Journal of Adolescent Research, Ahead of Print.
Media is an important socialization actor through which adolescents can learn about careers. Nine focus group interviews were conducted with 44 late adolescents (Mage = 16.27; SDage= 0.54; 56.82% female) in high schools in Belgium to explore how youth in this age group receive career-related messages, the work tasks, skills, values, and ethics that are cultivated, and the ways adolescents experience and judge the perceived realism of career-related messages received via entertainment TV/social media. A combined inductive and deductive thematic analysis of the data revealed various pathways through which adolescents intentionally and unintentionally received career-related messages. Moreover, the adolescents had been cultivated to value specific work tasks/skills (e.g., social skills) and intrinsic and extrinsic work values and work ethics (e.g., working hard to succeed, centrality of work) when consuming career-related messages through TV/social media. Lastly, the perceived realism of such messages depended on content elements (e.g., a balanced portrayal of work values). Differences related to career-related messages on social media versus entertainment TV were observed. Practical implications for various groups (e.g., career counselors, media content producers) are discussed.