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Maria Puertas, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, SpainAbstract
Digital platforms have rapidly become central spaces where adolescents negotiate identity, belonging, and peer relationships. Applications such as WhatsApp, TikTok, Instagram, and Discord structure everyday interactions, shaping discourses marked by immediacy, multimodality, and constant connectivity. While these ecologies can foster creativity and solidarity, they also give rise to subtle risks, including symbolic exclusion—discursive practices of marginalisation enacted through silence, irony, or digital humour—that significantly affect young people’s emotional well-being and social integration.
This study examines the communicative practices of Spanish secondary school students in online contexts, drawing on discourse-analytic approaches to identify dominant patterns of interaction, the emergence of conflict, and strategies of agency and resilience. Findings highlight how adolescents both reproduce power relations and experiment with new forms of expression that challenge exclusion and foster inclusion. The educational implications are critical. Current approaches to digital literacy remain too focused on technical proficiency, overlooking the cultural, emotional, and ethical dimensions of online communication. This paper argues for a pedagogy that integrates critical discourse awareness, emotional education, and intercultural reflection. Such frameworks would enable teachers to recognise hidden forms of exclusion while empowering adolescents to engage in inclusive and empathetic communication. By framing adolescent voices as both vulnerable and transformative, the paper positions classrooms as key arenas for cultivating critical digital literacies that prepare young people to navigate digital ecologies responsibly, creatively, and as active citizens.
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