Privacy Co-Management on Social Media in Latinx Youth
Mentor 1
Celeste Campos-Castillo
Mentor 2
Katherine Craig
Start Date
1-5-2020 12:00 AM
Description
The goal of this project is to conduct an exploration of privacy from the perspective of adolescent co-managers, with a focus on managing information indicative of the mental wellbeing of peers, and also to develop and disseminate guidelines for privacy co-management to Latinx adolescents, their schoolteachers, administrators, and adult caretakers. This project involved interviewing 43 Latinx teens between the ages of 14 and 18 to understand the thought processes of current youths in relation to mental health and privacy in social media. Participants were asked about how they would respond to a variety of situations, including body insecurity and signs of an eating disorder, ranking them from not worried about to worried, and if they would tell a trusted adult about the worrisome situations. Interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis, which allowed for coding and classification of participant norms and practices around privacy co-management, with themes anchored in the experiences and feelings of the participants. Common themes in responses involved normalizing issues as justification for not being worried, and an understanding as justification for not being worried, and an understanding of how things may escalate in cases where they expressed worry. Body insecurity had the largest gray area because the ramifications are not as clear as others, for example suicidal thoughts, and because it is considered ‘normal’. Those who are worried about eating disorders do not have a full understanding of the issue because it is rarely talked about, escalating eating disorders to hospitalization, much like how people escalate drug use to overdosing. The results show the lack of literacy surrounding eating disorders and the unspoken hierarchy of posting others of different social media sites.
Privacy Co-Management on Social Media in Latinx Youth
The goal of this project is to conduct an exploration of privacy from the perspective of adolescent co-managers, with a focus on managing information indicative of the mental wellbeing of peers, and also to develop and disseminate guidelines for privacy co-management to Latinx adolescents, their schoolteachers, administrators, and adult caretakers. This project involved interviewing 43 Latinx teens between the ages of 14 and 18 to understand the thought processes of current youths in relation to mental health and privacy in social media. Participants were asked about how they would respond to a variety of situations, including body insecurity and signs of an eating disorder, ranking them from not worried about to worried, and if they would tell a trusted adult about the worrisome situations. Interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis, which allowed for coding and classification of participant norms and practices around privacy co-management, with themes anchored in the experiences and feelings of the participants. Common themes in responses involved normalizing issues as justification for not being worried, and an understanding as justification for not being worried, and an understanding of how things may escalate in cases where they expressed worry. Body insecurity had the largest gray area because the ramifications are not as clear as others, for example suicidal thoughts, and because it is considered ‘normal’. Those who are worried about eating disorders do not have a full understanding of the issue because it is rarely talked about, escalating eating disorders to hospitalization, much like how people escalate drug use to overdosing. The results show the lack of literacy surrounding eating disorders and the unspoken hierarchy of posting others of different social media sites.
