Co-creation assumes an interactive and dynamic relationship where value is created at the nexus of

interaction. However, the evidence for co-creation – with or without digital technology – is limited.

Co-creating value is especially challenging with marginalized youths, those who appear to have

isolated themselves and reside outside the system, not wanting much from it, and distrusting its widely

accepted benefits. In this article, social media is seen as an underutilized resource for developing

services and, importantly, co-creating them with the users. It is believed that social media empowers

individuals to create and share content that the government cannot easily control. 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following question: How can the experiences of socially withdrawn youth shared on social media be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window into the everyday lives of socially withdrawn youths, offering information that could be used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.