https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9536-8515
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Abstract
Post qualitative inquiry is an immanent approach to research that I engaged during a study on TikTok with my 11-year-old daughter. In this article, I reflect on how its experimental style enabled a provisional escape from the hierarchy of adult/child through lines of flight. I also reflect on how binary thinking that disparages children’s knowledge permeated our post qualitative inquiry through my authority as a parent making decisions about my child’s social media use and as a university researcher making choices about academic theorizing, writing, and publishing. Rather than view these shifts as dualistic and contradictory, I suggest that post qualitative inquiry involves continuous, inseparable flows of blockage and rupture that create transformation. My TikTok education thus comprised learning about a social media application that matters to my daughter, but also attuning myself to moments of movement and stasis that heightened my desire to slip the confines of the adult/child hierarchy in parenting and research.
Acknowledgements
My deepest thanks to Jon Eben Field and two anonymous reviewers for your smart and attentive feedback.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the Author(s).
Notes
1 “Epi” is short for “episode.”
2 I received research ethics board permission to use my daughter’s real name in publications.
3 For example, Miriam watched TikToks on anti-Black racism (#BlackLivesMatter, the police killing of George Floyd), current events (the US presidential election, COVID-19), aesthetics and style (VSCO girl, room décor), dance (Renegade, Chrome), music (Doja Cat, 80s pop, Megan Thee Stallion), influencer culture (@charlidamelio, @nabela, @avani), youth mental health (depression, anxiety, cutting), and sexual harassment and misogyny (#MeToo, feminist memes), to name a fraction of the content she consumed.
4 For a critique of the tendency in post qualitative inquiry to paint all strands of humanism with the same brush, see Gerrard et al. (Citation2017).
5 Such panics are often framed by psychological and neuroscience studies that directly link young people’s social media use, especially that of girls, to depression, suicidal ideation, and body dysmorphia (Campbell, Citation2019; Kelly et al., Citation2019; Roberts, Citation2019; Royal Society for Public Health, Citation2017). As leaked insider research on Instagram shows, there are connections between girls’ social media use and mental health issues, yet there is also critique of this cause-and-effect argument. As Jessica Grosse (Citation2021, para 3) asks: “How do we know for sure that social media is worse for teen girls than traditional media was for previous generations?”
6 TikTok’s terms of service explain that account users must be 13 to access all the app’s features, though there is an under-13 account that offers limited access. Miriam had parental permission to register as a 13-year-old if her account remained private and her screentime was limited.
7 Snapchat and Instagram are also popular social media platforms with young people, but their overall user base includes more people over 24-years-old than TikTok. Users also spend more time on TikTok than other social media applications, logging on for at least 45 min a day compared with 26 min on Snapchat and 29 min on Instagram (Barnhart, Citation2021).
8 Miriam explained the Hype House as, “a house full of famous TikTokers who live together, they sleep, like, in the same house, they eat breakfast together and then they make TikToks all day together,” also known as a “collab house” (Lorenz, Citation2020).
9 Charli D’Amelio is the most well known TikTok personality and was the first to exceed 100 million followers. For a critical exploration of D’Amelio’s popularity and its relation to white, middle-class femininity, see Kennedy (Citation2020).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Shauna Pomerantz
Shauna Pomerantz is Professor of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University, Canada. She has published on immanent girlhoods, girls and social media, girls’ style, dress codes, skater girls, girls’ academic success, girlhoods in popular culture, and reconceptualizing childhood studies. She is author of Girls, Style, and School Identities: Dressing the Part, and co-author of Girl Power: Girls Reinventing Girlhoods and Smart Girls: Success, School, and the Myth of Post-Feminism.