Co-creation assumes an interactive and dynamic relationship where value is created at the nexus of interaction. Co-creating value is challenging with marginalized youths. In this article, social media is seen as an underutilized resource for developing services. This article approaches social media as a context from which it is possible
to derive information that would otherwise be unattainable. Using data from a Finnish discussion board, this article answers the following question: How can the experiences of socially withdrawn youth shared on social media be used to enrich the knowledge base on service co-creation processes? The empirical data consist of messages on the Hikikomero discussion forum, which were analysed using a combination of unsupervised machine learning and discourse analysis. The results show that social media provides a window into the everyday lives of socially withdrawn youths, offering information that could be used to develop public services
