surveillance. These online interactions are presented
as a space of adolescent agency where teens freely express themselves in public, but
they are simultaneously presented as a space that is closely monitored by peers and
Sarah’s father who poses as one of her online friends. These examples demonstrate how
 MEDIA A ND T E CH N O L O G Y IN Y O U N G A D U L T L I T E R AT U R E 7

participatory surveillance technology in the lives of teens can be presented as allowing

for both freedom of expression and interaction with peers and oppressive oversight by
controlling forces, such as corporations or parents.
Surveillance technology is also represented as the means through which adolescent
characters address their problems. The most significant example is the young adult
dystopian trilogy The Hunger Games (Collins, 2008, 2009, 2010) which represents a
more successful attempt at resisting oppressive surveillance technologies in the lives
of young adults. Throughout the trilogy, the main character, Katniss, and the other
central young adult characters variously use the surveillance technologies against
the oppressive government that is monitoring them. These acts of resistance include
performing for the cameras in ways that manipulate the audience, feeding lies to the
genetically-engineered birds, and concealing details from paid informants. The young
adult dystopian trilogy serves as an example of characters being confronted with a
problem represented in part by oppressive surveillance technologies and then using
those media and technology to ultimately solve the problem presented to them.
The representation of oppressive surveillance technology as a focal factor of the
problems young adult characters face is exemplified by the previously discussed
dystopian young adult novel Little Brother (Doctorow, 2008). The main character,
Marcus, is ultimately successful at first circumventing the oppressive surveillance
technologies imposed on him by his school and later by reversing the gaze of the
surveillance on the unjust and oppressive government agency, the DHS. As Connors
(2017) explains, this young adult novel presents surveillance technology “not simply as
a tool of the oppressor, but a tactic for resisting oppression” (p. 16). Young adult novels
with this type of subversion of oppressive surveillance technology are potentially
appealing to teen readers because the stories move beyond didactic, cautionary tales
of the potential danger of media and technology by depicting young adult characters
using media and technology in ways that empower them to resist oppressive systems.

Lack of diversity

Across these representations of media and technology in young adult literature is a

lack of diverse characters and experiences. In their review of young adult literature that
features digital communication (including social media and surveillance technology),
Koss and Tucker-Raymond (2010) found that the novels primarily involved “affluent,
heterosexual, White Christian suburbanites talking to one another about their daily
lives, relationships, and families” (p. 50). Media and technology were primarily repre-
sented as elements in the lives of teens that help them communicate, complete school
work, and make new friends. Koss and Tucker-Raymond point out the glaring absence
of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American young adult characters who use media
and technology, as well as the poor and working class youth who are not represented.
If young adult literature is a genre oriented toward representing the reality of young
adults, then their content analysis reveals that young adult literature that incorporates
media and technology is grossly aligned to reflect “White privilege and participation
in digital technologies” (p. 50). This is problematic for the diversity of teens who use
8 MEDIA A ND T E CH N O L O G Y IN Y O U N G A D U L T L I T E R AT U R E

media and technology in their daily lives (Lenhart, Madden, & Hitlin, 2005), who are
potential readers of young adult literature, and who may be seeking to see themselves
represented by the genre.

SEE ALSO: Media and Adolescent Identity Development; Representation of Children

and Youths in Media; Youth Media

References

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Further reading

Linville, D., & Carlson, D.L. (Eds.). (2015). Beyond borders: Queer eros and ethos (ethics) in
LGBTQ young adult literature. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Nilsen, A.P., Blasingame, J., & Donelson, K.L. (2012). Literature for today’s young adults (9th ed.).
London, England: Pearson.
Sarigianides, S.T., Petrone, R., & Lewis, M.A. (2017). Rethinking the “adolescent” in adolescent
literacy. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Trites, R.S. (2000). Disturbing the universe: Power and repression in adolescent literature. Iowa
City, IA: University of Iowa Press.
Wolf, S.A., Coats, K., & Enciso, P. (Eds.). (2011). Handbook of research on children’s and young
adult literature. New York, NY: Routledge.

Ryan M. Rish, PhD, is an assistant professor of new literacies at the University at Buf-
falo (SUNY). His research interests involve the new and digital literacy practices of
adolescents, as they relate to the institutions, social spaces, and geographic places in
which they are enacted. Ryan’s research on adolescents and preservice English teachers
appears in the journals The ALAN Review, English Journal, Literacy, SIGNAL, and Voices
from the Middle.

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