‘It was too much technology … I chucked my laptop across the room': young women, networked affect and the positivity imperative

Abstract

ABSTRACT Engaging with theories of networked affect, this paper highlights the importance of new ways of thinking about young women’s relations with social media beyond ‘good or bad’ narratives, and towards more affective, embodied and agentic relations with digital technologies. Drawing upon interviews with 45 young women (16–25 years), we reveal the emergence of new digital intensities during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the reshaping of young women’s digital encounters. As well as highlighting the importance of digital technologies for escaping the stressors of pandemic life, digital practices surfaced creativity, connection and moments of joy. Yet for many young women, the ‘positivity imperative’ to perform proactive and productive feminine subjectivities during the pandemic re-turned their digital relations, surfacing negative affects (i.e. guilt, anger, shame) about themselves and their bodies. There was a networked affective ‘stickiness’ of these feelings, prompting some to navigate new boundaries around their social media engagement to protect their own wellbeing. In so doing, we see how the pandemic acted as a ‘jolt or spark’, activating new affective entanglements with digital technologies, and evoking new ethical and affective relations of care with bodies and subjectivities.