As social media usage increases in children and adolescents, the boundaries of teenagehood begin to blur with it. According to the American National Institute of Health, upwards of 40 per cent of children aged 8 to 12 years old use social media. While most social media platforms, such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube, have a minimum age of 13 years old required for users, children are still able to access these platforms by simply inputting a different age.
Children younger than 13 being on these platforms presents an issue regarding the formation of their personal identities, as children’s brains undergo key biological shifts between the ages of 10 and 12 years old. As an article published in the American Psychological Association by Zara Abrams details, from 10 to 12 years old there is a key shift in dopamine receptors multiplying, which makes children especially sensitive to social rewards such as attention and admiration. This change makes the likes, views, attention, and notifications from social media incredibly rewarding for the preteen. This is further supported by a study published in JAMA Pediatrics, a key peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Medical Association; this study found that the constant feedback loops from social media, such as likes and virality, continually over-sensitise the adolescent brain to external validation during a key developmental stage. This constant stimulation therefore locks the adolescent into an extended loop of teenage-like emotional volatility and reward-seeking behaviour well into their mid-twenties, which extends their perceived and behavioural teenagehood and stunts their behavioural ascent into adulthood.
This unadulterated access to social media has facilitated what many are calling the “disappearance of the tween”, a modern sociological phenomenon which examines the ways in which tween culture and spaces have disappeared. The boundaries of teenagehood have been stretched and challenged, with the digital-age teenagehood argued as beginning as young as 9 or 10 years old and extending into the mid-twenties by some sociologists. In the Oxford English Dictionary, “teenager” is defined as “a young person aged from 13 to 19 years old”. Traditionally, teenagehood begins and is defined by a set mix of biological and chronological benchmarks. Biologically, teenagehood begins in the pre-teen era once puberty hits, typically around age 10. Chronologically, teenagehood begins officially at age 13, as “thir-teen” is the literal start of the teen years. It is the mix of these benchmarks which defines the core meaning of “teenager”.
Given the way that social media platforms operate, digital content is flattened into teen and adult content streams with no distinct segment aimed at the preteen audience. This pushes 8 to 12 year olds, who are not supposed to be on these platforms, straight into teenage and adult trends and content streams. Experiencing this content facilitates a compressed childhood as younger children begin to adopt the online teenage behaviour they see on social media; scrolling through the exact same fashion trends, music, and feeds pushes these children to engage in teenage subcultures that are supposed to serve as markers to differentiate teens from children and adults.
These children use social media to create their public personas and curate their sense of identity during a time when their own core identity has not fully formed. This creates an algorithmic echo chamber of identity which encourages children to all wear the same brands, listen to the same music, and practice the same behaviours they see online, beckoning the “disappearance of the tween” as the tween subculture dissipates. It is through this that children are able to perform teenagehood before traditional markers of teenagedom have been met. Teenagehood therefore becomes an act of consumption and spending — they attempt to bypass the tween stage by consuming adult and teen fashion and beauty trends, with Mintel Market Research reporting that preteen cosmetic usage has reached a widespread 50 per cent rate among children aged 9 to 14 and CBS News reporting that households with children 12 and under spending more on skincare and makeup than households that only have teenagers. These children look to social media to facilitate their early ascension to teenagedom, believing that products and social signals can replace the key benchmarks needed.
In this age of social media, teenagehood can therefore be performed through consumerist subculture; participation in the right fashion trends, usage of the right slang, and listening to certain music allows children to perform aspects of teenage subculture and identity before reaching traditional benchmarks. However, this does not inherently mean that these children are now teenagers — just that they are behaving like them. The actual definition of teenagehood has not changed; social media has just facilitated the access and consumption of teenage media and feeds to a younger audience, beckoning the disappearance of the tween phase itself.
