The Girls Social Media Project (GU Ref No. 2017/568) was a locally representative study that explored Queensland Year 7 and 8 girls’ social media use. 
The study focused on girls in this age group because they are more likely than any other demographic to experience online problems such as cyberbullying and emotional distress in relation to these experiences (Alexander et al., 2016; Cooper et al. 2016; OESC, 2018; Rigby & Johnson, 2016). 
The study investigated girls’:
  • online safety practices
  • social media practices with friends
  • online difficulties and challenges

The study: participants and methods

2017
75 Year 7 girls from 2 Queensland high schools completed a project designed online survey
38 Year 7 girls from the same schools were involved in group discussions about the survey contributions
2018
160+ Year 8 girls from the same schools were involved in a school-based social media project where girls collaborated with peers to produce a wide range of materials with helpful messages about social media for girls their age.
46 Year 8 girls from the same schools were involved in group discussions about the project work.

Key findings

Girls' online safety practices
These are well-recognised national and international online safety practices.
Most girls could easily provide explicit examples of what these actions ‘looked-like’ in their social media practice. 
Girls' social media practice with friends
  • plan events and share experiences
  • co-create and share selfies
  • comment on and like each other’s content and images
  • follow friends to see what they are doing
  • use specific codes and rituals for sharing private content
  • create private accounts or messaging groups usually with ‘besties’
  • sometimes share passwords with ‘besties’
  • download apps recommended or used by friends without seeking adult guidance
Social media is an important site for girls’ to negotiate friendship. Being supportive, trustworthy, and loyal are key to these relationships. Girls often adapt online protocols to meet these expectations. However, these adaptations can make life difficult for them with friends.
​ Girls' online annoyances, difficulties & troubles
  • other girls showing off
  • inappropriate language/content/images posted by peers (girls and boys)
  • parent monitoring/restrictions
  • pressure to “have” social media
  • posting, checking, commenting, and liking demands
  • private content/messages shared online
  • mean/hurtful posts/name-calling
  • dramas or fights in group messaging
  • cyberbullying
Many girls talked about cyberbullying but few actually reported being bullied. Instead, most were annoyed by other girls showing off and sharing inappropriate content and found mean/hurtful behaviour difficult to deal with.
Girls’ strategies for negotiating online troubles
  • Seek support from friends: ‘I ask my friends for help and they tell me what to do.’
  • Don’t block, just talk: ‘I talk to them face-to-face to work it out’.
  • Ignore it: ‘I just ignore it so it doesn’t get worse’.
  • Block/delete: ‘If it is someone I don’t know or really care about, I block or delete them’.
  • Reporting tools: ‘If it is someone I don’t know, I just use the report button on the app’.
  • Get mad: “Sometimes I just have to have a go back cause it makes me so mad”.
  • Tell parents: ‘If it’s really dangerous or scary, I tell my mum’.
  • Tell teachers/principals: “When it’s really bad, you need to go to the principal”
Girls have their own ideas about how to manage online troubles.  Online safety protocols needs to be reframe to support their help-seeking preferences (e.g., specific peer support programs).
Why don’t girls report online troubles to adults
  1. Get in trouble: “I didn’t even do anything and I got in trouble.”
  2. Won’t be believed: “my parents didn’t believe me”
  3. Device taken away: “if I tell my parents, they will take my phone away,  that’s social suicide”
  4. Problems get worse: “they will find another way of getting at me”
  5. Get called a snitch: “I would rather put up with it than be called a snitch”.
Regulatory standards, implied penalties, personal beliefs, fear and local taboos  significantly influence girls’ help seeking and reporting practices.
Take-away messages
Friendship is a powerful influencer, it offers important clues as to how girls interpret, translate and enact online safety protocols. Friendship expectations, local circumstances, and the often invisible social conditions of girls’ everyday interaction can inform policy and online safety practice. There is a need for age, gender and context specific online safety guidelines as well as locally developed peer support programs.

​Recommendations for schools

  • Translate generic online safety rules and online wellbeing agendas into age and gender-specific strategies.
  • Use a school-based approach that involves: mapping year-level and gender-specific concerns.
  • Develop year-level and gender-specific strategies through student-led projects and activities. Use gendered groupings for Years 7 – 9 students.
  • Focus on reframing regulatory online reporting practices into help seeking options that effectively leverage/encourage peer group support.

New Social Media Mindset Framework

A poster was developed as a teaching resource to help develop a social media mindset for students, available here as a PDF [348 KB].