TINDER FOR TEENS: AN IN-DEPTH EXPLORATION OF YOUTH INTIMATE CULTURES AND SEXUAL AND GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE ON SNAPCHAT

Resumen

Snapchat has long been a pivotal space for youth digital intimate and sexual cultures, as well as gendered and sexual risks and harms. Despite being one of the most widely used social media platforms among youth in England and America, there has been little in-depth research that connects Snapchat’s unique features and affordances with an analysis of young users’ practices, behaviours, and experiences on the platform. Responding to this gap, our paper explores our mixed-methods research findings on British young people’s diverse social, sexual, and intimate experiences on Snapchat. We explore how Snapchat’s unique features, such as disappearing images (“Snaps”), algorithmic friend recommendations (“Quick Adds”), and user engagement metric ("Snapscores”), form new conditions and environments for young people’s experiences of digital courtship, sexting, and sexual and gender-based violence. In addition, we contextualise youth user experiences with Snapchat’s community guidelines, safeguards, and protections for youth, which we argue fail to understand or address the actual lived experiences of youth users. We conclude with recommendations for interventions dedicated to increasing platform-specific digital literacy (particularly for parents, policymakers, and educators), and preventing and responding to youth experiences of online gendered risks and harm—while upholding their digital and sexual rights.