Waving and Drowning: UK Trans Youth Experiences of Social Media Affective Publics

Trans youth and their relationship to social media have been under increasing scrutiny in the UK, with social contagion fears influencing government-issued school guidance, and calls for bans on social media for under-16s in the wake of transphobic violence. In this context, trans youth are frequently discussed but rarely listened to. This project sought to address this by asking UK-based trans youth about their attitudes, experiences and feelings regarding their social media use, as well as what the qualities of an ideal social media would be. Data was collected by holding asynchronous online focus groups with 17 self-identified trans youth aged 17-24 between February and August 2023. Thematic analysis of the data resulted in 5 data chapters grouped into topics of: building identity and community, visibility traps and doors, negative vortextuality, transphobia, and imagined futures. Using a framework based in trans existentialism, queer, feminist and trans affect theory, intimate publics and a sociology of algorithms, narratives emerged of complex and ambivalent negotiations of treacherous and precious personal online environments. Results support a range of existing research on: the positive role of social media for identity work, possibility modelling and emotional support, the high exposure to transphobia online, and the desire for platforms designed with affordances that consider the needs of trans people over profit. Novel contributions to knowledge include insights into maintaining networks across multiple platforms, privacy and safety anxieties, algorithmic and human-coproduced harms, embattlement, and intimacy labour. Plus, new formulations of commitment to t4t counterintimacy and cycles of negative vortextuality and doomscrolling, utilising depressed trans reading to affirm the liveability of trans lives that contain a great deal of day-to-day negativity. These findings have implications for stakeholders that include education around ways to maximise well-being and safety for trans youth on social media without compromising their agency.