Study Highlights Social Media Differences Between Minority Boys and White, Straight Boys

John Magnus Dahl is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies (UiB). His research focuses on youth and their everyday lives on digital media. Recently he followed six boys aged 16 to 19 – both online and offline – to find out how they used their smartphones.

The study will soon be published in book form by Palgrave Macmillan, with the title In The Palm of Their Hands: Teenage Boys and their Smartphones as Worldmaking Devices.

«A lot happens with identity development during this period. This age group has lived with digital media and smartphones their entire lives,» Dahl says.

For a year and a half, Dahl was with the boys in as many situations as they allowed him.

«At school, on the bus, at cafés. I attended a few parties. And came to a ‘russedåp’ (a Norwegian graduation celebration), to leisure activities, and those kinds of things. I also followed them on as many social media platforms and forums as they let me, and conducted several interviews with them,» Dahl says.

This type of research is called participant observation.

So how did these boys use digital media?

About Being a Man

Those that Dahl classified as «normal» in his publication – white, straight, middle class boys – use social media, but they post much less, he explains.

«They simply create much less content. This doesn’t mean they are less active in terms of time spent social media, or that they follow fewer accounts. But it’s clear that it’s less important for them to be active and create content to appear as a certain type of person on the internet,» Dahl says.

Dahl concludes that much of the behavior on digital media is centred around being a young man and what it means to be a young man.

«This permeated almost everything they did. It was obvious that for the white, straight boys, it was very easy to fit into an established, clear masculinity. It became obvoius to me that they behaved quite uniformly on social media. Much of what they did online was about the boys’ group, appreciating them, and showing it in various ways».

It was about showcasing guy culture.

«The straight boys post many party pictures where they hug each other, but they also post pictures of themselves posing, either flexing muscles or showing off their outfits, and then like or share each other’s posts. It seems that liking and sharing each other’s posts, and posting pictures of the friend group together, is a way to compliment each other when they can’t do it verbally,» Dahl says.

More Important for the Minority 

The same applied to the queer boys and those with minority backgrounds. But it was clear that they had to work much harder to appear as «real» or «proper» men, according to Dahl.

«I was interested in finding out if queer boys and boys with a minority background used social media differently than the majority, and found that they stand out a bit,» he says.

Dahl has created two ideal types of smartphone users. The one oriented towards the familiar: They use smartphones and other types of digital media to strengthen and maintain existing social circles. This often fits the majority youth.

The other ideal type he calls the foreign-oriented smartphone user: They really try to reach out to new people in many different ways. This fits several of the minority youth.

«Additionally, I saw that being active on digital media, and really trying to create a clear self and clear relationships – what I call worldmaking – was much more important for the minority boys than for the white, straight boys,» Dahl says.

Awkward Dating Apps

One observation of was that one of Dahl's informants that had an immigrant background, spent a lot of time making very elaborate YouTube videos, clearly inspired by large popular YouTube channels.

«But the audience was primarily the boys in his class. These videos might have had an audience of 30-40 people. He still put a lot of energy into it. It was a kind of extension of the guys culture onto the internet,» Dahl says.

Another finding was that none of the heterosexual boys used dating apps.

«Those who did said it was kind of a joke. They might talk about a friend who was on the app's and laugh. But for the queer boys, dating apps were very important – also for finding friends and reaching out. They had often used these apps since they were 14 or 15 to find other queer people. I have a very sweet quote from one a guy who said, ‘I thought I was the only gay in Åsane.’»

Dahl believes that for the straight boys, using dating apps was perceived as not being a «real man.»

«A ‘real man’ is supposed to dare to take the initiative in real life. At parties, for example. You’re not supposed to need help from a dating app. Research on dating apps shows that they are very popular among students, so something clearly happens when the boys are uprooted and move around,» he says.

Little socializing with girls

In general, there were few traces of socializing with girls on the platforms, Dahl says.

«The straight boys said it themselves that they almost don’t have any female friends. The queer boys do. On Instagram, the queer boys play a lot with femininity, but they do it in a somewhat ironic way that to some extent distances themselves from the feminine – with the help of irony, they can be both feminine and not at the same time,» Dahl says.

He explains that a lot of masculinity theory suggests that if one expresses masculinity, one must simultaneously clearly reject femininity.

«It seems quite clear that this happens with these boys,» he says.

«One would think that these things would have changed over the years, but it almost seems like the opposite?»

«The frameworks change, but there is a strict divide between girls and boys, which seems important for them to maintain. And even though queer boys challenge this a bit, they still need to set some boundaries. They might wear makeup and jewelry and things like that, but they still have this ironic distance to their own self-representation, which it seems the girls cannot have,» he says.

Six boys is a small selection.

«Now I know them very well. Interesting further research would be to find out how representative this is. In general, there has been very little research on technology and masculinity. This is probably because technology has been seen as masculine in the first place,» he says.

Source:

Dahl, John Magnus R. (2025, forthcoming): In The Palm of Their Hands: Teenage Boys and their Smartphones as Worldmaking Devices. London: Palgrave MacMillan