For each of these dimensions, we will discuss how young people’s practices and ideas complicate stereotypical, gendered, and heteronormative narratives and dichotomies. Building on these studies, we explore our own research findings attempting to broaden the scope of public and academic debates by introducing four different dimensions of online sexuality. After that, we will go into the small, but growing, number of critical, empirical studies that interrogate and challenge these dichotomies by focusing on young people’s own experiences and perspectives, which are much more varied. First, we will explore further the dichotomous thinking represented in present-day discourses about youth, sexuality, and social media. We will use research from the fields of gender studies, queer studies, sociology, anthropology, pedagogy, and media studies, as well as our own empirical data to argue for a more nuanced and complex understanding of social media’s impact on youth sexuality.

In this chapter, we argue that a dominant anti-technology narrative in psychological research that informs many popular ideas about technological risk does not reflect the complexities of young people’s experiences with sexuality and social media.

Revelation online intimacy