Mid-Adolescents’ Social Media Use: Supporting and Suppressing Autonomy

Abstract

Autonomy development is an important process in adolescence and is central to a successful transition to adulthood. Social contexts play a crucial role in supporting and suppressing autonomy. Considering social media is a salient and important context for mid-adolescents it has the potential to strongly influence autonomy development. This study applied qualitative methods to examine mid-adolescents’ perspectives of how their social media use impacts autonomy. Participants included 36 students aged 15 years from four schools in Melbourne, Australia. All participants completed a rich picture mapping activity and focus group discussions, and a sub-sample of 11 adolescents participated in follow-up, one-on-one interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis generated two overarching themes; supporting autonomy and suppressing autonomy. Sub-themes included; promoting self-governance, facilitating choicefulness, developing a sense of self, external forces motivating use, fostering compulsive and non-intentional use, and affordances of social media threaten personal control. This study revealed that social media contributes to today’s adolescents encountering unique experiences with regards to their autonomy development compared with other generations. Findings highlighted the need to harness the autonomy-supportive aspects of social media use whilst mitigating the autonomy-suppressive ones to help mid-adolescents engage with social media in a way that promotes healthy functioning and wellbeing.