Gender roles on social networking sites: investigating reciprocal relationships between Dutch adolescents' hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity and sexy online self-presentations

Previous research has suggested that adolescents play out stereotypical gender roles in their self-presentations in social media. However, longitudinal research on the relationships between (sexy) online self-presentation and adolescents' gender role orientation is lacking. The present study in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of children and media 2017-04, Vol.11 (2), p.147-166
Main Authors: van Oosten, Johanna M. F., Vandenbosch, Laura, Peter, Jochen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Facebook
Gender
Instagram
media effects
Sex roles
Snapchat
Social networks
Social research
Studies
Teenagers
youth
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Summary:Previous research has suggested that adolescents play out stereotypical gender roles in their self-presentations in social media. However, longitudinal research on the relationships between (sexy) online self-presentation and adolescents' gender role orientation is lacking. The present study investigated whether endorsing a stereotypical gender role orientation (i.e., hypermasculinity for boys, hyperfemininity for girls) predisposes adolescents to engage in sexy self-presentation or to look at others' sexy self-presentations in social media. In addition, we investigated whether engaging in sexy self-presentation and looking at others' sexy self-presentation predicted an increased hypergender orientation over time. Using a three-wave short-term longitudinal panel survey among 1467 Dutch adolescents with six-month time intervals between waves, we found that adolescents' hypergender orientation predicted more frequent sexy self-presentation and exposure to others' sexy self-presentations in social media. Hypergender orientations were not predicted by these online behaviors and no gender differences were found.
ISSN:1748-2798
1748-2801
DOI:10.1080/17482798.2017.1304970