Sexualising characteristics of adolescent on TikTok. Comparative study Great Britain–Spain

Abstract

The research addresses whether adolescents are increasing their self-sexualisation on TikTok through content analysis. It has studied the type and number of sexualising features present in the videos that Spanish and British teenagers share on the social network TikTok, offering a comparative view. A total of 447 videos from 12 British and 12 Spanish tiktokers aged 11 to 17 have been analysed, considering their gender and age and comparing both nationalities. A high level of self-sexualisation has been found in the videos of adolescents of both genders and nationalities. The results show that age and gender determine the sexualising characteristics included in their videos and that British and Spanish minors do not use the same sexualising codes, although neither nationality is more sexualised than the other. It has been confirmed that boys and girls self-sexualise in similar proportions. Age determines sexualising characteristics they incorporate in their audio–visual productions, which indicate the blurring of traditional stereotyped roles and the unification of sexual codes that have traditionally been considered a female domain.