The Promise and Peril of Social Media: How Context Shapes Online Risks and Digital Literacy Among Marginalised Adolescents

Debates about adolescent online risks often overlook the lived realities of young people navigating structural adversity and digital inequality. This qualitative study explores how 20 adolescents in a low-income, semi-rural South African community navigate the double-edged nature of social media. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we show how offline violence, gendered power dynamics, and structural inequalities are entangled with online experiences, creating overlapping risks that amplify existing vulnerabilities. At the same time, social media is a source of entertainment, belonging, and glimpses of alternative futures, particularly for adolescents with personal smartphone access. Digital literacy in this context is largely informal and reactive, shaped by peers and trusted adults rather than formal education. These findings contribute to debates on adolescent online risks and digital inequality by showing how local contexts structure both the benefits and harms of social media as well as the forms of digital competence that develop. We argue that understanding adolescent digital life requires attention to structural adversity, everyday social dynamics, and the interdependence of online and offline worlds.