Young People and their Engagement with Health-related Social Media: New Perspectives

This symposium will provide original, empirically robust, and theoretically rich insights into the complex relationship between social media and young people, and will consider the potential impacts on the field of health and... [ view full abstract ]

This symposium will provide original, empirically robust, and theoretically rich insights into the complex relationship between social media and young people, and will consider the potential impacts on the field of health and physical education (HPE). To date, the main target population for the analysis of risk in digital health has been healthcare professionals and adults (Swist et al., 2015; Rich & Miah, 2017). There are few empirical accounts of how young people use or share health information on social media (Hausmann et al. 2017), and how their experiences can be used to frame health interventions (Dunlop et al., 2016). As a consequence, no robust guidance on young people, social media and health is available (Hausmann et al. 2017) and there is little mention in school/childcare guidelines in current UK, European or US policy (Livingstone et al., 2017).

The session draws on data from over 1500 young people as ‘expert’ (or at least prolific) social media users and offers analysis from multi-disciplinary perspectives. The objectives are to: (i) increase awareness of the opportunities and risk-related impacts of social media on young people’s health and wellbeing; (ii) generate new theoretical insights into young people’s digital health; and (iii) provide new directions for pedagogy and practice in HPE.

The session is organised into three sections. Section 1: five original composite and digital narrative case studies will be presented. The case studies were constructed using a public pedagogy framework from participatory research with over 1500 young people (age 13-19) in ten UK schools. Section 2: three separate disciplinary analyses of the case studies will be presented. Each academic will identify key issues from their disciplinary perspective and implications for HPE.  Section 3: The discussant will suggest new directions for effective pedagogy and practice in HPE.