Open AccessBe Yourself: The Relative Importance of Personal and Social Norms for Adolescents’ Self-Presentation on Instagram
Author(s) -
Arne Freya Zillich,
Claudia Riesmeyer
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
social media + society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.941
H-Index - 32
ISSN - 2056-3051
DOI - 10.1177/20563051211033810
Subject(s) - presentation (obstetrics) , norm (philosophy) , psychology , referent , negotiation , social psychology , social norms approach , coping (psychology) , german , sociology , clinical psychology , perception , political science , medicine , neuroscience , law , radiology , social science , linguistics , philosophy , history , archaeology
This article examines the relative importance of personal, descriptive, and injunctive norms for adolescents’ self-presentation on Instagram and analyzes the role of proximal and distal reference groups in norm negotiation. Based on 27 semi-structured interviews with German Instagram users between 14 and 19 years old, we identified four types of adolescents’ self-presentation that differ in terms of norms and referent others: authentic, self-confident, self-staged, and audience-oriented self-presentation. In addition, our study demonstrates that adolescents engage in reflective norm breaches when coping with conflicting self-presentation norms. These results highlight the crucial role of both adolescents themselves and their proximal and distal reference groups for norm negotiation.