Researching health-related learning with “digitalised youth”: challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Social media operates as a powerful pedagogical space through which “digitalised youth” learn about “healthy lifestyles” in complex ways, which often compete with the health-related knowledge taught in formal educative spaces, such as PE. This chapter explores on how to address the ethical and methodological challenges of conducting research with “digitalised youth”. To do this, we outline a recent research project investigating young women’s health-related learning within a popular social media site (Instagram) and the tensions these young women experienced with the formal educative space of Physical Education. We analyse this project using the CREATE framework, reflecting deeply on all aspects of the inquiry and supporting this reflection with detailed examples. We also consider changes that could be made to ensure future research further supports youth voice, highlighting the relevance of creative participatory methodologies for exploring young people’s online experiences, feelings and affects in order to re-imagine empowering experiences of both learning and research. Finally, we explore some challenges to adhering to the CREATE principles but ultimately argue how useful these principles are when constructing a socially just and transformative research process.