The ways in which we communicate have seen a drastic change in the last 10 years with social media making its way into our lives. Teenagers are at the very core of this expansive online community with your average teenager often being active in multiple platforms and apps. Through social media teenagers are greatly expanding their social reach and capacity and are connecting with the world at a rate like we have never known.

Social media plays an important role in making and maintaining friendships for this age group. A survey (Anderson & Jiang 2018) shows that about 81% of teenagers attribute their increased connectedness with their friends to social media and about seven in ten teens say it helps them express their creative side. Nevertheless, social media has also put tremendous pressure on the teens to stay on top of their activity, to fit in with their peers and stay in the loop. The same survey shows that 45% of teens report feeling of overwhelm and nearly the same percentage of teens feel the pressure to be liked by others. This indicates that the impact of social media on the emotional wellbeing of its teenage users is highly significant and should not be underestimated. As speech and language therapists, it is therefore vital that we look at the intricacies of this new platform of communication and its impact on the children we see so that we can support them to use it in a way that is in line with their aims of socialising and making friends but also reducing any potential harm they could suffer online.

Children on the Autism Spectrum may have particular difficulty using inferencing skills to understand sarcasm when chatting with their peers on social media. ASC (Autistic Spectrum Condition) is a cluster of conditions characterised by differences in communication, social interactions, expressing emotions and cognitive processing. Children with ASC may have learning abilities ranging from above to below average. Those with average to above average intellectual abilities, informally referred to as ‘High-Functioning Autism’ may face many challenges in mainstream school when interacting with their ‘neurotypical’ peers. Communication skills in the areas of pragmatics, social interactions and higher language skills (e.g. understanding inference, sarcasm, jokes, metaphors, or other non-literal language such as idioms) can prove challenging to some children with ASC and these children may feel confused and left out as a result. They are often at a high risk of being mocked at or bullied by peers who have limited awareness or understanding of Autism.

In order to make therapy functionally relevant to this client group, I have compiled a list of common chatting/texting phrases for my clients with their literal and possible non-literal meanings (see the table below for some examples). In sessions, I help these young people understand that messages may have indirect meanings and may not always directly mean what they say. We explore together the possible ‘hidden’ meanings behind the literal phrases. My intervention also addresses the difficulties these young people often have in expressing and understanding their own and others’ emotions in the context of the complexities of social media communication. Alongside the short-term targets, the overall goal of an intervention is to tie in with the bigger picture i.e. the overall wellbeing of that individual young person.

References

Teens and social media: An overview

Madden, M., Lenhart, A., Cortesi, S., Gasser, U., Duggan, M., Smith, A., & Beaton, M. (2013). Teens, social media, and privacy. Pew Research Center, 21(1055), 2-86.

Teens' social media habits and experiences

Anderson, M., & Jiang, J. (2018). Teens’ social media habits and experiences. Pew Research Center, 28.

Teens, social media & technology 2018. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018/. Anderson, M., & Jiang, J. (2018). Teens, social media & technology 2018. Pew Research Center, 31, 2018. Accessed November, 2020

“Friending” teens: systematic review of social media in adolescent and young adult health care

Yonker, L. M., Zan, S., Scirica, C. V., Jethwani, K., & Kinane, T. B. (2015). “Friending” teens: systematic review of social media in adolescent and young adult health care. Journal of medical Internet research, 17(1), e4.

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