Working-class wisdom: how relationality and responsibility shape working-class youth’s meaning-making on social media

Abstract

Young people spend prodigious time online cultivating identities, relationships, and values, however, most research about young people's experiences online fails to consider how socioeconomic status shapes young people's engagement online. Drawing on communication theory about meaning-making, impression management, and trends toward prosumption, we examine how social class, informs young peoples' engagement online. Interviews and focus groups with culturally and geographically diverse teens from working-class families reveal that working-class youth articulate their engagement online in terms of (1) rule following, (2) impression management to become intelligible to peers, (3) cultivating relationships, and (4) occasionally by intentionally keeping meaningful things offline. We argue that their energies reflect efforts at (1) controlling the meaning of posts and (2) relational work, evidencing a ‘responsibility-orientation’ to online engagement. Implications extend previous research identifying the importance of personal responsibility for working-class users online and consider how education systems and online platforms might better serve working-class youth.