Author discusses influence of social media on teen girls
Award-winning Vanity Fair writer and journalist Nancy Jo Sales will discuss the effect of social media on adolescent girls when she comes to Naperville with her book, "American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers."
Sales is scheduled to speak at 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 15, in North Central College's Wentz Concert Hall, 171 E. Chicago Ave.
Tickets are available with the purchase of Sales' book at Anderson's Bookshop, 123 W. Jefferson Ave., in downtown Naperville. Call (630) 355-2665 or visit www.andersonsbookshop.com for details.
No one knows teenagers and their habits like Sales, a journalist recognized for her reports on youth culture and crimes, and for her profiles of pop culture stars. Social media has changed the teen landscape as evidenced by these facts:
• 92 percent of American children have an online presence before age 2;
• 73 percent of kids have smartphones;
• Teens spend up to 11 hours a day plugged into a device;
• In 2015, girls exchanged 40 to 50 texts a day, but other studies have found the number to be closer to 100 daily;
• A 2014 study found 22 percent of seventh-graders admitted to sexting.
Sales, a parent of a girl herself, knows what parents are up against. With intimacy and precision, she captures what it feels like to be a girl in America today.
From Montclair to Manhattan and Los Angeles, from Florida and Arizona to Texas and Kentucky, Sales crisscrossed the country, speaking to more than 200 girls ages 13-19. Her book documents a massive change in the way girls are growing up, a phenomenon that transcends race, geography and household income.
"American Girls" provides a disturbing portrait of the end of childhood as we know it and of the experience of a new kind of adolescence. It is an adolescence dominated by new social and sexual norms, where a girl's first crushes and experiences of longing and romance occur in an accelerated electronic environment; where issues of identity and self-esteem are magnified and transformed by social platforms that provide instantaneous judgment.
Being a girl in America in 2016 means coming of age online in a hypersexualized culture that has normalized extreme behavior, from pornography to the casual exchange of nude photographs; a culture rife with a virulent new strain of sexism and a sometimes self-undermining notion of feminist empowerment; a culture in which teenagers are spending so much time on technology and social media that they are not developing basic communication skills.
From beauty gurus to a disconcerting trend of exhibitionism, Sales provides a shocking window into the troubling world of today's teenage girls.
Her book, "American Girls," may ignite a much-needed conversation about how we can help our daughters and sons negotiate unprecedented new challenges.
A native of West Palm Beach, Florida, Sales graduated summa cum laude from Yale in 1986. She became a contributing editor at Vanity Fair in 2000. She has a daughter, Zazie, and lives in the East Village in New York City.