Multilayered social media self-presentation practices: How German adolescents present themselves on Instagram and Snapchat

Self-presentation plays a significant role during adolescence and is often performed on image-based social media plat­ forms, such as Instagram and Snapchat. Our study examined common self-presentation practices and overarching forms of self-presentation among German adolescents as well as the influence of both individual (gender, social media use, per­ ceived benefits) and structural influencing factors (audience size and anticipated feedback) on these forms of selfpresentation. We conducted computer-assisted face-to-face surveys with 1,002 German Instagram and/or Snapchat users between 14 and 16 years of age. Our findings illustrate that adolescents present themselves through a variety of different practices on Instagram and Snapchat. We identified selfpresentation practices that are common on both platforms, but we also found indications for platform-specific practices. Furthermore, principal component analysis identified three overarching forms of self-presentation: staged selfpresentation, authentic self-presentation, and presentation of everyday life.