'American Girls': Teen-age addiction to social media

American Girls

Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers

By Nancy Jo Sales

Knopf. 416 pp. $26.95.

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Reviewed by

Hillary Rea

nolead ends Selfie. Thot. Yik Yak. Savage. Aesthetic. Slut pages. Emoji. Kik. Tinder. Tumblr. Snapchat. Such jargon pops up on page after page in Nancy Jo Sales' engrossing exposé, American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers. Sales, 51, is the author of The Bling Ring, which inspired the movie of the same name. She also has a teenage daughter.

From 2013 to 2015, Sales interviewed girls and women ages 13-19 from all over the country and all socioeconomic backgrounds. Regardless of geography and parents' tax bracket, they found in the digital world a shared addiction - one of the words, Sales writes, that came up again and again in the interviews.

Each of the seven chapters covers one year of teenage life. "Thirteen" focuses on cyberbullying and revenge porn. An interviewee states, "There's an element to some girls' experience on social media that's not unlike a kind of stoning, a virtual stoning." "Fourteen" tracks teenage beauty gurus who "vlog" the glitz and glamour of their lives on YouTube for all to see. These digital influencers make money while motivating their peers to live the same way (#goals).

There is a common thread of oversexualized teenage behavior - whether from watching Gossip Girl, going on spring-break trips to Panama City Beach, or watching online porn. By the time you reach "Nineteen," it makes perfect sense that rape culture thrives. Of course teenagers are having casual sex, in groups, without condoms!

The subtext of this book is that porn-cult and the Kardashian clan form a feedback loop that perpetuates rape culture, selfie culture, and every other social-media problem of the last few years. In the index there are more page references to Kylie, Kendall, Kris, and krew than to selfie. Sales writes that "the biggest, darkest cloud in the perfect storm that brought Kim Kardashian rising out of the ocean of wannabe celebrities like Venus on a flip phone was the widespread consumption and normalization of online porn."

Interviewee Kayla puts it best: "I really wonder what's going to happen to our generation. We're not learning how to communicate well or deal with our problems with each other." Let's hope this book is a stepping-stone to a brighter online future.

Hillary Rea is a comedian and storyteller. She is the producer and host of Tell Me A Story, a bimonthly event at Shot Tower Coffee at Sixth and Christian Streets.

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