ABSTRACT
This chapter makes a case for researchers and health promoters to consider young people’s digital media expertise. This expertise is more than technological but encompasses a rich understanding of platform cultures and knowledge of where health discussion can and cannot operate in social media. Young people’s knowledge of social media platform cultures typically surpasses that of health promoters, educators, and researchers. Young people’s digital media competencies are underpinned by friendship and peer-based interactions, but health promotion strategies often fail to engage with these. The chapter analyses discourses of social media use by comparing researcher accounts of digital health interventions with young people’s discussions of social media use. It explores two key themes of focus group data. Firstly, how participants foregrounded friendship as the central component of their social media use, and secondly, how participant discussions of social media use can be understood as expertise.
