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“You Never Know Who's Looking at Your Page!”: African American Male Adolescents’ Perceptions of Emotional Display Rules Online
Author(s) -
Galletta Horner Christy,
Akiva Thomas
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of research on adolescence
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.342
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1532-7795
pISSN - 1050-8392
DOI - 10.1111/jora.12478
Subject(s) - sadness , anger , embarrassment , psychology , perception , social psychology , context (archaeology) , developmental psychology , paleontology , neuroscience , biology
Social network sites ( SNS s) are a powerful new context for adolescent development. We qualitatively investigate African American adolescent boys’ ( N = 50, mean age = 15.8) perceptions of emotional display rules on SNS s. We present and discuss a taxonomy of display rules for anger, sadness, embarrassment, and excitement. Perceived display rules around anger and sadness were most notable. Participants’ understandings of display rules around anger were complex and varied, with many describing threats of violence as marking the line between acceptable and unacceptable expressions. Although youth stated that expressing sadness via SNS could garner emotional support, this was understood somewhat consistently as unacceptable. Overall, our findings suggest that perceptions of emotional display rules on SNS s are varied, complicated, and can be difficult to navigate.