We Have Something to Say: Dismantling Adultism and Recentering Youth Voice in Social Work Practice and Research through Digital and Social Media

Democratizing work with young people requires challenging adultism, the beliefs and assumptions that bias society toward adult interests. Zeldin and colleagues (2018) posit that "adultism pervades our society, yet it is often not recognized as an axis of oppression"(p. 299). Despite attempts to neutralize operationalized power dynamics, youth studies suffer from the biases of adult-centered interests and constructions of youth. Studies about young people seldom include their direct engagement and voices, instead drawing from indirect data collection and reliances on adult proxies such as guardians. Yet, power is held by those with the voice to participate in decision-making. While the concept of bi-directional adult-youth power-sharing seems logical, many adults do not embody skills or democratized norms for effective pluralistic power-sharing. Without established and embodied power sharing, youth-adult partnerships may be difficult for adults to engage in equitably, usurping youth participatory action research frameworks, positive youth development models, and youth-centered research and praxis gaining momentum in social sciences. By defining a conceptualization of collaborative, trauma-informed, emancipatory youth-adult engagement, social work can enhance research and practice to empower one of the most undervalued facets of society: youth voice.

Centering young voices is one of the greatest affordances of youth-centered spaces, yet the impact of adultism and structures that demote youth voice remains underexplored in research. Creative action with young people requires a range of expressive possibilities that extends "beyond the limiting constraints of discursive communication to express meanings that otherwise would be ineffable"(Barone & Eisner, 2012, p. 1). This requires shifting from youth risk/deficit models and increasing democratized empowerment models to promote liberatory strengths perspectives, relevant to participatory action-oriented research and engaged practice models. These recentered models promote youth capacity, youth voice, and in turn positive youth outcomes.

Identifying ways that young people can congregate and share their voices is increasingly leaning toward digital domains. Digital media affords creative expression and counternarratives that promotes young people making meaning of the world through arts-based and socially engaged artistic connected tools such as digital storytelling that center on relational aesthetics. Social media could help young people develop new connections and facilitate interpersonal relationships with peers. At the same time, social media also has the potential to offer young people spaces for collaborative learning and fostering support-seeking through digital platforms. These social media platforms can be leveraged to effectively advocate for social awareness about issues intended to affect change for large-scale societal issues.

In this roundtable, we define elements of digital media, digital storytelling, and social media as promising tools for mitigating the impact of adultism. We discuss the affordances of digital and social media as inclusive, democratized forums for youth voices to promote expression and civic engagement. In collaboration with community partners- a youth educator and a young digital media leader who forged a national fellowship for filmmakers of color- we discuss digital and social media as forums for fostering positive youth development. We conclude with key principles and practices for bolstering asset paradigms and youth-affirming praxis to recenter social work practice and research.