Social Media in Juvenile Delinquency Practices: Uses and Unlawful Acts Recorded in Youth Justice in Portugal

• Published in: Comunicação e sociedade (Braga.) pp. 157 - 177
• Main Author: Carvalho, Maria João Leote de
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centro de estudos de comunicação e sociedade 2022
• Subjects: redes sociais; delinquency; youth justice; delinquência; práticas digitais; jovens; justiça juvenil; young people; digital practices; social media
• ISSN: 1645-2089; 2183-3575
• DOI: 10.17231/COMSOC.42(2022).3988

Currently, the strong involvement of young people in social media raises questions about potential multiplier effects on risks and opportunities for delinquent practices. It is not always easy to distinguish a harmless online action, an integral part of the social and relational experimentation typical of adolescence, from a fact that will constitute an unlawful act subject to judicial intervention. This article seeks to understand and discuss how the use of social media is materialized in the facts, defined as a crime by the criminal law, perpetrated by young people aged between 12 and 16, in the context of youth justice in Portugal. It is based on an exploratory analysis of qualitative information collected in a Family and Children Court from youth justice proceedings concerning 201 young people of both sexes. Just under a third of this population was proven to have been involved in unlawful acts using social media at three levels: planning/ organization, execution and dissemination. Multiple participation in social media is dominant. There is a significant overrepresentation of girls as perpetrators of unlawful acts, especially those involving a high degree of violence, embodying the online-offline continuum. Most of the analysed facts of both sexes have at their epicentre the perception that personal honour has been attacked and requires reparation. From there, it is a short step to violence, which can lead to a reconfiguration and exchange of roles between victim and aggressor, which is not always easy to prove. For both sexes, the relationships established in school dominate the interaction between aggressors-victims. More than the anonymity afforded by the digital, what stands out is the need for affirmation in public and/or semi-private space, and violent action is the catalyst to gain respect through the instant gratification offered by social media in an online-offline continuum embodying the “onlife” (Floridi, 2017) that characterizes the lives of young people today.