Hypothesis: About 75% of the characters in the Teen Fiction section of Wattpad are white. Another 15% are thugs, and 15% are bad boys.

Procedure: Go into the Undiscovered Teen Fiction section. Select 100 random characters from 100 random stories. Write down when you see a "thug", a person of color portrayed correctly, a "bad boy," a LGBT+ character, a character who is a victim of abuse, a disabled character, or a mentally ill character. Create a data table and draw conclusions.

Data:

73% were white

15% were thugs

The remaining 12% were well-portrayed people of color

17% were bad boys

6% were LGBT+

The remaining 94% were heterosexual and cisgender

13% were abused or mentally ill

No disabled characters

Conclusions: The data very closely matches my hypothesis. However, this isn't a good thing! In the United States, 55% of children ages 5-17 are white (in comparison with 73% on Wattpad). This indicates that Wattpad fails to represent real life ethnic diversity. Wattpad also has far too many stereotypical portrayals of people of color and "bad boys," which Emma proved to be abusive instead of romantic. The LGBT+ statistic is very similar to real life, as is the statistic for abuse/mental illness. However, abuse and mental illness were often portrayed incorrectly.