Becoming Your “Authentic” Self: How Social Media Influences Youth’s Visual Transitions

Abstract

By focusing attention on the ways that the media manifold fosters visual practices of presentational work for Generation Z, this article examines the active and relational nature of youth’s engagement with visual self-images during the transition between high school and university. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 35 youth between the ages of 15–22, the analysis examines how the relational contexts of family, school, and peers, alongside the socioeconomic and gendered dimensions of young people’s everyday lives work to shape the different ways that youth engage in visual processes of becoming; in terms of becoming who they are and who they want themselves to be. Findings reveal that although youth’s visual self-performances parallel contemporary theorizations of mediatization, self-identity, and visuality, I argue that more attention should be paid to the nuances of transitional moments among young people, and the precise ways in which they navigate practices of “looking,” which are tightly bound up with heightened expectations around visual performance and projection of the self.