Could Social Media Positively Affect Black Youth?

Like many teenagers, I spent many weekends during my formative years at the mall – a popular place for young people to gather in the 80s and 90s. My fellow mall compatriots were comprised of white, Black, and Latinx friends – mainly girls – and it didn’t take long to notice that my experience differed based on who I was with. While shopping with my white girlfriends often generated smiles and offers of support from retail workers, browsing with my Black girlfriends sometimes resulted in suspicious looks and covert following, offering subtle (and not-so-subtle!) reminders that our presence was viewed as problematic.

Many Black people of all ages can recount such experiences, but young Black people today live in a society characterized by new levels of polarization and divisiveness, thereby positioning them to experience racial discrimination at new heights. Research shows that today’s Black youth are subject to racial discrimination at higher rates than any other racial minority in the U.S., averaging five instances a day. While such experiences are often associated with greater depression and anxiety in the short-term, they can also produce more entrenched effects in the long term, ones researchers refer to more recently as racial trauma or stress related to the real or perceived experiences of racial discrimination. Several studies have noted how negative outcomes related to racial discrimination mimic post-traumatic stress reactions, and Black youth are particularly vulnerable to these impacts, since they’ve not always yet developed the skills to cope with racism-related encounters.

Prior research also shows that the length, proximity, or intensity of a racism-related experience doesn’t correlate with mental health impacts — in other words, regardless of whether it’s a one-time microaggression or the persistent experience of being treated as less than white peers, it can be equally harmful to mental health. And it can occur in spaces often deemed safe ones. Researcher Dawn Henderson and team reviewed prior research and found that school interactions, especially ones associated with feelings of alienation, racial discrimination, and violence, can produce heightened levels of anxiety, depression, substance use, and aggression in Black youth.

The effects aren’t just psychological; current research is uncovering how unjust policing and community violence impacts biological systems in Black youth. Researcher Shannin Moody and team showed children whose mothers experienced unfair treatment from police displayed altered activity with cortisol, one of the hormones that regulates the body’s stress response. Teenagers who experienced police encounters had the same or higher cortisol levels as emerging adults. Other research found that different stressors coming directly from the social environment, including violence and family conflict, can also produce blunted cortisol responses in Black youth, which increase susceptibility to mental health challenges.

While Black youth grapple with racism and its realities, it’s important to remember that those aren’t the only challenges they face — they’re expected to navigate racism and all the other challenges that shape mental health outcomes over time (Bernard, 2020). With more and more research underscoring the influence of racism on mental health outcomes, Donte Bernard and team created the culturally-informed Adverse Childhood Experiences model (C-ACE), which recognizes racism as a distinct ACE category and determinant of post-ACE mental health outcomes for Black youth. This model combines the existence of historical trauma, social disadvantage, and biological predisposition to show how Black youth are uniquely vulnerable to ACEs and their potential health consequences.

A growing body of research justifies the existence of racial trauma and its effects on young Black people — and they acknowledge the massive systems and structures that often interplay to create a perfect storm of ACE-delivering experiences. So where do Black youth find support for this reality? Social media could have promise as a tool for Black youth to engage in positive identity development, which can mediate some of the effects of racial discrimination and resulting trauma.

Researchers Tate LeBlanc and Aerika Brittian Loyd studied social media and its effects on positive racial and STEM-related identities, and they claim that social media may actually contain tools and functions that promote well-being and positive identity development despite the known risks. When social media is used to maintain offline relationships, explore new content and connections, and try different modes of self-representation, it can impact the cognitive processes that support positive identity development. Social media provides the opportunity to seek out and create culturally affirming spaces.

LeBlanc and Loyd note five social-cognitive processes that may influence the association between social media use and positive identity outcomes:

1. Possible selves: From a young age, Black children receive negative messages about their race. Using media to envision themselves and their future prospects allows them to craft a real and bespoke narrative about who they are.
2. Self-efficacy: Black youth face racism-related stressors in their educational and social contexts, therefore seeing themselves as competent and capable is crucial for development. Social media can enhance their ability to achieve goals by seeing organizations, groups, and individuals that showcase the breadth and depth of what is possible, thereby expanding possibilities for positive identity development.
3. Sense of belonging: Belonging helps Black youth determine which groups and spaces affirm their authentic selves. Social media allows them to connect with adults and peers who affirm positive facets of their identity.
4. Sense of social support: Social support can extend beyond connectedness to equipping Black youth with information that helps them see themselves differently. Social media may provide a means of secondary support through exposure to content that offers guidance relevant to certain domains of racial identity.
5. Personal interest: While researchers spoke specifically to STEM content in this context, developing interests is a healthy way to affirm the self-concept. Social media can help them to identify and cultivate their interests and potential career options.

The authors noted that their hope with this research was to highlight ways social media may actually make Black youth’s worlds bigger, thereby allowing them the space to dream bigger. This doesn’t mean that the pitfalls of social media aren’t still real and relevant — they are. But if social media has the capacity to not only offset the harms of racism, but also expand beyond its grasp, perhaps it’s worth cultivating these spaces and giving young people the knowledge to navigate them. While more research is still needed, the promise of social media as a positive space for Black youth is encouraging.