Constructing Dysfunction News Coverage of Teenagers and Social Media

Mass Communication and Society
ISSN: 1520-5436 (Print) 1532-7825 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/hmcs20
Constructing Dysfunction: News Coverage of

Teenagers and Social Media
Susannah R. Stern & Sarah Burke Odland
To cite this article: Susannah R. Stern & Sarah Burke Odland (2017) Constructing Dysfunction:
News Coverage of Teenagers and Social Media, Mass Communication and Society, 20:4,
505-525, DOI: 10.1080/15205436.2016.1274765
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2016.1274765
Published online: 21 Feb 2017.
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Mass Communication and Society, 20:505–525, 2017
Copyright © Mass Communication & Society Division
of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
ISSN: 1520-5436 print / 1532-7825 online
DOI: 10.1080/15205436.2016.1274765
Constructing Dysfunction: News Coverage

of Teenagers and Social Media
Susannah R. Stern
Department of Communication Studies
University of San Diego
Sarah Burke Odland

Department of Communication
University of Colorado Denver
Cultural storytellers such as journalists play a meaningful role in shaping how

adults think about the role that social media play in teenagers’ lives. To better
assess what adults might be learning, we employed a critical, qualitative approach
to examine how contemporary news media constructed cultural understandings of
teens’ relationship with social media. Our analysis of 339 print and online news
articles from 2013–2014 found that the news media constructed a mediated reality
that placed dysfunction as the defining characteristic of teens’ relationship with
social media. The news articles consistently positioned teenagers and social media
as at odds with one another, entwined in an unhealthy, frequently dangerous union.
Discussions of the self-expressive, creative, and communicative practices of teen
social media users were undermined or absent altogether. Altogether, the coverage
created a mediated reality that denied teenage agency and obscured the diversity of
teenagers’ experiences and social media practices.
Susannah R. Stern (Ph.D., University of North Carolina, 2000) is a professor in the Department
of Communication Studies at University of San Diego. Her research interests lie at the intersection of
adolescence, identity development and media practice.
Sarah Burke Odland (Ph.D., University of Iowa, 2005) is a Lecturer in the Department of
Communication at the University of Colorado at Denver. Her research interests include gender,
media, and critical studies.
Correspondence should be addressed to Susannah R. Stern, Department of Communication Studies,
University of San Diego, 5998 Alcala Park, San Diego, CA 92110. E-mail: susannahstern@sandiego.edu
505
506 STERN AND BURKE ODLAND
Social media use has emerged as a key practice associated with contemporary
teenage life. Not only do four fifths of American teens use social media, but
many consider social media to be fundamental to their everyday experience
(boyd, 2014; Lenhart, Perrin, Stepler, & Rainie, 2015; Robards, 2014). Young
people use social media for everything from keeping in touch, coordinating
social events, recording memories, and sharing art and music, to shopping,
socializing, and self-expression (Lenhart et al., 2015; Lenhart, Purcell, Smith,
& Zickuhr, 2010). Social media use is embedded within teens’ daily activities
and, for many, integral to managing relationships and participating in public
culture (boyd, 2014; Commonsense Media, 2012; Lenhart, 2015).
Teens’ experience with social media is also notable because it distinguishes
their adolescence in significant ways from the adolescent experience of their
parents and other adults, who grew up without social media. A majority of
American parents of teens indicate that they are concerned about their teens’
online activities and their potential impacts in the short and long term (Madden,
Cortesi, Gasser, Lenhart, & Duggan, 2012). These concerns likely stem from
observations in their families and communities, but they may also be impacted
by stories about social media and teens that circulate in the popular press. Indeed,
in the absence of direct experience, adults’ reliance on and acceptance of
information in news reports increases (e.g., Bryant, Philo & Watson, 2011).
Moreover, studies have demonstrated how news reports influence adults’ percep-
tions of youth, in particular (Aubrun & Grady, 2000). Recognizing the power of
journalism to help shape cultural understandings, this study explored how con-
temporary news media construct the relationship between teenagers and social
media.
We examined one year of media coverage (2013–2014) from both print and
online news sources. We asked, what do news media tell readers about the
relationship between teenagers and social media? And how are readers encour-
aged to understand the role social media play in contemporary American adoles-
cence? To answer these questions, we adopted a critical, qualitative approach in
our examination of the media texts. Rejecting the notion that news is simply a
collection of objective “facts,” news is understood as a product of the culture in
which it operates, and is influenced and shaped by cultural beliefs and ideologies
(Hall, 1982). As artifacts of the culture, media texts are a site of contestation—a
place where struggles take place over which meanings and ideologies will
predominate and which will be suppressed or ignored (Kellner, 2000). This
privileging of some ideologies over others produces a dominant—or hegemo-
nic—way of seeing the world. Once an ideology becomes hegemonic, it accu-
mulates “the symbolic power to map or classify the world for others” (Hall,
1988, p. 44).
News constructions of the relationship between teens and social media have
significant implications for young people (Haddon & Stald, 2009; Podlas, 2011).
NEWS COVERAGE OF TEENS AND SOCIAL MEDIA 507
The narratives that circulate in the popular discourse inform not only individual
family rules but also school curricula and policies, and even state and federal
legislation (Livingstone, 2014; Scales, 2001). To discover the dominant ideolo-
gies that work upon these institutions, we drew on Sonja Foss’s (2009) model for
conducting an ideological criticism of an artifact, which includes identifying the
nature of the ideology that is dominant in the artifact, the interests of those who
are privileged and repressed in the artifact, and the rhetorical strategies that are
used to create and support one ideology over others. With these criteria as a
guideline, and using a constant comparison method of analysis, we sought to
provide insight into the constitutive ability of the news media to construct
cultural understandings of the relationship between teens and social media.
TEENAGERS AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE NEWS
For at least the past 50 years, representations of teenagers in the American news
media have been scant, narrowly focused and largely negative. When teenagers
have been covered, stories have commonly characterized teens as either criminals
or victims of violence (e.g., Children Now, 2001; Kunkel, 1994; Males, 1999;
Woodruff, 1998). Although crime and violence are newsworthy across all age
groups, the propensity for teens to be covered predominantly in these ways has
helped reinforce cultural understandings of teenagers as either threats (e.g.,
public menaces) or “at risk” (Giroux, 2000). This framing of teens has been
especially poignant in coverage about teenagers in public spaces, where the
media have implied that young people do not belong (e.g., boyd, 2014;
Panelli, Nairn, Atwool, & McCormack, 2002).
The boundaries between private and public spaces blurred more than ever
with the introduction of the World Wide Web, social media, and smartphones in
the past two decades. A teenager’s ability to pose simultaneously as a risk and at
risk seemingly expanded. Perhaps in consequence, journalism about youth and
technology in the early 2000s primarily offered a discourse of moral panic
(Facer, 2012). News coverage emphasized how new technologies brought the
unsafe public world into teenagers’ private lives; simultaneously, unaccompanied
teenagers could now wander into dangerous public spaces, where they could
encounter malevolent people and engage in risky behavior (boyd, 2014; Facer,
2012). Such stories emerged amidst discourse highlighting the generational
disconnect between parents and young people (Holmes, 2011), exacerbating
the perception that youth were at risk and adults were ill prepared to protect
them.
Although much has been claimed anecdotally about the limited and proble-
matic nature of news coverage about youth and technology (e.g., boyd, 2014;
Herring, 2008), we were able to locate only a few studies that performed recent
and systematic analysis. Haddon and Stald (2009), for example, compared news-
paper coverage of potential online risks to and opportunities for children in 14
European countries in 2007. Employing a quantitative content analytic method,
the researchers found that the majority of coverage was negative and typically
focused on crime. The authors argued that although crime reporting is a com-
mon, routinized type of journalism worldwide, the “overall result is that these
routine practices [of reporting crime] may over-present online dangers, and from
a cultivation analysis framework, lead the public to overestimate the Internet as a
risky place for children” (p. 390).
Thurlow’s (2007) research focused more narrowly on press characterizations
of young people’s new media discourse. He argued that the language young
people use on the Internet and mobile phones was typically derided in news
reporting, rather than accepted as a creative cultural practice. Similarly, in
another focused inquiry about youth and technology, Draper’s (2012) analysis
of U.S. television news segments about adolescent sexting (sending sexual
messages via text message) led her to conclude that news coverage depicted
teenagers as incapable of or unwilling to understand the potential negative
consequences of their sexting behaviors. Employing discourse analysis, Draper
demonstrated how news stories reinforced the idea that teenagers’ technology use
encouraged sexual encounters that wouldn’t have taken place without the tech-
nology and suggested that sexting was best prevented by increased surveillance
by parents and educators.
THE CURRENT STUDY
The current study examined news coverage focused on teenagers and social
media, specifically. The term “social media” emerged in the early 1990s as
technology companies and virtual communities sought to describe the conver-
gence of media, technology, and sociality (Bercovici, 2010). Since then, myriad
definitions for the term have surfaced as social media themselves have evolved.
We employ the definition offered by boyd (2014), who referred to social media
as “the sites and services that emerged during the early 2000s, including social
networks sites, video sharing sites, blogging and microblogging platforms, and
related tools that allow participants to create and share their own content” (p. 6).
The social media platforms most commonly used by teenagers in most recent
years include Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Google+ (Lenhart
et al., 2015).
The popularity of social media among teenagers can be ascribed to a variety
of factors. Chiefly, social media enable young people to connect with those they
care about at a time when, developmentally, peer friendships and romantic
relationships are especially valued (e.g., boyd, 2014; Lee, 2009). Current teens
want to engage in the same practices they have always engaged in—talking,
sharing, flirting, complaining, joking, confiding, comparing. Social media make
these kinds of engagements possible, virtually around the clock. Moreover, the
situations of many contemporary teens impede their ability to physically spend
time together to engage in such practices outside of school. For example,
nonloitering policies have pushed teens out of historically popular hangout
destinations such as malls, and teens themselves are often highly scheduled or
find transportation difficult (e.g., see Childress, 2004; Hine, 2000; Valentine,
2004). Social media offer an appealing and engaging solution to many of these
restrictions. Finally, social media can offer teenagers social validation, which
they find particularly rewarding at this stage of life (boyd, 2014; Sherman,
Payton, Hernandez, Greenfield, & Dapretto, 2016).
A growing body of research has explored the role that social media play in
teens’ lives. Studies have identified a variety of benefits of social media partici-
pation, such as identity growth, relationship development and maintenance, self-
expression, social planning, idea exchange, community engagement, and
enhanced health information access. Risks have also been identified, including
online harassment and cyberbullying, exposure to inappropriate or pornographic
material, depression, addiction, privacy invasions, and self-objectification,
among others (see Livingstone & Brake, 2010, and O’Keefe & Clarke-Pearson,
2011, for overview of research on both benefits and risks). When viewed in
aggregate, the existing research paints a complicated picture of teenagers’ rela-
tionship with social media. It becomes evident that teenagers approach various
social media platforms with a diversity of personal contexts and histories,
psychological and personal traits, intentions for engagement, and technological
and expressive abilities.
What do our news media tell us about this complicated relationship between
teenagers and social media? How are readers encouraged to understand the role
that social media play in contemporary American adolescence? These are the
questions we sought to answer in our research.
METHOD
Our study examined news stories about teens and social media published in
U.S. newspapers, magazines, and online publications over the course of a 12-
month period, from March 2013 to February 2014. This period was selected as
the most recent coverage available at the time we performed our research. We
attended to an entire year of coverage to explore the overarching trends in the
news, rather than focusing on a narrower period that might have been dominated
by only a handful of heavily covered events.
Our search strategy was designed to assess the range of mainstream news
sources that American readers might encounter. Print news continues to be a
significant source of information, but increasingly Americans turn to the Internet
for their news (Beaujon, 2012). Many online news sources are directly affiliated
with traditional news operations or aggregate their news products, but many
online sources have also begun to create their own content (Pew Research
Center, 2014). Contemporary readers also consume a variety of types of news
products, from news reports and analyses to features and editorials. Our goal was
to be as inclusive as possible in our sample. After scrutinizing database options
to meet our goal of maximum inclusivity, we employed our university-supported
Factiva database, an online aggregator of more than 8,000 information sources in
print and on the web. Factiva includes many print and digital publications not
included by other databases like LexisNexis. Although Factiva enables searches
across a wide variety of media, we limited our search to articles that were text
based, including print news, news web sites, news blogs, news magazines, and
trade journals.
Using the search terms “teen/teenagers” and “social media,” our Factiva
search identified 397 articles from news sources ranging from large national
papers (e.g., USA Today) to metro websites (e.g., WashingtonPost.com). We
selected the search term “teenager(s)” because it is commonly used as a concrete
descriptor for people ranging in age from 13 to 19, the age group in which we
were most interested. Other terms, such as “adolescent” or “youth,” are less
consistently tied specifically or exclusively to young people in their actual teen
years (e.g., see Lesko, 1996; Oswell, 1998). We screened each of the articles to
verify its fitness for inclusion; 58 were eliminated because they were duplicates,
book reviews, opinion-editorials not produced by journalists, or irrelevant to the
topic of teens’ relationship with social media.
Qualitative textual analysis techniques allowed us to engage in a deep
exploration of the news coverage about teens and social media. Using constant
comparative methods (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), we began by reading the articles
several times to identify key themes and categories that reoccurred across
the year of coverage. Drawing on Foss’s (2009) model for conducting an
ideological criticism of an artifact, each author independently took notes regard-
ing individual news topics, word usage, tone, sources, and details offered about
stories’ subjects and their actions in an effort to identify dominant ideologies,
repressed ideologies, and the rhetorical strategies used to support certain ideol-
ogies over others. Then, as a pair, we compared our observations so that we
might connect, elaborate, and refine our categories and integrate them mean-
ingfully into a larger framework of understanding. We focused in particular on
how teens were treated within the news story and on how social media were
described within the context of teens’ lives.
To validate our impressions of the preponderance of certain trends, we also

designed a brief protocol based on emerging categories. For each article, we
examined whether the term “social media” itself was operationalized, and
whether the article mentioned the ethnicity, class, or culture of its teenaged
subjects. Our protocol also addressed whether each article implied or stated
that social media are or can be dangerous for teenagers; that social media fuel,
magnify, or encourage troubling teen behaviors or trends; that parents were
responsible in any way for their teens’ online conduct or for monitoring their
conduct; or that social media can be healthy, positive, or productive spaces for
teens. For those articles acknowledging actual or potential positive relationships
between teenagers and social media, we evaluated whether any negative facets of
teen social media participation were mentioned. Finally, we examined whether
the article included quotations from any teenagers, law enforcement members, or
security professionals. Both authors independently coded the same subsection of
the sample as a way to assess reliability of the protocol; thereafter, the final
sample was divided between the authors, who coded independently. The protocol
was not designed to be comprehensive or as the primary means of analysis;
rather, it was designed as a tool to help us corroborate our sense of the frequency
of certain trends in the news coverage.
RESULTS
The overarching ideology identified in the news coverage was that teenagers and
social media are engaged in a dysfunctional relationship. The stories consistently
positioned teenagers and social media as at odds with one another, entwined in
an unhealthy intersection. Moreover, the news coverage constructed social media
as the dominant—often controlling—partner in the relationship. In so doing, the
news media stripped teens of their agency and regarded them as ill-equipped to
navigate the treacherous terrain of a constantly evolving social media landscape.
Our analysis begins by discussing the news media’s construction of the
concepts “social media” and “teens.” Next, we describe the ways the stories
constructed the dysfunctional relationship between teens and social media. These
include (a) characterizing social media as a dangerous place for teens, (b)
depicting social media as fueling problematic teen behaviors and practices, (c)
portraying social media as a covert destination for teens that in turn necessitates
parental vigilance, and finally (d) undermining positive stories about teen social
media use.
Generic Construction of “Social Media” and “Teen”

In their discussions of “social media,” nearly every news article (330 of 339)
failed to define, operationalize, or provide any context for their use of this term.
Although we included in our sample only news articles that explicitly used the
term “social media,” it is notable that the news stories indiscriminately swept all
social media platforms and sites under the nonspecific, ambiguous label without
offering further delineation. Typical of the coverage was an article from the
Minneapolis Star Tribune about a man accused of sexual misconduct: “He faces
multiple charges in Anoka County for allegedly using social media to try to lure
girls into sexual encounters” (Chanen, 2013, p. 2b). Social media platforms vary
by purpose, reach, user base, privacy setting options, multimedia capacities,
degrees of anonymity, and self-expressive affordances. Yet coverage in our
sample suggested that distinguishing particular social media sites from one
another is unnecessary; social media are indistinguishable, at least when it
comes to teenagers.
The coverage also frequently treated social media as a singular noun, instead
of acknowledging the plural construction of “media” and the plurality of social
media sites, genres, and technologies. For example, a Newsweek article
explained, “Social media is [emphasis added] a magnificent beast that feeds on
boredom, fame, friendship and instant gratification” (Jones, 2014, p. 1). The
effect of the singular construction is to efface the actual differences in social
media site interfaces, capabilities, and user bases and to treat all social media as
effectively one and the same.
Teenagers received similar treatment in the news coverage. Presented as a
uniform group of like-minded and like-acting people, real teenagers’ extensive
diversity was obscured. Although only news articles mentioning the term “teen-
ager” were eligible for inclusion in this analysis, news articles could easily move
beyond the generic label to distinguish the teens under discussion from the
approximate 40 million teens who reside in the United States (U.S. Census
Bureau, 2013). However, in all but a handful of the articles, teenagers were
discussed as though they had no ethnicity, class, or cultural context, despite
ample research demonstrating that these factors bear significantly on teenagers’
social media access, interest, and usage (e.g., Hargittai, 2010; Hasebrink,
Livingstone, Haddon & Ólafsson, 2009; Livingstone & Brake, 2010). For
example, an online Philadelphia Daily News article began, “With plenty of
preening self-portraits and pointless chatter with friends, 17-year-old Nasheen
K. Anderson’s Twitter feed at first looks like that of any typical teenager
[emphasis added]” (Difilippo & Leach, 2013, para. 1).
Moreover, in stories that focused on the dangers of social media, there was
little discussion of other risk factors that make some teens exponentially more
vulnerable online than others (Livingstone & Brake, 2010). For example,
journalists typically omitted details about specific teenagers’ history of risk

taking, psychological state, or family and friend contexts that might distinguish
them from other teens. The coverage thus implied that all teenagers are equiva-
lent social media users and equally “at risk.”
A Dangerous Place
The news articles commonly portrayed social media as inherently treacherous for
teenagers. Indeed, this was the case in nearly half of the articles analyzed. A
typical storyline about the lurking dangers found on social media appeared in an
Atlanta Journal-Constitution article about a “sextortion” case. The article
explained that a 28-year-old man was sentenced “for using social media to
gain the trust of teenage girls and then enticing or coercing them into transmit-
ting nude photos and videos of themselves” and raping three of them (Rankin,
2013b, p .B1). Similarly, the Boston Globe ran a story about a man who utilized
a social media website to coax teenagers into a sex trafficking scheme.
According to the journalist, the man “contacted the 16-year-old girl … through
an Internet site and offered to introduce her to prostitution” (Valencia, 2014, p.
B2). Quotations by law enforcement and cybersafety professionals, included in
more than one third of the articles, reinforced the view that social media are risky
adult environments where teenagers do not belong.
Adding to the sense of social media as dangerous, stories describing social
media-related crime often moved beyond the particular incident to suggest a more
widespread phenomenon. For example, a Tampa Bay Times story about the
successful capture of two online predators quoted a law enforcement agent, who
claimed that “the reality is these people go online and find real children all the time
[emphasis added]” (Geurts, 2013, p. 3B). The stockpiling of numerous tragic
incidents within a single article also contributed to the sense that dangerous social
media interactions are pervasive. A Buffalo News article about Twitter illustrated
this technique: “The Kenmore assault is just the latest in a string of teenage
tragedies across the country in which texting and social media sites … seem to
play an outsized role” (Gee, 2013, p. D43). The journalist next referenced an
incident in which a young girl committed suicide after being bullied, and another
case in which pictures of a rape victim were circulated among local teens.
Coverage such as this typically neglected to include any reliable data regarding
the actual frequency of such events.
Articles focusing on the dangers of social media were typically short and lacking
in detail about the related circumstances, such as the teenagers’ social support system
(or lack thereof) or the particulars of their social media correspondence. The news
articles also omitted information about the teenagers’ motivations for engaging in
online communication or consequent sexual relationships. As dangerous places of
contact, rather than communication tools or sites of strategic social practice, social
media were portrayed as locations that teens would best avoid.
Fueling Bad Behavior

Furthering the construction of the dysfunctional relationship was the news
stories’ tendency, in over half of all articles, to highlight how social media fueled
a variety of troubling teen behaviors and trends. Cast as an accessory to teen-
agers’ innate poor judgment, social media were blamed, at least in part, for
underage drinking parties, bullying practices, disruptive pranks, eating disorders,
muggings, intentional hit-and-runs, gang activity, an increased teen suicide rate,
and the trauma of sexual assault victims. As illustration, an article in the
New York Post described an apparent incidence of the “knockout game,” in
which young people attack unsuspecting passersby with the goal of knocking
them unconscious. The article concluded by explaining how the game “has been
fueled by social media, with thugs boasting of their attacks online and posting
Internet videos of the sucker punches” (Conley & Celona, 2013, p. 25).
Similarly, a WashingtonPost.com article about a Steubenville, Ohio, rape case,
which involved the rape of a teenage girl at a party by two high school football
players, criticized the role of social media in teens’ lives after photographs and
details of the assault were posted on various social media sites. The article
argued that “social media’s role magnifies the trauma,” through the “public
violation of one’s reputation and image,” which “compounds the dehumaniza-
tion” (Tesfamariam, 2013, para. 8).
Interestingly, much of the Steubenville news coverage focused not on the
assault itself but rather on the perpetrators’ and witnesses’ use of social media to
discuss and distribute images of the attack. From the perspective of many in the
media, teenagers’ willingness to document and circulate images of the crime
provided irrefutable evidence of the dysfunctional relationship teens have with
social media. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch article summarized the events in this
way: “The crime, which took place after a party last summer, shocked many in
Steubenville because of the seeming callousness with which other students took
out their cellphones to record the attack and gossip about it online” (Welsh-
Huggins, 2013, p. A1). Emphasizing the shock over what teenagers were willing
to share online, the news coverage suggested that teens’ social media documen-
tation practices were nearly as troubling as the abusive offline behaviors.
The news coverage also sometimes characterized problematic teen behaviors—
fueled by social media—as on the rise, despite a lack of reliable evidence to back up
the claims. For example, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article about the role of
social media in popularizing teens’ interest in car surfing (riding on the hoods of
speeding cars) stated, “Hard numbers for car surfing are hard to find, but such incidents
appear to be on the rise” (Davis, 2013, p. A1). An article on WashingtonPost.com about
how social media increasingly contribute to teen dating abuse offered statistics about
the frequency of teen dating violence, but empirical evidence of social media’s role was
absent. Instead, the president of the National Domestic Violence Hotline was described
as having “heard stories from teens who have had dating partners use text
messaging, social media and cellphone calls to intimidate and control them”
(McEwen, 2014, para. 2). Anecdotes and unsupported claims were frequently
incorporated into news coverage as substitutes for actual empirical data.
Social Media as a Covert Destination … That Parents Must Monitor

The news stories’ emphasis on how social media fueled bad teen behavior fits
logically with another theme in the coverage: the depiction of social media as
covert destinations for teenagers to hide from prying parents. Social media
enabled teens to conceal the very behaviors they fueled and magnified, the
news coverage implied. Sometimes offhandedly and sometimes as the focus of
the news story, journalists claimed that teens deliberately used social media as a
means to circumvent well-meaning mothers and fathers. As illustration, an article
from MarketWatch about teens’ declining use of Facebook carried the subhead-
line “To Escape Parents, Teenagers Seek Out Alternate Corners of the Internet”
(Fottrell, 2013). In describing teens as seeking out “alternative corners,” the story
implied that teens pursued remote locations to dodge parental intrusion. Because
teens are “wary of sharing details of their social lives where parents can read
them,” the article explained, they must avoid mainstream social media like
Facebook. Avoiding parents was presented as a main motivation for teens’
selection of social media sites, rather than, for example, teens’ desire to partici-
pate in social media sites that were popular with friends, or to take advantage of
the unique features of particular social media platforms, or to resist the dom-
inance of multinational digital media companies. Moreover, the news stories
nearly always neglected to address how developmentally normal it is for teen-
agers to desire privacy, not because they have something to hide but because it is
critical for personal development (boyd, 2014; Larson, 1995).
The abundance of advice offered in the news stories implied that parents,
nearly exclusively, should be worried that teens are hiding their interactions on
social media. One fourth of the articles we examined explicitly or implicitly
indicated that parents were responsible for supervising or monitoring their teen-
agers’ social media participation. An Orange County Register article, like many
stories, employed the second-person “you” to hail parent readers: “Dive into
Instagram if your teen hasn’t yet. If they’re already there, help navigate. They
need you [emphases added]” (Broughton, 2013, para. 8). Similarly, an Atlanta
Journal Constitution article was typical in its explicit identification of who is
responsible for receiving advice and acting on it: “Parents [emphasis added]
need to talk to their children about who they communicate with online” (Rankin,
2013a, p. A1). Across the year of coverage, news stories nearly always neglected
to identify any other adults (e.g., mentors, community members, neighbors,
clergy, coaches), or institutions (e.g., social media companies, government agen-
cies, nonprofits) as having a role in providing guidance to teens about their social
media participation.
Among the advice the news coverage offered to parents, the most common
theme was vigilance. “It’s important to monitor how your child is reacting to
social media to make sure they’re not becoming obsessed,” warned a parenting
editor quoted in the Washington Post (Williams, 2013, p. T14). The seriousness
with which parents should commit to such oversight was underscored by the
inclusion of police warnings in many of the news articles. Another
WashingtonPost.com article profiled a police officer turned high school resource
officer who explained that the “most distressing aspect of teen life these days is the
way teens interact on social media”; he advised parents to be “proactive” and
instructed, “Don’t give up on your kids” (Shapiro, 2013, para. 8). Reporting on the
arrest of a man who sexually assaulted teens after contacting them through social
media, the Pittsburgh Post interviewed a police lieutenant who “urged parents to
keep tabs on their children’s social media activities” (Silver, 2013, p. B1).
Failure to be actively involved as parents, the news media warned, can have
dire consequences. A Tampa Bay Times article, reporting on the suicide of a
teenage girl after intense cyberbullying from classmates, quoted the teen’s
mother as saying that “she blames herself for not scouring her daughter’s
phone and computer” where much of the bullying happened without her knowl-
edge (VanderVelde, 2013, p. 15). The Christian Science Monitor offered espe-
cially potent language that reinforced the appropriateness of parent blaming,
quoting the mother of a teen who killed himself after being bullied on social
media:
[The bully] killed my son as surely as if he crawled through the window, put a gun
to his head, and pulled the trigger. And those parents loaded the gun and allowed
him to do it. They gave him the computer, gave him access, even when they knew
for 3 years that he was hurting not just my child but others as well. (Paulson, 2013,
para. 15)
In this way and others, much of the coverage insinuated that parents must
concern themselves earnestly with their teenagers’ social media practices, out
of fear rather than support.
Undermining Healthy Relationships

Although the dominant relationship constructed between teens and social media
was characterized by dysfunction, one third of the articles acknowledged the
possibility or actuality of teenagers’ healthy relationship with social media. Such

stories described, for example, teenagers’ use of social media for social activism,
philanthropy, or creative enterprise. However, three fourths of the articles that
initially seemed positive were quickly undercut by proclamations about the
dangers teenagers face on social media platforms or the tragedies that had
occurred in these spaces. In so doing, the media suggested that whatever the
healthy aspects of social media might be, danger always lurked.
A Boston Globe article was typical of the coverage, undermining the idea that
teenagers might share a healthy relationship with social media by itemizing risks
after mentioning benefits. The article explained, “Studies suggest that teenagers
who use social media have enhanced self-esteem and friendship quality
(although there are clear drawbacks, such as vulnerability to cyber-bullying
and unwanted sexual advances)” (Swidey, 2013, p. R16). In similar fashion, a
lengthy Newsweek story about teen sexuality explained that when “done right,”
social media allow for “meeting like-minded users, sharing experiences, nurtur-
ing independence and gaining confidence at everything from reading and writing
to photography.” But just a few paragraphs later, the article delved into the
“frightening” side of social media with great detail, explaining that social
media push teen users—especially girls—into producing objectifying selfies
that place them in compromising and dangerous situations (Jones, 2014, p. 1).
Although the norms of journalistic objectivity help to explain why positive
discussions about social media in teenagers’ lives were counterbalanced by
negative commentary, it is important to note that the opposite did not hold
true. In articles focused on the risks and dangers of social media, the valuable
and benign uses of social media that have been well documented were not
mentioned.
DISCUSSION
The role that social media play in teenagers’ lives is unquestionably newsworthy.
Teenagers’ diverse social media practices—and the unique affordances and risks
accompanying them—merit both discussion and interrogation. However, if news
consumers are truly to understand the complexities of social media participation
for contemporary adolescents, discourse about teens and social media must not
begin and end with the concerns of adults. Indeed, by constructing a mediated
reality that privileged an exclusively adult vantage point, the news coverage that
we analyzed neglected to regard teenagers as active agents whose social media
use is embedded meaningfully into their everyday lives. Instead, the press
coverage highlighted dysfunction and danger as at the very core of teens’ social
media interactions.
Several factors help explain the negative focus of the coverage. First, the news
media have a well-documented pattern of valuing conflict and deviance as
criteria for coverage (Shoemaker & Cohen, 2006). Stories about scandals and
tragedies involving youth and social media are thus more likely to have been
considered newsworthy by news gatherers and editors, compared to more repre-
sentative, everyday experiences of social media-engaged teenagers. Second, a
preponderance of journalism is both created and consumed by adult audiences.
This adult ecosystem primarily comprises people who came of age before social
media existed. In consequence, it may simply feel natural to regard social media
as threatening to or problematic for adolescents. Alternatively, or likely in
conjunction, the adult-centric view of social media may be explained by the
tendency of the media to “act in loco parentis,” producing a news product that is
filtered “through the dual lenses of adult values and adult fears” (Herring, 2008,
p. 75). Indeed, the media’s self-appointed role as parental stand-in was seen in
many news stories, offering both implicit and explicit directives about how to
handle the presence of social media in teenagers’ lives.
The negative focus of most coverage, and the tendency to position technology
as acting on teens rather than the other way around, replicates news coverage of
other media technologies for at least several decades (e.g., see Buckingham,
2007; Springhall, 1998). From dime novels, gangster films and comics, to rap
music, and video games, new media forms that become popular with the young
have been vilified throughout history. Such “media panics” have been critiqued
for their emphasis on the potentially deleterious effects of media, often in out-
sized proportion to actual danger (Drotner, 1992). Moreover, like past studies, we
found the news coverage we examined demonstrated a presumption of imminent
harm to teenagers as a consequence of their (social) media use, rather than a
framing of teens’ new media practices as involving risk (e.g. Lim, 2013). Despite
the unique characteristics of social media (e.g., they are networked, searchable,
interactive, multimodal), these points of distinction were acknowledged only in
so far as they supported the long-standing “media-harms-youth” framework.
The news media’s characterization of social media as having a controlling
influence in teens’ lives also harkens back to a simplistic cause-and-effect
sensibility of media effects. By focusing predominantly on what social media
do to teenagers or what social media incite from teenagers, the news coverage
reified a now debunked view of media as having all-powerful, primarily
negative effects on youth. Not only does this type of discourse run counter to
substantial evidence and theory, but it also discounts the dynamic and purpose-
ful nature of teenagers’ actual social media practices. For example, studies
show that teenagers often display strategic decision making on social media,
taking into consideration who they want to connect with, how long they want
their posts to last, the level of curating they want to undertake, and how much
publicity they desire, among other considerations (e.g., Agosto, Abbas, &
Naughton, 2012; Marwick & boyd, 2014; Mesch, 2010). Grounded theories of
adolescent media practice, such as Steele and Brown’s (1995) media practice
model, highlight teens’ agency as they select, attend to, and apply the media
content with which they engage. Identity work and social goals drive media
interactions and outcomes, not the other way around. This type of complexity is
not easily or quickly explained in a news article, but it more accurately reflects
the agency in real teenagers’ experience when they engage with social media.
The dearth of teen voices, perspectives, and circumstances in the coverage
helped sustain the news construction of teenagers’ relationship with social media
as dysfunctional. News stories more often included the words and views of law
enforcement and cybersafety professionals than those of actual teenagers.
Despite the fact that teenagers might reasonably be considered experts on their
own experiences, less than one fourth of all stories included a quote from a
teenager. Moreover, when discussing teenagers, news stories neglected to iden-
tify or examine the distinguishing factors that render the teenaged years distinc-
tive. Adolescents have unique brain architecture, which helps to explain their
reasoning skills and sensation-seeking behaviors, both offline and online (e.g.,
Steinberg, 2014). Social, emotional, and biological changes during adolescence
also impact teens’ behaviors and interactions (Steinberg & Morris, 2001). When
one considers additional factors such as age-based segregation in schools and at
extracurricular activities, the lack of opportunities for teens to gather at public
locations, and an adult citizenry fixated on stranger danger, one begins to sense
the complex contexts that shape the contemporary adolescent experience (e.g.,
Childress, 2004; Hine, 2000; Valentine, 2004). Altogether, these factors are
likely to influence teenagers’ social media practices, not to mention the condi-
tions that make social media relevant and appealing. However, these factors
received scant, if any, attention in the news articles examined, thus obscuring
their importance in contextualizing the relationship between teens and social
media.
A more contextualized and less adult-centric style of news coverage might
also have better reflected the situation that, for many teenagers, social media are
necessary for everyday practices, including social participation, relationship
management, and homework (e.g., boyd, 2014; Commonsense Media, 2012;
Lenhart, 2015). Moreover, social media have utility for teenagers, as they can
connect like-minded youth with one another, facilitate self-expression and iden-
tity development, and allow civic and political participation (e.g., boyd, 2014;
Livingstone, 2008; Xenos, Vromen, & Loader, 2014). The news articles in our
study rarely acknowledged these more beneficial social media practices. They
tended to focus on visible artifacts (e.g., images posted by teens) and conse-
quences (e.g., suicides), rather than the everyday, less visible practices of most
American teens (e.g., social planning). Even the ubiquitous practice of simply
“hanging out” on social media was left out of the coverage (boyd, 2014).
This is not to say that all of teenagers’ social media interactions are benign or
that teenagers do not face risks as part of their social media participation. Rather,
we argue that by focusing primarily on just the most visible and sensational risks
(e.g., predation, cyberbullying), the news coverage diverted attention from other
types of benefits and concerns that warrant consideration from news readers and
their communities (see also boyd, 2014; Lim, 2013). For instance, social media
participation is accompanied by new pressures on teenagers to self-surveil and
self-present, to stay in constant contact, to socially compare, and to validate
others while seeking validation for oneself. These pressures may impact teen-
agers’ self-esteem, depression and anxiety levels, and relationship quality (see
Best, Manktelow, & Taylor, 2014; Gardner & Davis, 2013). How teenagers
navigate these costs and how they balance them against the benefits of social
media participation are crucial topics for discussion. The news media’s inatten-
tion to these more nuanced but ordinary dilemmas is a missed opportunity to
invite meaningful conversations about teens’ social media practices.
In the end, the dominant narrative communicated by the news articles we
examined positioned social media as a problem to be tackled. And those respon-
sible for fixing the problem, according to the news media, are, indubitably,
parents. Parental oversight has long been regarded as the appropriate antidote
to questionable youth/media interactions. Highlighting the values of free speech
and individual choice, for example, Americans have frequently expected parents
to monitor and control children’s and teens’ exposure to sex, violence, and
advertising, rather than examining the social responsibility of media producers
or the larger public (e.g., Linn, 2004; Minow & LaMay, 1995). In the current
study on teens and social media, the news media served to normalize parental
surveillance as an appropriate, common, and necessary practice. The articles
presumed a reading audience with the interest, time, and financial resources to
dedicate to keeping their children safe from the lurking dangers of social media.
Most importantly, in placing the burden of oversight on individual parents, the
news coverage absolved from responsibility the very social media companies
that reap millions of dollars in profits from their teenage users. The news
coverage failed to interrogate what role social media companies should play in
advancing the psychological and physical well-being of teenagers. This inatten-
tion is problematic, given social media companies’ stated desire to make their
platforms addictive (Singer, 2015). Indeed, despite its construction of the rela-
tionship between teens and social media as dangerous and dysfunctional, the
news coverage never questioned what design features might be altered to make
social media engagement more beneficial for teens. There was also no discussion
of the profit motives of social media companies, or how motives for profit may
be at odds with the best interests of teenage development. News coverage that
ignores issues of corporate control and social responsibility privileges corpora-
tions (and their stockholders) at the expense of teenagers.
The critique we offer here rests on our own interpretations of news coverage
about teenagers and social media, informed by our subjectivity, situation, and
adult vantage point. Teenagers’ readings of the articles might have yielded
different considerations that were not raised here, and future studies can be
enhanced only by including youth collaborators in the process of critiquing
news narratives. Likewise, incorporating the perspective of journalists who can
illuminate their newsgathering and newswriting decisions can help root news
coverage of youth and social media in specific sites and circumstances of
production. More intense analysis of individual story arcs of heavily covered
events, such as the Steubenville rape scandal, would also be interesting to
interrogate as a window into how news coverage may shift over the course of
an unfolding situation involving teens and social media.
Currently, the news coverage of the relationship between teenagers and social
media emphasizes the dysfunction social media bring into teenage lives. Teens
are denied agency as judicious, rationally motivated, and conscientious social
media participants. In consequence, teens are pushed to defend their social media
pleasures and practices against parents and a larger society who presume they are
in or about to be in peril. Not only does this positioning likely work to distance
teenagers from adults, but it may also feed discord in homes and tensions in
schools. Perhaps most problematic, it forces teenagers into an intractable bind:
the understanding that social media participation is virtually requisite and fre-
quently meaningful in their lives, and the recognition that adults may respond to
their social media engagement with concern, disapproval, and distrust.
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Mass Communication and Society

ISSN: 1520-5436 (Print) 1532-7825 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/hmcs20

Constructing Dysfunction: News Coverage of

Susannah R. Stern & Sarah Burke Odland

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