Reporting on young people, sexuality, and social media: adiscourse theoretical analysis

The amount of public interest in and media panic over youth, sexuality, and social media has grown in recent years. In this paper, we explore the discursive practices that are disciplining the digital intimacies of young people through print media discourses. Therefore, we use a Foucauldian feminist approach and conduct a discourse theoretical analysis of 183 news articles published in Northern Belgium between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2016. Our findings show that the discourse in newspapers reporting on youth, sexuality, and social media consists of three recurring discursive practices. First, there is the problematization of social media. Second, this problematization is legitimized by the use of authoritative voices, such as those of academics or other experts. Third, this results in a gendered categorization where young girls are extensively included in the debate and young boys and their digital experiences are most often excluded. This gendered discourse not only perpetuates sexual double standards throughout society but also implicitly disciplines young people to adhere to hetero-patriarchal ideals of femininity and masculinity.