Friendships, intimacy and digital intermediation in adolescence

This article examines how adolescents regulate privacy and friendships through their use of social media. Based on two surveys conducted on 12- to 18-year-olds, we show how they appropriate the technical features of these platforms to establish the norms of friendship and manage their private lives. We then show that this modelling is frequently challenged by issues related to preventing the dissemination of private information, the quest for social prestige, and peer pressure. Finally, the tensions and controversies that permeate their digital lives sometimes give rise to ambivalent forms of mediation by peers who take on the role of intermediary. These relational dynamics hint at the contours of an emerging regime of online diplomacy between peers, which this article explores.