Teens today use social media to develop and maintain romantic relationships. They communicate privately online to avoid parental monitoring. Some key findings: - Teens meet potential partners online and use technology like instant messaging and social media to flirt and get to know each other. - In relationships, teens expect constant contact and public displays of affection online. Monitoring partners' accounts is common. - Breakups online can lead to bullying, but social media also enables exes to stay indirectly connected. - While technology facilitates intimacy, it also increases teens' vulnerability to emotional harm from unwanted contact or spreading of private information.

1. +
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out
Chapter 3: Intimacy
A Presentation by Chelsea Seward

2. +
Dating, New Media, and Youth
 Courtship, a 20th century
development, used to be heavily
monitored by parents.
 When dating was introduced,
teens would leave the home and
go on “dates” at school dances
and restaurants.
 By the 1950’s, “going steady”
was the term used for couples
who were exclusively dating.
 In the 1970’s-1980’s, this form of
dating decreased steadily and
turned into “hanging out once in a
while”.
 Adolescences sought the feeling
of being in love, privacy, and
romantic interaction.
“Given that teens have been
developers and shapers of
contemporary youth dating
culture, it makes sense that they
would quickly put new media to
use in the service of their
romantic pursuits.” (Trudell 1993)

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Dating, New Media, and Youth
“While we usually think of these intimacy
practices as individual and private, teen
romance and dating rituals take place, in
many ways, publicly and collectively.”
(Pascoe, 2010)
 Today, teen’s use social media to craft
and reshape dating and romance
norms and rituals.
 These social media technologies
make it possible for teen’s to
communicate with partners, friends,
acquaintances, and even strangers.
 These private channels make it
possible for teen’s to communicate
with others extensively without their
parents and other authority figures
knowing.
 These social media channels allow
teen’s to form, maintain, and end
romantic relationships.

4. +
Three Primary Technologies
Instant Messaging:
 Maintain contact with romantic
partners and use extensive
communication to maintain
relationship.
Mobile Phones:
 Provide technology for teens to
constantly be able to
communicate and “keep-tabs”
on each other.
Social Network Sites:
 Enables teen’s to maintain
relationship and is a key venue
for intimacy through images
and text on social media sites.

5. +
Teen’s Sexual Experiences
 Interview’s were conducted with teen’s to gather information
about relationships, yet not much information was gathered
about sexual relationships with partners.
 Teen’s tended to discuss only dating, crushes, romance, and
heart-break.
 The omission of this information could be from:
 The need to conduct further, more extensive interviews once trust is
developed between interviewer and participant.
 Survey’s were conducted under constraints that discouraged questions
about issues of sex and sexuality.
 Intimacy practices were more salient to these youth than sexual ones.

6. +
Meeting and Flirting
 New media has provided teen’s and
young adults to meet potential
partners.
 With technology, teen’s are able to
approach potential partners and feel
less vulnerable than face-to-face
interactions.
 Not only can teen’s and young adults
meet people online, they can use
technology to get to know people.
 Social media sites offer a platform of
getting to know an individual without
communicating with them.
 Searching people online is an easy
tool to access more information
about a person before meeting
them.
 After meeting with or getting to know
an individual, it is common for teen’s
to use instant messaging platforms to
enact in conversation.
 Flirting online and through text-
messaging is common when teen’s
are “breaking the ice” with the other
person.

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Meeting People Online
“While most teens express hesitation
about meeting people online, in
the case of marginalized teens,
the Internet allows them to meet
other people like themselves”
(Holloway and Valentine 2004).
 Meeting people online creates a
platform for people who don’t
typically meet others in public.
 Meeting and conversation with
people online also offers teen’s a
way to communicate with others
privately, away from their friends
and families. (This is especially
prevalent in the gay community.)

8. +
Going Out
“Technology also mediates
teens’ long-term, steady,
and committed
relationships.”
(Pascoe 2010)
 Teens have high expectations
of contact with partners and
being publicly acknowledged by
others on social media
platforms.
 Posting photos together
 Writing on each others social
media sites
 Having a “in a relationship”
status
 Exchanging notes of affection
 When in an adolescent
relationship, if one partner calls
and the other does not answer,
the caller might get angry.
 Teens tend to spend more time
and put more effort into their
romantic relationships as
opposed to their relationships
with friends.

9. +
Going Out
 Teens often expect “check in’s”
from their partners when they are
not together. This often creates
problems in relationships.
 Lack of personal time
 Trust issues
 Teens rank people of importance
to them by the commitment they
feel from others.
 Teen’s often expect public terms
of endearment from their friends
and partners.

10. +
Breaking Up
 While the media is used as a comfortable way to create and sustain
relationships, it is considered to be a poor way to break up with someone.
 Teens prefer breaking up in person, so both people have the opportunity
to say something face-to-face.
 Social media sites offer a hostile platform for teens to bully and publicly
announce personal break-ups.
 Angry posts
 Public humiliation
 Removing photos
 Lack of privacy
 Social media sites also offer an opportunity for ex-partners to “check up”
on each other after the relationship ends.
 In a healthy break-up scenario, social media gives ex-couples the
opportunity to stay in contact through an indirect channel.

11. +
Monitoring and Boundaries
 Teens tend to monitor other’s social media sites in order to keep tabs
on each other, especially when in relationships, after a relationship
ends, and when a relationship is developing.
 Sharing a password with a significant other denotes intimacy and
reflects who has more power in the relationship.
 Girls tend to strategize new ways to feel more powerful in
relationships.
 Monitoring often causes:
 Insecurities
 Trust issues
 Emotional abuse
 Physical abuse

12. +
Vulnerability
 New media increases teen’ vulnerability and their own control over
emotional exposure. This exposure makes them more vulnerable to
victimization from:
 Friends
 Acquaintances
 Adults (family)
 Boys tend to express relief about how new media enables them to
control what they perceive as emotional vulnerability.
 Allows boys to save face when flirting.
 Controls stumbling over words/loss for words.
 Feel less exposed.
 Increased comfort

13. +
Vulnerability
 Teens are not in total control of digital representations of
themselves and others.
 Information, both positive and negative, can spread rapidly without
their control.
 Online profiles also create risk for teens:
 Online predators
 Unwanted stalkers
 Inappropriate remarks and messages from others
 Bullying
“The same technologies that allow youth to manage
emotional exposure might also render them more
vulnerable, in part because of the amount and type of
information shared and the speed at which it can
travel.” (Pascoe 2010)

14. +
Conclusion
“The snapshot of
contemporary teens’
intimacy practices
presented in this chapter
indicates that today’s teens
are part of a significant
shift in how intimate
communication and
relationships are
structured, expressed, and
publicized.”
(Pascoe 2010)

15. +
Resources
Pascoe, C. J. (2010). Hanging out, messing around, and geeking
out: kids living and learning with new media. Cambridge, Mass:
The MIT Press.