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LGBTQ+ adolescents, antifragility, and identity coherence poster

Me and my co-RA, EG, presented this poster at two undergraduate events: San Jose State University's SPARC and UC Santa Cruz's Psi Chi Symposium. Transcription of the post below the "read more" line.

Brief pitch

Mass media narratives and academic research name social media experiences as being good and bad for adolescents; it's not one or the other. Queer youth are especially agentic — they come to these platforms with goals and values already, which shapes their use and digital outlook. As queer youth use social media, they also cohere their identities and align their selves, environments, values, and cultural norms.

We think antifragility, the quality of complex systems to improve following stress or damage, is a useful preliminary lens here. Antifragility may characterize the grit of working through social media, rather than just experiencing or receiving it. So, how exactly do LGBTQ+ youth thrive through adverse experiences as they reconcile opportunities and challenges in their social media environments?

About the three themes

Themes, under Braun & Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis, tell the story of patterned meaning across the coded qualitative dataset (roughly 2-hour videos and interviews of queer youth screensharing and discussing their top 3 social media sites to the original 2022 researchers). Our lab group made these themes in about 15 hours the week before SPARC, so they're quite preliminary. At SPARC and Psi Chi Symposium we invited the people who came up to us to tell us about their own personal experiences or sharpen up our themes. I think of this Tumblr post as a natural extension of that, so please feel free to comment, reblog, and share.

Background and reflexivity

I am a 22 year old Asian-American closeted gay man raised in the San Jose Bay Area, and a 4th-year cognitive science major at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I'm broadly interested in cognitive psychology, abstract systems, human factors, and adult development. Relative to the participants and their data, I am insider to the homosexual and/or sexual minority experience, the (older) Gen Z experience, and the online (fandom) community experience. Therefore, I may be most attuned to the person-environment interface, encompassing a number of processes such as self-disclosure, identity internalization, and digital skill-building. However, I am also an outsider in the sense that I am a cis man, have rarely been able to act or express my gay identity, and my social media use has declined since 2023. Correspondingly, I may have missed or glossed over trans and nonbinary experiences (especially in early proto-theming; hopefully refocused w/ my lab team), why people disclose themselves the way they do, and what internal or external mechanisms exactly drive people to continue to use social media.

My proto-themes before cooperative theming (additional methods background)

These themes may be incorrect, overly complex, or detached from the data. I'd like to post them here as a historical note, however, as they have "seeds" of the later themes, and may provide an even better angle on my background and reflexivity.

1. Pursuing contact with the proximal [should actually be "distal"] queer digital culture requires learning, socialization, dialectic, and broadly beneficial/challenging interactions with peers; LGBTQ+ adolescents close the gap by repeatedly naming the gap between themselves and peers. (Core claim: Sharing queer experiences, speech, slang, discourse, and media approximates social contact; and they do actually have contact eventually. They actively search for peers and peer cultures.)

2. LGBTQ+ individuals (desire to) creating internally complex, heterarchical/rhizomatic, self-moderating, reflective, organized communities and spaces and social norms demarcates these spaces as unique playgrounds of thought, behavior, and culture. (Core claim: Queer adolescents separate their communities from cishet and/or harmful communities robustly. When they co-construct their cultures and perpetuate their own values, they separate themselves from a more suppressive society.)

3. LGBTQ+ individuals broaden initially challenging, negative online experiences into a multivalent/ambivalent ongoing endeavor ["phenomenology" also subs for "ongoing endeavor" imo] to actively alter, negotiate, and control the conditions of their unique [or "tailored"] acculturations. (Core claim: Many queer individuals begin their journey with difficult, even harmful, experiences; but these early experiences go on to stimulate even more identity cohesion and community involvement.)

4. Curative, artistic, and aesthetic digital practices constitute the porous boundary between self and other under queerness, with individuals practicing distinct standards of deferred intimacy and autobiographical record-keeping. (Core claim: When queer adolescents express themselves online, they practice sophisticated strategies of self-disclosure given factors like being closeted/out, being in relationships, being at risk for predators or adversaries, and being mindful of unique site cultures. Social media activity isn't a one to one copy of themselves or their life, or even across platforms. They are able to express themselves richly despite platform limitations.)

Transcription of the poster

Introduction

Literature characterizes LGBTQ+ youths' online experiences as a double-edged sword, both beneficial and detrimental for their development.

Yet queer youth are agentic navigators of their spaces and actively reconcile these polarized experiences.

Active learners of their digital environments

Develop their own beliefs and ideals for their spaces

We are interested in how they develop antifragility through online spaces: the ability to evolve and thrive through adverse experiences

One main avenue of “thriving” we are interested in is the participants pursuit of identity coherence: a general feeling of clarity, authenticity, purpose, and satisfaction within oneself

Thus, positive and negative online experiences may provide unique opportunities for LGBTQ+ youth pursuing identity coherence.

Research Question

How do LGBTQ+ adolescents develop antifragility, as they reconcile opportunities and challenges in their social media environments?

Method

Participants:

12 LGBTQ+ Adolescents (Ages 16-20)

Wide variety of sexual/gender minority identities

Procedure:

Social Media Tours

Participants guided researchers through their top 3 social media sites, geared towards understanding participants most significant polymedia interactions.

Analysis:

DataVyu is used to code directly into audiovisual data.

Reflective Thematic Analysis

Theme 1: Constructing practice spaces for authenticity

Queer adolescents use different social media and digital skills to strategically construct spaces for themselves to explore and express themselves. They internalize their spaces to continue to construct a stable sense of self.

AGNIESZKA: It is completely different, in person and with my family, I am very focused on other people, so interacting at school is really stressful, keeping track of people's expressions and tone of voice, it is really hard, and so I am focused on others, and it is really draining. These posts [on Tumblr] are entirely for me; when I reminisce and reblog, it is for me. I am not putting on an act for others. On Tumblr, I will have moments of fear, but most of the time, when I interact with these things, it is to make myself happy, and not manage other people.

G6: “I post here more on TikTok and there’s less people I know that see it and queer funny stuff I think that’s fun same as Insta but I feel more comfortable because there’s less people I know like acquaintances... I had an idea for it. and TikTok had the tools for it... I made it for me, I did not expect people to really see it... I am not really concerned with how people react, but I did not want everyone to see it which is why I didn't post it to instagram"

Theme 2: Transforming negative experiences online

Queer youth begin their journey with difficult experiences, but they metabolize these early experiences and incorporate them into a value-oriented and self-aligned social media practice.

AURA: "I was like 14, and saw a trans person and was like, WOW, you can be like that! ... I think it was iFunny but it was negative. I was 14, not understanding the bigotry behind the jokes. As I matured, I realized, this is not okay… One of my online communities that had friends in real life... one of the kids online was 14, and I helped them find resources and HRT as a minor... doing my best to help closeted trans people... I like to hang out with trans people and give back when you can”

FOX: "at the beginning of [my social media use], it was such a toxic form of escapism and algorithmic reinforcement, and anxiety of what was going on in the world. 8 hour TikTok scrolling looking at videos of basically warzones... After meeting [her ex partner] too ... they like taught me self-love, that was a concept ... that I'm keeping in mind as I curate my social media experience. Once I finally learned self-love, I unfollowed a lot of people… I have my own little gay echo chamber on social media, so if anything, it is just reporting on what is going on with gay prejudices, TERFs and whatnot, reacting irrationally with trans people... I am also just not really on social media [these days]"

Theme 3: In community, everyone can be a student or a teacher

Individuals actively synthesize others’ experiences into an elaborated sense of self that is independent and is still embedded in community. Once identity feels more robust, some give back to the community by advising and guiding peers.

OCTOPUS: A lot of people find that the danger of like online spaces, especially in regards to queer identity, is that it is difficult to understand yourself. But then a benefit of these online spaces is that you get to hear all these voices, and then you still get to come to the conclusion yourself and take on other peoples experiences and accounts and still realize that it is their own experiences... Just being a part of the community was really interesting to me, in thinking about my identities in different ways.

LUMI: "This one especially is a rant about my parents being allonormative specifically towards me, thinking "oh you won't always be asexual, it is just a phase"... It was helpful [to post]... on r/asexuality people are really supportive but it is great… Someone was feeling confused about their asexuality and I was like 'we are here for you, you are valid' and I will just do a lot of that if people are having a hard time, especially on r/asexuality…Someone did reach out to me after I posted about my asexuality and was like hey man you good?... It is just really nice having a pretty much automatic supportive community, especially processing when people IRL are not so understanding. "

Discussion

Queer youth negotiate their environments and experiences in myriad ways:

Creating practicing spaces: LGBTQ+ adolescents curate their own, uniquely important spaces online away from outside expectations.

Processing negative experiences online: Queer adolescents reflect on early negative experiences online, then incorporate them into new, purposeful uses of social media aligned with themselves and their values.

Everyone are students and teachers: Queer youth actively appraise others’ queer stories and communities. Some give back as leaders once identity feels more coherent.

Future Directions

Future analysis will be conducted using the broader PYD 11 and PVEST 4 frameworks to further investigate how LGBTQ+ youth learn from their online experiences.

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