“Protecting my Positivity”: Emerging Adults as Social Media Actors, Agents, and Authors

Abstract

Social media engagements are integral to the lives and experiences of emerging adults. The aim of this study was to explore social media as a space where South African emerging adults shape and refine their sense of self. An explorative and descriptive qualitative approach was employed and individual interviews were conducted with 41 participants ((MAge = 23.17; SD = 2.65; Females = 53.7%). Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Participants confirmed the centrality of social media in their lives and emphasised both the value (being connected, informed, and entertained) and the dangers (invasion of time/privacy and exposure to negativity/inauthenticity) of social media engagements. Social media facilitate the development towards an evolving story of the self as emerging adults navigate through the intricacies of life. A prominent finding in this study related to the intentionality of the social media engagements of emerging adults as they actively attempt (as Actors, Agents, and Authors) to find positivity and possibility in a world of contradiction and instability.