"Sharenting" & the Fate of the Modern American Girl
TIME magazine has an issue every 5-6 issues that magically collects perspective on more than a few topic areas that have relevance to this Blog and my reserach and teaching perspective. It's a cool phenomena to find a some periodical that seems to speak directly to you and your interests; Similiar to finding a person that amazingly wants to chat about everything you find interesting.
Anyway, so what's so interesting in this February 22/29th 2016 issue:
Advice/Mentoring: TIME has started a "insight" feature section given the millenial audiences' interest in living best and meaningful lives. Should be really cool to chack back in on (p 24-25).
Social Media Use & Girls Lives: As much as my colleagues in the Communication field celebrate the benefits, media ecology perspectives suggest that any innovation comes with tradeoffs. We should acknowledge them and consider the broader implications for our relationships, family, and development. More on this below as the feature of this post (p 26-27).
Aging in our Modern Era: Probably warranting its own "take-away" blog post, TIME's cover feature this issue relates to the aging process and how modern progresses in health and connectivity have impacted how we see living longer and more "involved" lives. Intergenerational communication and how we think about family, work, and retirement is forecasted to play more of a role in future years, begging important questions about how we age together. (p 60-92)
Debt & Lifestyle: When we think about the worlds we create around us, driven by expectations reinforced by media images and social trends (e.g., go to college, find a career you are passionate about, marry the love of your life, buy a home, raise children that will make the world a better place, enjoy retirement, age gracefully), these things all come at a cost. Costs including time, energy, other opportunities, currency, your future. Leveraging your future in exchange for current needs (or wants) produces debt. Some debt is mostly unavoidable to participate in a next level of living (e.g., mortgages, modest education loans, infrastucture) but our thinking and acceptance of debt is potentially problematic. TIME's Rana Foroohar investigates this with some nice insight and challenging questions. (94-101)
This post though is dedicated to point 2 above: "How social media is disrupting the lives of American girls."
In this TIME article by Nancy Jo Sales, author of 2016 book "American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers" as well as 2013's "The Bling Ring," she shares some notable, facinating insights of our media-enriched social era:
On the Ubitquity of Online: "92% of American children have an online presense before the age of 2. Parenting post nearly 1,000 images before their fifth birthday. 'Sharenting' has given parenting a whole new dimension: viewer-rated performance." (26)
On Narcissim, Sexuality & Validation: "Accompanying the boom in selfie culture is a rise in competitive spirit, as well as a distrubing trend of sexualization. Likes, hearts, swipes - validation is only a tap away. And one of the easiest ways to get validation is by looking hot. Sex sells whether you are 13 or 35...sexting and sharing nudes have replaced other forms of intimacy." (26)
On Victimhood?: "Victim isn't a word I'd use to describe the kinds of girls I've seen (and interviewed), surviving and thriving in an atmosphere that has become very hostile to them much of the time."
On "Branding" similiarity: "If buiding a social-media presence is simliar to building a brand, then it makes a twisted kind of sense that girls - exposed from the earliest age to sexualized images, and encouraged by their parents' own obsession with self promotion - are promoting their online selves with sex...they're also following the example of the most successful social media celebrities." (27) {Examples that quickly come to mind include the Kardashian family, Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Beyonce, etc....granted these women have several notable positive characteristics, the inclusion of sexuality as a deliberate choice related to their current brand is mostly undeniable}
On Parental Role Models: Sales recalls a conversation with four teenage girls in a mall, and commenting on a group of two teenagers walking past with short shorts and cleaveage bearing tops, followed by their motehrs in the same exact clothing: "'Their daughers look hot and they want to look like their daughters,' Maggie said. 'They think they're the Real Housewives.' The reluctance of baby boomers and Gen X-ers to grow old is not lost on girls. The resistence to againg has been evident in the success the beauty industry has had with anti-aging products. The demand for plastic surgery and other cosmetic procedures skyrocketed in the 2000s, with a 98% incrsed in procedures from 2000 to 2012...the hypersexualization that has enveloped the lives of American girls seems to have also ensared their moms." (27)
Regardless of how overt or central you view these phenomena in relation to the identity of the American girl, it indiciated the potential of trend that puts young women in danger. Sales notes that the accessiblity of porn has produced a model for how young women think about what gets attention, and why so many images on social media mimic those images. The similiarities provide unqiue challenges for those trying to protect young women from "slut shaming," bullying on and off line, and an increasingly cynical view of what it takes to be appreciated and validated in relation to ones peers.
Counter-argument: Sales acknowledges a young "choice" femisist perspective that says that any feminine expression of her own volition is in fact an empowered female voice ("a feminist act"). I'm not an expert on what counts as a feminist act or not, but as Sales notes, the impact of these social pressures on participating in these actions needs to be taken into account, expecially if there are outcomes that promote exploitation, emotional abuse, or social ostracization.
Reference:
Sales, Nancy Jo, (2016). How social media is disrupting the lives of American girls. TIME (26-27_, Febraury 22-29, 2016,
