Development of a conceptual model of children and adolescents virtual world life in social media

The importance of finding a safe and supportive online environment for children and adolescents, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, is an issue that requires attention in the field of communication sciences. Various countries have been working for years to understand the experiences of this age group in the online space. In Iran, theoretical resources on this subject are severely limited. Therefore, the aim of this article is to explain the dimensions and theoretical approaches that support the virtual life of children and adolescents using a descriptive-analytical approach.This article designs a model for explaining the communication behavior of children and adolescents in social media by taking a comprehensive view and considering different approaches to their relationship with media (child-centered and media-centered), as well as different approaches to new communication technologies (such as deterministic, instrumentalist, cultural studies, and social formation). Finally, by explaining various aspects of this issue, it concludes that at a micro level, the relationship between access to social media, interaction patterns, and learning in social media can lead to the formation of a media identity for children and adolescents.Technological changes are a process that has no direction. Understanding the place of the virtual space in the lives of adolescents requires us to avoid having a purely technological interpretation and to understand the social position of technology and its variable outputs. The virtual space can be an element that creates new cultural characteristics in the social life of young people, but these behaviors may also reproduce older conditions. In fact, a purely technological approach ignores the material and cultural conditions in which these technologies operate. Digital spaces such as websites, social networks, etc., are owned by commercial companies that target adolescents and try to shape their consumption patterns. At the same time, adolescents become empowered by using these spaces and seem to become partners in creating content. They play an important role in society and find a global and wide audience with their creative presence. Therefore, in this article, we follow this tradition and do not seek to value, accept, or reject one of the theoretical traditions or approaches in the field of the relationship between communication technology and childhood and analyze the virtual world of children and adolescents with it. Instead, considering the research background, we aim to combine these approaches and provide a model that is suitable for the problem and research background. Children will either become social media users or not due to digital selection or social inequality and lack of access to social media users. How children access social media is related to their interactions in this space and their view of how to use and learn from social media. Also, the type of view of social media is related to the interaction and learning patterns of child and adolescent media users, and all of these factors can affect how they identify themselves in social media and shape their own media. One of the key features of a media-centered approach is the display and management of identity in online backgrounds. "Who am I?" has become a central issue: how adolescent users present themselves as flexible subjects and gain a sense of control over their public network. Online content production is an intrinsic process of managing the identity, lifestyle, and social relationships of every child and adolescent user. Online self-representation involves a symbolic interaction that Mead and Goffman have explained, and today this symbolic process has evolved into a display that details friendly links and is used as an identity marker in user profiles. Self-managed online identities also include judgments about complex multidimensional relationships. Adolescents use their interactions with "friends" as part of this process to display their identity.