Do Psychologists Need to Know about Twerking? Why Staying Current with Adolescent Culture is Critical to Effective Research and Practice

Through social media platforms (e.g., YouTube, Face book®), twerking became an online phenomenon in 2013 among young people in many Western countries, but has yet to appear in any scholarly discussions. This paper explore show well psychologists who are working with young people are ‘keeping up’ with a rapidly changing social landscape of popular youth culture, and whether it is important for us to do so. We argue that the hypermediacy of current adolescent culture poses significant challenges to the field of psychology in translating relevant, meaningful, and timely research and intervention. In identifying challenges currently experienced by psychologists that hamper efforts to maintain social cohesion with young people, we offer suggestions on how educational and developmental psychologists can address these challenges in research and practice.