Only for Friends, Definitely Not for Parents: Adolescents’ Sharing of Alcohol References on Social Media Features

Although previous studies have examined alcohol-related posts on social media, the variety in studied platforms and features has been limited. Therefore, by conducting 26 go-along interviews (age 14–18, M = 16.31, SD = .84), this study investigated (1) whether alcohol-related posts differ across SNS features (i.e., chat, feed, story, snap) and (2) whether privacy management strategies play a role in adolescents’ decisions to disclose these different alcohol posts across different SNS features. The findings of this study underline the important role of features’ affordances. Particularly, based on the public visibility of a feature, adolescents reported eliminating certain audiences (e.g., peers, parents) by adapting privacy settings or by strategically selecting more private features before sharing transgressive alcohol posts on these features. In all, this paper broadens the current knowledge about the depiction of alcohol posts in the heterogeneous media landscape. Implications for interventions are proposed.