Social media as moral laboratory: street involved youth, death and grief

Abstract

ABSTRACT Street involved youth experience both increased rates of mortality and the all too frequent deaths of people they know, rely on, and care about. In this paper, we explore how street-involved youth dealing with the death of peers or family are engaging in what Mattingly calls ‘moral laboratories’, that is, ‘experiments in how life might or should be lived’ (2014, 27). Drawing from interviews with youth in Victoria, Canada, we analyse aspects of their narratives on social media and grief – finding out about the death, what to post, and supporting others. The affordances of social media mean news of a death can spread like wildfire, private lives become public, the deceased’s reputation is scrutinized and judged, as are the words and actions of youth trying to survive. In offline and online spaces, marginalized youth experiment with expressing their grief, rage, and hope, with mourning and memorializing, navigating fractured and complicated relationships, and finding ways to support themselves and others. We argue that thinking about the ‘moral lives’ of street youth can highlight important aspects of their relationships of family, friendships, and community and their strategies for both protecting these key relationships and finding reasons to keep on living.