“Boys are Allowed to be Drunk”: Exploring Gender Norms in Adolescents' Alcohol References Across Different Social Media Platforms and Message Types

Abstract

With alcohol experiences increasingly shared on social media, this study investigated the construction and understanding of gender norms in alcohol posts: (a) whether stereotypical gender norms prevail across different platforms and message types (b) among adolescents. Focus group interviews with 47 adolescents (Mage= 16.21; SD = 1.22) indicated that social media are important outlets for reproducing stereotypical norms. While sharing alcohol depictions was deemed to be stereotypically female, there were gender differences in the acceptability of sharing certain types of alcohol depictions. As opposed to girls, it was more appropriate for males to depict extreme, negative alcohol behaviors. While girls acknowledged that ephemeral environments enabled them to feel comfortable sharing extreme alcohol behaviors, they carefully negotiated these references by limiting the number of these posts, highlighting female traits in them, and restricting this content to close friends only. Thus, alcohol-related social media posts are more stereotypical than actual drinking experiences, even in more deliberating message types including ephemeral ones.