‘Us girls … we have such a strong support system': mediated care among adolescent girls on a night out

In contemporary public and scientific discourse, the role of social media in young people’s lives is frequently problematized. However, technologies are often involved in practices of care, and this complicates dystopian images of digital technologies and their influence. In this study, I draw on feminist and Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives on care to analyze five focus group discussions with a total of 38 adolescent girls, demonstrating how social media is an integrated and important part of how they practice care during a night of drinking. The results indicate that girls’ care in nightlife can be characterized as embedded in a feminized culture of care, rather than solely a response to the risks they experience. Moreover, the study emphasizes two particular ways that social media is part of this culture of care: location sharing as a means of providing care for others, and the use of media involvement shields as a form of self-care. Social media applications are simultaneously objects of commercial practices and of objects of care practices. Both aspects are part of young people’s lived experiences with digital media, and political initiatives targeting their media use should be attentive to such complexity.