Processes and Manifestations of Digital Resilience: Video and Textual Insights from Sexual and Gender Minority Youth
Craig, S. L., Brooks, A. S., Doll, K., Eaton, A. D., McInroy, L. B., & Hui, J. H. (2023). Processes and manifestations of digital resilience: Video and textual insights from sexual and gender minority youth. Journal of Adolescent Research.
Highlights
Background
Sexual and gender minority youth (SGMY) experience greater exposure to stressors than youth who are not SGMs (Craig et al., 2020). These stressors are often attributed to their sexual and/or gender identities and expressions, which can lead to negative outcomes and behaviours (Davis et al., 2020; Russel & Fish, 2016).
SGMY have varied coping responses to their minority stress including resilience, defined as the ability to adapt constructively to risk exposure. Resilience is developed through promotive and protective factors and processes that are enacted through settings called “systems” (Bronfenbrenner, 2005).
A newer system called the “cybersystem” is composed of interconnected digital microsystems (Stokols, 2018) and is readily available through information communication technologies (ICTs) such as smart phones and tablets to “Gen Z”.
Online activity may foster resilience for youth who experience harm offline (Sage et al., 2021) but the literature on how youth do this has not been synthesized.
Study Description
Two research questions guide this study:
What digital activities do youth report engaging in to cope with stress; and
How do these online proximal processes develop resilience and improve self-reported well-being?
604 participants aged 14-29 years residing in the US or Canada responded anonymously to a single open-ended survey prompt: “Share a story about how the internet or social media has helped you feel strong or deal with stress in your life”. Participants could input a text or video response. Constructivist grounded theory was used to analyze this data.
Key Findings
This qualitative study identified four themes to demonstrate the proximal processes enacted in the cybersytem and their effects on individuals’ resilience to minority stress:
Regulating emotions and curating microsystems: Participants used the cybersystem as a distraction from stressors and to vent about them. By curating affirming digital microsystems, participants met a range of psychological needs while mitigating against online hostilities, appearing protective for youth experiencing harm offline.
Learning and integrating: Gathering information normalizes identity confusion and provides opportunities to experiment with new identity-related terminology and pronouns that may be a good ‘fit’. The unilateral functioning of search engines provided a safe way of accessing information without invasive questions by another person.
Cultivating relationships and communities of care: Participants mitigated the risk of unsupportive and invalidating offline microsystems by curating and consuming affirming online interpersonal and group relationships. However, users who engage less—such as ‘lurkers’ who do not interact with others—may stand to benefit less from these communities of care.
Advocating and leading: Participants mobilized to challenge online hate and cisheteronormative understandings of genders and sexualities. This required and developed a range of skills such as communication and self-care. Playing an active role in communities of care may develop self-advocacy and helping skills that may have offline developmental impacts for the individual and manifest wider community-level benefits.
A graphical representation of processes and manifestations of digital resilience. The left axis describes development over time whereas the right axis describes intrapersonal, interpersonal, and group proximal processes.
