How Social Media and Cultural Pressure Are Harming Our Girls
Practical Ways to Help Your Teen Push Back and Reclaim Their Confidence and Joy
Dear Friends,
Psychologists rightfully blame girls’ high stress levels and poor mental health outcomes at least partly on social media. The average girl today starts using social platforms by age 12, and they are particularly vulnerable to what happens there.
Why is social media use so problematic for the developing adolescent mind? Because the job of the growing brain is to scan everything going on in your world and silently ask, “How safe am I here? Do I belong?” Social media exacerbates a unique kind of social stress — of feeling left out, inferior, and inadequate, especially as you compare yourself to others.
Teens Today Face More Rejection Than Ever Before
Young people are experiencing an unprecedented scale of rejection. From Instagram likes to college rejections to dating apps, today’s adolescents are navigating more social rejection in a week than a Boomer may have experienced in a lifetime. Every part of their life is now public and performative, a constant stage for approval or disapproval.
Adolescent Brains Were Not Built for This
Girls spend, on average, nearly five-and-a-half hours a day on social media (more than boys), where they’re continually besieged and beguiled by unrealistic images of female beauty. This daily exposure is taking its toll. When girls feel they must be on their guard all the time, it ramps up the female body and brain’s stress machinery. Many girls complain to me that they see themselves as a collection of unacceptable body parts. They are caught in a culture of feeling they have to be “hot” to matter at all.
From my Post-It Note Project, girls have written:
“I want my parents to know I hate my body.”
“I wish they knew how bad my body image is.”
A Culture of Inauthenticity
In the 1990s, Harvard psychologist Carol Gilligan talked to 100 girls negotiating adolescence and concluded that these years were “a journey into silence and disconnection.” Their suffering, she said, was a result of stifling their authentic selves in order to meet society’s narrow expectations for girls and women. Although we pride ourselves on having broader expectations for girls today, girls’ feelings of inadequacy and inauthenticity are more constant and punishing than ever.
What Teen Girls Are Really Saying About Social Media
In my workshops across the country, girls tell me their lives feel like one long, endless performance, subject to critique on social media and off. They have performance fatigue. They have resilience fatigue. “You don’t know how hard it is not to compare yourselves to others online,” one girl wrote, a sentiment I hear all the time. Many admit to feeling pressured by influencers on TikTok and Instagram to diet, use skin products, and otherwise try to change their appearance. Teen girls are feeling increasingly disembodied and out of touch with their bodies and their interior selves.
How to Support Girls Through the Noise
Start with Better Communication at Home
Family and home life should be a reprieve from feeling that one doesn’t measure up. But that can only happen if we shift how we talk to our daughters about their struggles. You can start tonight at your dinner table with something so simple it’s often entirely overlooked: choosing language that reduces her stress levels while strengthening the connection between you.
Model What You Preach: Put the Phone Down
Let’s start with tech. Many girls tell me they wish they spent less time on social media, but they feel pressure to participate because that’s where their friends are, and it’s hard to pull back. “I wish I knew how to stop a ‘scrolling session”, one admitted to me. “I wish you weren’t always on your phone,” wrote another. We adults must reckon with our own relationships with our phones. Telling kids to put their phones away while constantly checking emails on your own is like telling them not to smoke with a cigarette dangling from your mouth.
Teach Critical Thinking About Social Media
Consider asking, as they scroll, to notice how they feel. If your teen admits to feeling angry, self-critical, or left out, explain that this is by algorithmic design, that companies are in fact cashing in on their distress. Young people do not like to be told what to do, but they also like to rebel against forces that are taking advantage of them. (This is how public health messages helped young people to stop smoking cigarettes: they got kids to see that Big Tobacco was taking big advantage of them, and kids didn’t like it.)
Start with small, meaningful boundaries. Agree, for starters, to no phones at mealtimes, bedtime, and during daily car drives — moments when they’re most likely to talk about what’s really bothering them.
Parents, Learn How to Truly Listen
Helping girls voice themselves, authentically, means listening in ways that ensure they don’t feel you’re critiquing them. When your daughter does vent her feelings, think carefully about how to respond.
Girls tell me their parents too often react in ways that make them feel diminished.
“I wish my mom knew my real struggles and talked to me about them without judgment or advice.”
“Ask me how I’m feeling instead of assuming you know.”
“You make me not want to share with you so don’t be mad if I don’t tell you anything.”
They also want us to manage our feelings like, well, grown-ups:
“Getting mad is a really discouraging solution to my mistakes.”
“I wish my mom didn’t put so many of her feelings on me.”
Before any high-stakes chat, promise, “I will just listen, I won’t ask a single question.” Then, be prepared to learn something that concerns you. But unless it’s something dangerous to her or someone else, try to manage your distress as you listen to her distress. Ground yourself in your feelings of love, which should soften your facial expression, lower your heart rate, and hopefully relax her, too.
If she does ask your opinion, tell her, “I promise I’ll tell you, but first I want to know what you think.” When she finishes sharing, reassure her, “I’m so glad you came to me with this.” These micro shifts in how you communicate will help her better sort through her emotions, express, and cope with them, which helps her brain to wire up to handle a little wobble, and build resiliency.
Girls Want to Be Seen and Believed
When I stand on stages and read girls’ notes back to them, they stamp their feet, snap their fingers, and clap – but not for me. They’re relieved, they tell me, to know that every girl standing in that auditorium feels the way they feel. On the hundreds of Post-its I’ve gathered at schools across the country, girls have been literally writing the script for what they long to hear you say to them:
“I wish I would hear, ‘Seeing you every day makes me happy.’”
“I’m really proud of you and who you are becoming.”
“I believe you.”
So put down your phone and listen up. What you hear may surprise you — and the changes that follow from that simple act of listening may surprise you, too.
We heal together💖
Donna
Invitation to Reflect
Thank you for taking the time to explore this deeply important topic with me. The challenges our daughters are facing today, especially around social media and identity, can be overwhelming for parents to navigate on our own.
What did this bring up for you? Have you noticed similar struggles in the teen girls in your life, or perhaps in your younger self?
Spread the Love
If something here sparked insight or felt meaningful to you, I’d be grateful if you shared it. Your voice helps bring attention to what our girls are truly facing.
Support for Your Journey
Healing is the most powerful gift we can give to ourselves and our children. 💗
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