Gendered media practices in new media environments: how young people engage with romantic and sexual advice on TikTok

Young people’s sexual learning is shaped by their engagement with various information sources. Social media is one such source, and advice on successful flirting and sexual engagement is a recurring theme on TikTok. Deploying a media practice approach (Couldry 2004) and drawing on data from ten focus groups with a total of 72 Danish adolescents aged 15-17, this study explores how young people engage with TikTok influencers’ romantic and sexual advice. The analysis finds substantial gender differences in how the focus groups engaged with the videos. On the one hand, the boys were more open to using influencers’ advice as a source of romantic and sexual learning. This may be attributed to the social inappropriateness often associated with discussions of intimacy in male friendship groups, making social media a more accessible learning source for them. On the other hand, the girls generally rejected the advice videos, viewing them as manipulative and emphasizing their friends as their primary source of sexual learning. Finally, new media environments influenced participants’ engagements with the videos. While not uncritical of commercial logics, they emphasized that influencers’ popularity, perceived authenticity, and circulation of opinions in the comment sections could influence the perceived trustworthiness of the advice.