Can platform literacy protect vulnerable young people against the risky affordances of social media platforms?

A qualitative study of young people with mental health difficulties sought to understand their digital experiences and identify whether their digital literacy helps them cope with online problems. The findings reveal how young people’s encounters with extreme online risk are amplified by platforms’ promotion of trending and viral content and intensified through the personalisation of content that can ‘trigger’ individual vulnerabilities. We conceptualise these twin processes in terms of risky affordances and show how young people are becoming hypervigilant in their efforts to understand them and take anticipatory and remedial action. In the process, they gain platform literacy, a form of digital literacy that responds to the challenges posed by platform architecture and business models and encompasses data and algorithm literacies. Specifically, young people gained platform literacy by critically examining and comparing social media platforms for their risky features at the interface (on the screen), business operation, and user support (beyond the screen). There were indications that this learning was facilitated by peer discussion, shared experimentation and reflexive deliberation about how their digital experiences relate to their individual biographies. When efforts to manage these risky affordances failed, the young people tended to blame themselves. However, they expected society to support them through improved digital literacy education, clinical support and platform regulation and design. Such systemic changes are vital if vulnerable youth are not to be left responsible for coping with the effects of powerful digital platforms on their mental health.