Publisher Description

A New York Times BestsellerFrom award-winning Vanity Fair columnist Nancy Jo Sales--a provocative, shocking and utterly of-the-moment portrait of a national crisis and a deeply reported investigation of how social media is devastating the lives of America's girlsA New York Times BestsellerAward-winning Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales crisscrossed the country talking to more than two hundred girls between the ages of thirteen and nineteen about their experiences online and off. They are 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; a culture in which teenagers are spending so much time on technology and social media that they are not developing basic communication skills.The dominant force in the lives of girls coming of age in America today is social media- Instagram, Whisper, Vine, Youtube, Kik, Ask.fm, Tinder.Provocative, explosive, and urgent, American Girls will ignite much-needed conversation about how we can help our daughters and sons negotiate the new social and sexual norms that govern their lives.

Author Biography

NANCY JO SALES is an award-winning journalist and author who has written for Vanity Fair, New York, Harper's Bazaar, and many other publications. She is known for her reporting on youth culture and crime and for her profiles of pop-culture icons. She won a 2011 Front Page Award for "Best Magazine Feature" and a 2010 Mirror Award for "Best Profile, Digital Media." Her 2013 book, The Bling Ring- How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World, tells the true story behind the Sofia Coppola film The Bling Ring, which was based on Sales's 2010 Vanity Fair piece "The Suspects Wore Louboutins." Born in 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.

Review

"American Girls is probably one of the most urgent conversation starters I've read in some time." —Psychology Today

"Sales digs into every aspect of girls' online lives, revealing myriad disturbing details…If you have a teenage daughter, read American Girls. Have her read it, too." —Newsday
 
"Adult readers will be shocked… [they] might be on Facebook and Twitter, but they probably haven't even heard of most of the apps that teens use, let alone how they use them…What Sales makes clear is just how prevalent social media is in the life of an American teenager." —The New York Post

"Based on interviews with hundreds of teens from 13 to 19, this exploration of the hypersexualized, social-media-ruled world girls grow up in today is eye-opening and sobering." —People

"Social media is life; social media destroys life. For "American Girls," Ms. Sales spent two and a half years investigating this paradox…. and she's exquisitely unobtrusive as she does it. Conversations that are not safe for adults seem to open like apps under her fingertips. She has sophisticated methods of infiltration." —The Wall Street Journal

"Sales forces us to face a disturbing new reality in a book that should be required reading for parents, teachers, school administrators, legislators and the boys' club of Silicon Valley." —The San Francisco Chronicle

"Sales painstakingly draws on scholarly research and numerous interviews with girls from New Jersey to California to offer a harrowing glimpse into a world where self-esteem, friendships and sexuality play out, and are defined by the parameters of social media." —USA Today

"In her new book American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers, readers are afforded the opportunity to understand what is really going on in the lives of teenagers, especially our girls. ..This book stands apart from other books targeted at understanding the concerns and current plight of teenage girls… A must read for all parents." —Examiner

"This book is an ice-cold, important wake-up call." —Kirkus Reviews

"This is an important book... It's an essential read if you have teenagers or tweens in your life...I highly recommend American Girls for anyone who wants to understand how our ongoing revelation is playing out for teenagers." —WebInkNow

"This intelligent, history-grounded investigation by journalist Sales (The Bling Ring) finds dismaying evidence that social media has fostered a culture "very hostile" to girls in which sexism, harassment, and cyberbullying have become the "new normal," along with the "constant chore" of tailoring one's image for public consumption and approval… Parents, educators, administrators, and the purveyors of social media platforms should all take note of this thoughtful, probing, and urgent work." —Publishers Weekly *Starred Review*

Promotional

A New York Times Bestseller

Review Quote

"This intelligent, history-grounded investigation by journalist Sales (The Bling Ring) finds dismaying evidence that social media has fostered a culture "very hostile" to girls in which sexism, harassment, and cyberbullying have become the "new normal," along with the "constant chore" of tailoring one's image for public consumption and approval... Parents, educators, administrators, and the purveyors of social media platforms should all take note of this thoughtful, probing, and urgent work." -- Publishers Weekly Starred Review "Sales digs into every aspect of girls' online lives, revealing myriad disturbing details...If you have a teenage daughter, read AMERICAN GIRLS.

Promotional "Headline"

A New York Times Bestseller

Description for Reading Group Guide

Dear Parents, As a journalist who has covered teenagers for twenty years, and as the mother of a teenage girl, writing American Girls was very important to me. I''m so grateful to you for reading it and discussing it with your children and fellow parents. As I say in the book, I feel the stakes for girls could not be higher. As parents we need to know what is happening with our children on social media, and what we can do to help them navigate through the unprecedented challenges they face with this new technology. American Girls is not a parenting book, but I hope the information it provides and the testimonies of the girls I interviewed will form the basis of an understanding of what girls around the country are experiencing online. Every parent has to decide for him- or herself how to respond. Girls I interviewed told me that they want and need our guidance, and I feel it is our responsibility to give it. It all begins with a conversation. --Nancy Jo Sales Think about it: *Seventy-three percent of kids have smartphones. *Teenagers spend up to eleven hours a day plugged into an electronic device. *Kids begin seeing online porn as young as age six, and the majority of boys and girls have watched it before they turn eighteen. *Ninety-two percent of American children have an online presence before the age of two. *Seven percent of Tinder''s estimated 50 million users are between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. *In 2015, girls exchanged 40 to 50 texts a day (Pew study). Other studies found the number to be more than 100. Social media platforms your children are probably using: Ask.fm - a Q&A-style platform where users post personal information and invite others to ask questions and make comments, which they can do anonymously Facebook - a social networking site where users create profiles featuring pictures and personal information, including geographic information. The platform allows for communication between profiles, creation of groups and events, and offers a stream of "friend activity" via a newsfeed. GroupMe - a mobile app that offers free group text messaging. It allows for easy exchange of pictures, videos, and Web links. Users can also send private messages, but only to someone who also has the GroupMe app. iMessage - Apple''s proprietary instant-messaging service, which allows sending of text, photo, video, and audio messages from the iOS platform and features group messaging Instagram - photo- and video-sharing social media app where users create profiles, follow other profiles, and comment on and like images or videos. Unlike on Facebook, following a profile on Instagram is not symmetrical, so connections are not always mutual. In addition to posting content publicly, a user can also privately share photos or videos with one of his or her followers or a group of followers. Instagram profiles can be made private, requiring the user to give permission before someone can begin viewing their content. Kik Messenger - an instant-messaging service available on mobile phones. Users can remain anonymous on this platform. Periscope - a live video-streaming app. The streaming video can be made public or viewable to only certain users. Pinterest - a social network that allows users to visually share and discover new interests by "pinning" images or videos to their own or others'' boards and browsing what other users have pinned. Functions as a sort of online mood board. Reddit - an entertainment, social networking, and news website where registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links in the manner of an online bulletin board system. Snapchat - a photo- and video-messaging app where images are sent to a specific follower and then disappear after a set amount of time, or are available as a "story" that is broadcast to all of the user''s followers for twenty-four hours. Users add each other as friends or follow stories of fellow users. Snapchat users receive immediate information on who has opened their Snaps or watched their Snapchat Stories. Tinder - a location-based dating app that facilitates communication between mutually interested users, allowing matched users to chat. Users swipe right (interested) or left (not interested). Once a match is made, the users can begin messaging each other inside the Tinder app. Tumblr - a micro-blogging platform and social networking website for sharing and following user-generated content. Twitter - a social networking service that allows users to broadcast short posts of 140 characters or fewer called tweets. Users can also broadcast photos and videos in their tweets. As on Instagram, users have followers and follow other profiles, but the connection is not always mutual. Vine - a video-sharing platform of looped files between three and six seconds long. Yik Yak - an app for participating in anonymous discussion threads within a five-mile radius. YouTube - a video-sharing website. Users can create profiles and channels, which other users subscribe to in order to see updates. Users can also leave comments on video posts. -- What we mean when we talk about sexism on social media: agency - Independence of choice and action, self-definition and self-direction double standard - A set of principles that applies differently and usually more rigorously to one group of people or circumstances than to another; especially a code of morals that applies more severe standards of sexual behavior to women than it does to men feminism - The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities; a political discourse and movement aimed at transformation away from patriarchy and toward a society free from gender oppression media - The main means of mass communication (especially television, radio, newspapers, and the Internet) regarded collectively misogyny - Dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women objectification - When a person is defined by her/his sexual attributes and the rest of her/his personality and existence are ignored; objectification involves the reduction of a person to an object for someone else''s gaze or pleasure patriarchy - A society or social system that is controlled by men or in which men hold a disproportionate share of the power rape culture - A society in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender, sex, and sexuality sexism - Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex sex-positive - The idea that all sex and expressions of sexuality, as long as they are healthy and explicitly consensual, are positive things. Sex positivity stresses informed consent and agency within one''s own sexuality and aims to remove stigma and shame from all sexual choices. sexual harassment - Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature sexualization - When a person''s value is defined by his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics, or when a person is made into a object for others'' sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision-making. Sexualization also occurs when sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person. slut-shaming - Attacking a person for being sexual, having one or more sexual partners, acknowledging sexual feelings, and/or acting on sexual feelings, especially as pertains to the sexual activity of girls and women (see double standard) victim-blaming - When the victim of a crime, an accident, or any type of abusive maltreatment is held to be wholly or partially responsible for the wrongful conduct committed against her or him War on Women - An expression used in United States to describe certain Republican Party policies and legislation as a wide-scale effort to restrict women''s rights, especially reproductive rights

Discussion Question for Reading Group Guide

1. Studies say that teenage girls use social media more than anyone else, while other studies show that many parents are posting about their children from birth (pp. 31-34). Do you post on social media about your kids? What kind of posts, and how often? What effect do you think this has on them? 2. Many girls expressed to author Nancy Jo Sales the feeling that they were "addicted" to social media. Do you think your daughter seems "addicted" or that she is on social media more than she should be? Have you ever talked to her about this or tried to find ways to limit her social media use? Why or why not? 3. While reporting for American Girls , Sales spoke to parents who had virtually no idea what their daughters were doing on social media. How aware are you of your daughter''s social media use? Do you know which apps she is on and how she uses them? 4. Girls told Sales that they felt pressure to get more likes and followers on social media as a sign of social success (pp. 223-25, 289). Have you ever talked to your daughter about whether getting likes and followers is a true measure of someone''s worth? If your daughter seems to be seeking this kind of validation online, what would you tell her about how to redirect her sense of self-esteem toward something other than her social media presence? 5. Many girls told Sales about the pressure they felt to look "hot" on social media, as a way of getting likes and followers. As Sales reports in American Girls , the sexualization of girls is a huge problem in our culture, with wide-ranging consequences (pp. 92, 109-10). Have you ever talked to your daughter about the trend of sexualization, or asked her if she has ever felt this pressure to appear "hot" in her social media posts? If she said yes, how would you respond? 6. Many girls told Sales that they edited their selfies in order to look "better" or even "perfect." The pressure to be beautiful and "flawless" in social media posts is as problematic for girls as the pressure to appear "hot." Have you ever discussed with your daughter whether she edits her pictures in order to "improve" her appearance? What could you say if she told you that she is in fact editing herself to appear "better" online? 7. As Sales reports in American Girls , in the culture of social media, it is considered acceptable for both boys and girls to make sexualized comments on one another''s selfies--"You look hot," etc. This is an aspect of sexualization that many girls experience on a daily basis, again with possibly serious consequences. Have you ever seen these types of comments on your daughter''s social media posts, and if so, have you ever discussed with her what effect they have on her? 8. Many girls around the country told Sales that slut pages--a type of amateur porn site consisting of aggregated nudes, most often nonconsensually shared--are common in their school communities (pp. 48-49, 214-215, 226-27). Have you heard of this from your daughter, and if you did, what was your response? What responsibility do you think parents and schools have to deal with slut pages or similar accounts? 9. The exchanging of nudes has become common among kids. Some girls told Sales that they had received "dick pics" from boys as young as sixth grade. Most girls found it upsetting. Studies say, and girls also told Sales, that they sometimes felt pressure from boys to send nudes (pp. 23-25, 34-37, 109-10, 197). Have you ever talked to your daughters about the exchanging of nudes? The personal, social, and potentially even legal ramifications? The danger of nudes being nonconsensually shared? It''s an uncomfortable subject. How would you begin? 10. Sexting doesn''t always involve the exchanging of nude pictures; sometimes it''s just texting or chatting of a sexual nature. Studies say, and Sales heard from girls, that this practice can start as early as middle school and that sexts are also frequently shared nonconsensually (pp. 42-44, 109, 253). Have you ever talked with your daughter about sexting? What guidelines would you give her? 11. According to some studies, around 40 percent of girls have been cyber- bullied. Have you ever talked to your daughter about cyberbullying? If your daughter were cyberbullied, how would you respond? Sales reports in American Girls that, although schools do have the power to discipline students who cyberbully, many schools claim there is nothing they can do. How do you think schools should get involved in combatting this problem? 12. There is a common notion that "girls are mean," but when Sales investigated this widely held idea, she found it to be without scientific merit, and partly based on a handful of books with insufficient evidence. Girls, it seems, are no meaner than anyone else (pp. 152-53, 161-68). But the idea that "girls are mean," that meanness is "normal" girl behavior, is often used to dismiss the cyberbullying of girls, and in fact to dismiss the victimization of girls in other areas. Have you ever found yourself using the phrase "girls are mean?" Have you ever thought about what effect this phrase might have on your daughter''s sense of what it means to be a girl, and have you ever discussed this with her? 13. Studies suggest that communicating on screens may be making children less capable of communicating face-to-face and less empathetic (pp. 135-36). Have you noticed your own children turning away from face-to-face communication and toward communicating by text or through social media? Have you noticed yourself doing this as well? What do you think you can do as a parent, and with your family, to talk more and teach your children more about face-to-face interaction? 14. One of the most troubling revelations in American Girls is the pernicious effect that online porn is having on teenagers and even children--on their view of sexuality, gender, love, sex, and romance (pp. 17, 314, 331-32, 368, 372-73). Do you know if your kids are watching porn? Do you ever talk to them about it? Do you think you should? Why or why not? What do you think we should do as a society about children''s access to online porn? 15. Porn, some studies say, encourages a tolerance for sexual violence in both boys and girls. Sales suggests in American Girls that the availability of online porn may be having an effect on how kids view what to expect in a sexual experience, including, possibly sexual violence (pp. 15-16, 65, 361, 373). Does this trouble you? As uncomfortable as it is, do you think you should be talking to your kids--both boys and girls--about this? 16. Sales reports in American Girls that sexual harassment in schools has become a major, and largely unacknowledged, problem (pp. 271-74). Girls often find themselves the recipients of not only unwanted comments but unwanted gestures and touching--and yet many girls say they feel this is a "normal" part of life about which nothing can be done. Sales suggests that the culture of social media may be adding to an overall acceptance of sexual harassment (pp. 191-92). Do you agree with the connection she is making here? Why or why not? What responsibility do parents and schools have to stop sexual harassment in schools? 17. Studies show a sharp rise in drinking among teenage girls and young women, and girls are reportedly having their first drink at a younger age, around fourteen (pp. 298-99). Sales reports that the rise in drinking among girls may be connected to hookup culture, where being intoxicated helps in dealing with becoming physically intimate with someone you don''t know very well(pp. 258-59). And hookup culture, Sales believes, may have been accelerated by social media and dating apps, which make instant intimacy more possible or even likely. What do you think we should be telling our daughters about drinking? At what age do you feel we should begin this conversation? 18. Some have accused parents or other adults who are concerned about online predators with raising a "moral panic" (pp. 108-9). Sales suggests in American Girls that this may be abdicating our responsibility as parents and adults to protect our children from inappropriate attention. The culture of social media promotes the making of connections between strangers, and there is ample evidence that strangers do avail themselves of their ability to contact children online. Sales was alarmed to hear stories from many girls about how they were approached on social media by adults. Have you talked to your daughter about unwanted attention from strangers online and how she should respond if it happens? What can we do as parents to keep our daughters from encountering these situations? 19. Sales believes that one way to change the culture of social media is to educate both girls and boys about the history of the women''s movement and feminism (pp. 373-74). She proposes that if more kids knew about women''s struggle to achieve equality and their historical fight for their rights, they might have a different view of sexism and sexual harassment in their own lives and on social media. Do you think school curricula should include more information about the history of women and girls in America? If yes, how can we encourage schools to address this issue? 20. Do you agree with Sales''s argument that members of the tech industry should take more responsibility for the abuse of their apps by users (pp. 134-35, 374)? What do you think we can do as parents and adults to get the leaders of Silicon Valley to be more engaged about the effects their products have on teenagers and children, especially girls? How can we get them to become more active in the fight against cyberbullying, sexual harassment, and the abuse of children and teenagers online?

Excerpt from Book

Chapter One 13 Montclair, New Jersey "SEND NOODZ." The boy sent the message in the middle of the day, when she was walking home from school. He sent it via direct message on Instagram, in the same shaky, childlike font as the new Drake album ("IF YOURE READING THIS ITS TOO LATE"). Sophia stared at her phone. "Wait what?" she responded. No answer. She continued along the empty streets. It was a warm spring day and the wide green lawns were full of blooming trees. Montclair was a pretty place, and it was safe, so a lot of kids walked home from school. She''d been with friends, but they had already peeled off and gone inside their houses, so she was all alone. She hoped to see someone she knew, hopefully a girl she could tell: "Oh my God, you know Zack, he asked me for nudes!" And: "What should I do?" But there was no one around. She thought about texting someone--most things, observations, gossip, jokes, were shared right away, but this seemed like something new. Something almost . . . private. Secret. That rare thing, something no one else could know. She had heard of boys asking girls for nudes before, but it had never happened to her. This was her first time. She didn''t know how to respond, or if she should respond. Should she be outraged? Shocked? Her first reaction was: "I was like, Whoa, he finds me attractive? That''s kind of strange. I never knew he found me attractive . . ." She thought about the boy. He was thirteen, the same age as she, a boy from her eighth-grade class. He was a boy like other boys--he talked loud and rough and wore baggy shorts and snapback hats and had a swaggering demeanor like Justin Bieber, whom he probably would have dissed. He was "cute," "but kind of gross." She wondered if he liked her. "He never likes anything of mine on Instagram, but why would he ask me that if he hadn''t been thinking about me? If I wasn''t in his mind? Boys aren''t gonna come out and just say, ''I like you,'' ''cause they don''t do that. They have, like, their own language . . ." When she got to her house, a Victorian house with a wraparound porch, the place where boys had once come calling for girls, she went upstairs to her room. Plugged her phone into the charger. It was almost out of juice. She''d been up most of the night texting under the covers so if her mother walked in she wouldn''t see--texting friends in her group chat who were still awake, sending words and emojis and giggling over inside jokes. And then during the day she had texted all through school. She woke up tired a lot of the time, but, she said, "I just drink a Red Bull." She went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Peered at herself. Pursed her lips. Stuck her tongue out to the side, Miley-style. Tossed her hair. She knew that she was "attractive," so she wasn''t all that surprised that the boy had asked her for nudes. "I get, like, a hundred likes on all my pictures and people comment, like, ''Gorgeous . . . '' " But she wondered what it would be like if someone actually had a naked picture of her, and she wondered what that picture would be. "Not like I was gonna do it--oh my God, no--but if you did, like, what would you send so it looked good, and not ratchet?" She wondered if the boy had thought about kissing her. If he was going to be her first kiss. She''d been wondering what it would be like to kiss a boy, to have one want you so bad he would take you into the park or even his room and press his lips against yours, wrapping his arms around you, holding you close. She heard her phone ding from inside the bathroom. A text alert. She ran to see. It was the boy, responding to her message: "I really need this ''cause I have to win a bet I wont show anyone," he wrote. "What serious who else did you ask," she texted, her heart beating fast. "nobody lol I need it from you please" "Why" "so theres this high school kid I think hes a senior who hooks me up with lq"--booze--"he said hell get us as much as we need cause hes rich if me and jack show that we can get nudes no disrespect im just asking you cause youre the prettiest girl and the best person to ask" She stared at the phone, thought about it a moment, and wrote: "lol" New York, New York At the Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in May 2015, Kim Kardashian was launching her latest book, Selfish, a collection of selfies and nudes. It was more than 400 pages of Kim staring into the camera, pursing her lips, looking sultry and suggestive. It was Kim naked in a bathroom mirror, naked in a bedroom mirror, clutching her naked breasts, leaning naked over a bathroom sink, sticking her famous behind up in the air; Kim leaning naked over a bed in the grainy dark, Kim in lingerie and bathing suits, lounging beside electric-blue swimming pools, doing "leg shots." "Oh my God oh my God oh my God oh my God," said a thirteen-year-old girl waiting in the line snaking through the store. There were pictures of Kim from 2006, when she was still an L.A. party girl and friend of Paris Hilton''s, to 2014, after she had become one of the most famous women in the world. In those eight years, which had seen the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, and the global spread of social media through mobile technology, Kim had become social media''s biggest star. In 2006, she had just 856 friends on Myspace--where she announced in her profile, "I''m a PRINCESS and you''re not so there!"--and now she had 31 million followers on Instagram, second only to Beyonc

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