The Secret Social Media Lives of Teenagers

By Ana Homayoun

Earlier this week, Harvard University revealed that it had rescinded admissions offers to
at least 10 students who shared offensive images within what they thought was a private
Facebook group chat. The students posted memes and images that mocked minority
groups, child abuse, sexual assault and the Holocaust, among other things.

It is easy for parents to be left wondering, “What were they thinking?”

Over the past few years, memes — usually images or videos with text often meant to be
funny or sarcastic in nature — have become one of the most popular ways, along with
photos and videos, that youth communicate on social media. While some of that
communication can be positive, allowing teenagers to explore their own identity
development and find a sense of belonging, it can also get teens in trouble.

Sharing videos, images and memes creates the opportunity for an instantaneous positive
feedback loop that can perpetuate poor decision making. In an environment where teens
spend around nine hours using some form of online media every day, it doesn’t take
long for them to be influenced by an “all-about-the-likes” sense of values that can
potentially lead to life-altering decisions.

I’ve spent nearly two decades working with teens on organization and time-management
in the heart of the Silicon Valley, and many teen girls tell me they have a real Instagram
account (“rinsta”) for a wider audience and then keep a “finsta” (friends-only or “fake”
Instagram) for their closest friends.

Many teens use shortened versions of their names or aliases for finsta accounts, which
they often see as an opportunity to share a less edited, less filtered version of their lives.
They might spend a lot of time trying to capture the perfect Instagram photo for the
“rinsta,” which reaches a wider general audience, while a finsta might reveal, as one high
school sophomore girl declared, “my innermost thoughts.” Like the teens in the Harvard
Facebook group chat, those using finsta accounts can have a false sense of confidence to
say and do things they might not want a wider audience to see.

And because so much of today’s teen social media use is rooted in a fear of getting
caught, many teens have detoured their online activity to different ways of cloaked
communication. Closed and secret Facebook groups are one way teens (and adults!)
privatize communication to a select group — a closed group feels more private because it
allows an administrator to approve new users and monitor content. Secret Facebook
groups remain unsearchable, and members can only be added or invited by another
member. Another trick is to use hidden apps like Calculator% and Calculator+ that look
like regular calculators, but require users to enter their passcodes to reveal a back
storage area containing private photos.
Also popular with secretive teens are storage apps like Vaulty, which allows users to hide
photos and videos, and also has a “mug shot” feature, which takes a photo of anyone
who tries to access the app using an incorrect password. Vaulty’s most clever trick?
Users can create two passwords for one vault, with each password tied to specific levels
of access. So, a parent who insists that a teen hand over the password still might be
getting limited access. Some teens just hide apps within folders on their phones. Parents
wondering if their children are hiding something might look for a cleared search history
and an unexplainable spike in data usage as potential red flags.

The ready availability of tools to hide teen social media use can be problematic, leading
teens to overshare images, videos and commentary. But that privacy has long been
proven to be unreliable, because information shared within a private group can be easily
captured in a screenshot and shared with a wider audience. The notion of privacy online
is only as reliable as teens’ relationships with other users, and that combined with
general privacy concerns provides little guarantee that online information will ever be
kept secret. In the case of the Harvard students, administrators found out about images
and messages shared within a private group chat, highlighting how easily information
shared behind digital walls can quickly become more public.

What would motivate such seemingly intelligent teens to behave so recklessly online?
Many people — adults and kids alike — view likes, loves, comments and followers as a
barometer for popularity, even within a smaller, closed group. Teens can quickly get
caught up in the feedback loop, posting and sharing images and videos that they believe
will gain the largest reaction. Over time, teens’ own values may become convoluted
within an online world of instantaneous feedback, and their behavior online can become
based on their “all about the likes” values rather than their real-life values.

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There is a very real biological basis for this behavior. The combination of social media
pressure and an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain that helps us
rationalize decisions, control impulsivity and make judgments, can contribute to
offensive online posts.

In a recent study, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that the
areas of teens’ brains focused on reward processing and social cognition are similarly
activated when they think about money and sex – and when they view a photo receiving
lots of likes on social media. When teens viewed photos deemed risky, researchers found
the brain regions focused on cognitive control were not activated as much, suggesting
that it could be harder for them to make good decisions when viewing images or videos
that are graphic in nature. Teens seeking external validation become intoxicated by
sensationalist engagement, sometimes sending compromising photos or comments. Of
course, some adults have fallen into the same trap.

Even though 86 percent of teens say they’ve received general advice around online use
from their parents, researchers at Common Sense Media found that 30 percent of teens
who are online believe their parents know “a little” or “nothing” about what social media
apps and sites they use. And yet, teens still say that their parents have the biggest
influence on determining what is appropriate and inappropriate online.

Adults need to shift the conversation around teens’ social media use away from a fear of
getting caught and more toward healthy socialization, effective self-regulation and
overall safety. This would be all the more important if a bill that was just
overwhelmingly passed in the House becomes law. The bill could make it a felony —
punishable by 15 years in jail — if teens send consensual nude photos of themselves.

Some parents try to monitor their teen’s social media use with apps of their own. Bark,
an app that monitors accounts on 20 different social media platforms, along with iOS
and Android texting and email accounts, alerts parents to potentially risky behavior.
TeenSafe links teens’ phones directly to their parents’ phones, and allows full-fledged
supervision of phone calls, emails, texts, social media use and geolocation. But such
high-level monitoring runs the risk of breaching trust with teens at a crucial
developmental time.

Another option is to help young social media users realize that their online and real-life
experiences are more intertwined than they may think. Parents might, for example, cite
current events, like the Harvard episode, to remind them that nothing online is ever
completely private and talk to them about the ways private information can become
public. Using open-ended questions will help encourage children to identify and develop
their own values and standards around appropriate online behavior. Helping them think
through how they might react or behave in certain scenarios can give them the
confidence to make better decisions under pressure. Because in the end, teens’ online
life choices can have real-world outcomes – as those students whose admittance at
Harvard was rescinded learned the hard way.
Like. Flirt. Ghost: A Journey Into the Social Media Lives of Teens
For teenagers these days, social media is real life, with its own arcane rules and
etiquette. Writer Mary H. K. Choi embedded with five high schoolers to chronicle their
digital experiences. There’s twin sisters Lara and Sofia in Atherton, California; Ahmad
in New Haven, Connecticut; Mira in San Francisco; and Ubakum in Houston. As with
most teens, they’re elusive creatures. But when Choi asked them targeted questions,
they were able to deconstruct their own behavior in exhaustive detail. You’ll
Our Bodies, Our Selfies: The Feminist Photo Revolution

As far as selfies go, the photo of 17-year-old Grammy winner Lorde was a coup. “In bed
in paris with my acne cream on,” the singer wrote on Instagram, captioning herself in a
black T-shirt and messy bun, white splotches visible on her face.

Twenty-four hours and 95,000 Likes later, fans couldn’t stop gushing. “Lorde’s No-
Makeup, Acne-Cream Selfie Only Further Proves Her Awesomeness,” the Huffington
Post declared. “RESPECT” and “Love u,” commenters screamed. “Finally a celeb who
doesn’t have seemingly flawless skin.”

The scene was utterly ordinary — the way most teen girls go to bed each night — which
was precisely what made it so out of the ordinary. How often do you see a celebrity
looking like a regular awkward teen? (Answer: almost never.)

Over the past year, the selfie has pushed its way into our collective consciousness like a
pop song you can’t get out of your head. It was Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year. It
has spawned think pieces about think pieces. It will earn you nine points in Scrabble.

Yet when it comes to selfies and girls, much of the conversation has been judgey: selfies
are narcissistic, humble-braggy, slutty, too sexy, a “cry for help,” or yet another way for
girls’ to judge each other (or seek validation for their looks).

But the Lorde acne-cream selfie is just a tiny example of the ways young women like her
— and even, yes, some socially conscious celebs — are using the self-portrait to turn that
narcissism notion on its head. In small pockets all over the Internet, women are
celebrating their flaws. They’re making silly faces (ugly selfies!) and experimenting with
identities. They’re owning their imperfections (whether it be full hair or wrinkles or —
dare we say it — fat) and contradicting old stereotypes (for instance, that
“#FeministsAreUgly,” as a new Twitter campaign has it). In a culture that places
immeasurable value on a woman’s beauty, women are using selfies to show what women
really look like — no makeup, acne cream and all.
I’ve spent a good portion of the last year looking at the ways that imagery can impact our
perception of women, and how we can overturn sexist tropes through mass media. But
the selfie is doing the same thing through mass culture. Here are nine ways the selfie is
empowering women.

Selfies Push Back Against Traditional Beauty

Norms
Self-portraits have been an outlet for feminist expression, and subversion, for a long
time. But when it comes to modern-day beauty representations, what we see daily is
often a familiar spectrum of vanilla: white, gaunt, emotionless and airbrushed beyond
recognition. Selfies are pushing back against that beauty ideal, through thousands of
images of “real” women that they’ve created and shared themselves. “Selfies open up
deep issues about who controls the image of women,” says Peggy Phelan, an art and
English professor at Stanford University and the author of a recent essay about feminist
selfies. “Selfies make possible a vast array of gazes that simply were not seen before.”

Selfies Take Advantage of a Platform That Girls Rule

It should be no surprise that, according to a recent survey by Dove, 63% of women
believe social media — not print, film or music — is having the most pivotal impact on
today’s definition of beauty. That’s because it’s a world where girls rule. Teens and
young women use social media often and in more ways than men on almost every site,
from Facebook to Instagram to Tumblr.

Selfies Allow Women to Own Their Flaws

Whether it’s Nicki Minaj sans makeup; the model Cara Delevingne modeling the
grotesque; or Tavi Gevinson, the teen creator of Rookie magazine, noting the giant
pimple on the “Upper West Side of my face,” there is something powerful in seeing
normally flawless celebrities with actual flaws. On Twitter and Tumblr, the
#FeministSelfie hashtag reveals an epic stream of women in all shapes and sizes,
engaged in all sorts of activities, while #365FeministSelfie project — started by an
administrator at the University of Illinois at Chicago — encourages women to take a
snapshot of themselves each day for a year, no matter how they look. “We spend so
much time trying to hide our flaws because the culture has set it up that you have to be
ashamed if you’re not perfect,” Cynthia Wade, a filmmaker and creator of the short film
Selfie told me recently, for an article about ugly selfies in the New York Times. “I think
girls are tired of it.”

Selfies Give Girls Control

For centuries, we’ve watched as changing standards of beauty have shaped us: it was
men, not women, controlling the photos. But selfies put the power in girls’ hands. “It
allows you to have complete control over one moment in time,” 15-year-old Harper
Glantz, one of the subjects of the film Selfie, told me a few months back. “In school, me
and other girls sort of feel smothered just by social pressures that are hard to even
detect sometimes. I think what a selfie does is that it really allows you to express
yourself in a way that you feel comfortable with.”
Selfies Showcase Faces Not Normally on Display
“A huge swath of women and girls don’t see themselves portrayed in mainstream
media,” explains Jennifer Pozner, a media critic and the founder of Women in Media
and News, which aims to amplify female voices. And yet, through the sheer number of
selfies uploaded daily — selfies that showcase women in all forms — women are
upending notions about whose faces are beautiful, or mainstream, enough to be seen.
“They’re breaking through the media gatekeepers,” says Pozner. “And they’re saying,
‘I’m great the way I am.’”

Selfies Are a Form of Social Currency

James Franco’s recent ridiculousness aside, the actor made a good point when he wrote,
in an op-ed in the New York Times, that “attention is power.” “In a visual culture,” he
said, “the selfie quickly and easily shows, not tells, how you’re feeling, where you are,
what you’re doing. In our age of social media, the selfie is the new way to look someone
right in the eye and say, ‘Hello, this is me.’”

Selfies Challenge the Notion That You Need a Reason to Be Seen

Narcissus may have drowned because he was too enchanted with his own reflection, but
selfies challenge the idea that girls can’t revel in their own reflection — or feel good
about a photo of themselves. “Selfies are one way for a female to make space for herself
in the world: to say ‘I’m here, this is what I actually look like, my story counts, too,'” says
Pamela Grossman, the director of visual trends at Getty Images, and my co-curator on a
feminist photo-curation project. “They allow girls to shine on their own terms.”

Selfies Aren’t Just About What You Look Like, They’re About What You’re
Doing
Whether it’s solving a math equation or crossing a marathon finish line.

Selfies Force Us to See Ourselves

To celebrate what we look like — flaws and all.

American Girls

Once upon a time, only the wealthy and privileged could afford to have their portraits
painted by a small, select circle of artists. With the advent of photography, parents of all
backgrounds could have pictures of their children, which were coveted as documents of
their development and a way to show off their innocent beauty and charm to family and
friends.

Today, with smartphones and social media, we all have in our hands the means to
broadcast our pride and joy to the world. And we are cultivating our children’s online
selves from birth—or even before, in utero. Ninety-two percent of American children
have an online presence before the age of 2. Parents post nearly 1,000 images of their
children online before their fifth birthday. “Sharenting” has given parenting a whole new
dimension: viewer-rated performance.

The usual debate centers on whether posting pictures of one’s children’s online—or
allowing one’s children to do so—is safe from a privacy or security standpoint. And as we
have seen in the recent abduction and murder of 13-year-old Nicole Lovell of
Blacksburg, Va., concerns about online predators are more than just a moral panic: they
stem from something real. Lovell reportedly texted with one of her alleged killers, 18-
year-old David Eisenhauer, a Virginia Tech student, on Kik Messenger, an app known
among kids as a place for the exchange of sexts and nude selfies.

But while we’re consumed by the tangible dangers of messenging services like Kik, Yik
Yak, After School and other anonymous apps, we may be missing a different influence:
our own behavior. Kids today are often accused of being narcissistic, but they may be
learning their exhibitionist ways from their parents. Accompanying the boom in selfie
culture is a rise in competitive spirit, as well as a disturbing trend of sexualization. Likes,
hearts, swipes—validation is only a tap away. And one of the easiest ways to get that
validation is by looking hot. Sex sells, whether you’re 13 or 35.

So it should come as no surprise that in this atmosphere, with the new technology
available, sexting and sharing nudes have replaced other forms of intimacy. And it’s girls
—our daughters, granddaughters and nieces—who are most at risk in this online
environment, which blends age-old sexism with a new notion of sexual liberation
through being provocative.Girls who post provocative pictures often suffer slut shaming
on- and offline. Girls are more often targeted in cyberbullying attacks that focus on their
sexuality.

I spent the past 2½ years researching my new book American Girls: Social Media and
the Secret Lives of Teenagers, visiting 10 states and talking to more than 200 girls. It
was talking to girls themselves that brought me to the subject of social media and what
sexualization is doing to their psyches. How is it affecting their sense of self-worth? The
tweens and teens I spoke to were often very troubled by the ways the culture of social
media was exerting influence on their self-images and their relationships, with both
friends and potential dating partners. They were often highly aware of the adverse
effects of the sexualization on girls—but not always sure what to do about it.

“Sexism has filtered into new arenas that adults don’t see or understand because they’re
not using social media the same way,” says Katie, a student I interviewed at Barnard.
“They think, Oh, how can there be anything wrong here if it’s just Snapchat or
Instagram—it’s just a game.” But if this is a game, it’s unlike any other we’ve ever played.
And the stakes for girls could not be higher.

Victim isn’t a word I’d use to describe the kind of girls I’ve seen, surviving and thriving
in an atmosphere that has become very hostile to them much of the time. How can this
be, when girls are graduating from college in higher numbers than ever before, when
they’re becoming leaders in their chosen fields in greater numbers? From what we hear,
American girls are among the most privileged and successful girls in the world. But tell
that to a 13-year-old who gets called a slut and feels she can’t walk into a school
classroom because everybody will be staring at her, texting about her on their phones.

So why do some girls post sexualized pictures? Why are they complicit in this potentially
very self-undermining aspect of socialmedia culture? “I think it’s just to get attention,”
explains Lily, a 14-year-old in Garden City, N.Y., where I studied a group of girls for the
book. “It’s to get the likes. Everything’s about the likes.”

If building a social-media presence is similar 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. In so doing, they’re also following the example of the most
successful social-media celebrities.

It’s been almost 20 years since the brutal murder of JonBenét Ramsey magnified the
horror of child beauty pageants—the extreme sexualization of the little girls, the skimpy
costumes, garish makeup and risqué dance moves once associated with prostitution. In
1996, this seemed like a dark revelation, a national scandal. Then came Toddlers &
Tiaras. Now, parents post videos of their daughters suggestively shimmying to Taylor
Swift and Nicki Minaj—videos that rack up approval ratings, sometimes even media
attention and ad sales.

In Boca Raton, Fla., a wealthy coastal city with a population of around 90,000, about 50
miles north of Miami, I met Julie, Maggie, Cassy and Leah, a group of 13-year-old girls—
two white, two Latina—at the Town Center Mall. Wearing short-shorts and tank tops,
Converse and flip-flops, they glided along the air-conditioned halls past all the stores.
Their mothers had dropped them off for lunch—chicken and waffles at the Grand Lux
Café—and now they were stuffed, so they sat down on some couches to check their
phones.

As the girls visited their social-media accounts, opening their Snapchats and liking and
commenting on the Instagram posts of their friends, a parade of mothers and daughters
drifted past, all dressed almost identically. There were teenage girls in booty shorts and
cleavage-baring tops, and mothers wearing almost exactly the same things, except with
heels and bling. They carried shopping bags from Neiman Marcus, DKNY and Pink.

I remarked to the girls how strange it seemed to see the mothers in the mall dressed so
similarly to their daughters. “They want to look hot,” said Cassy, not looking up from her
phone.
“Everybody wants to look hot,” Julie said.

“Their daughters 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
resistance to aging has been evident in the success the beauty industry has had with
“antiaging” products. The demand for plastic surgery and other cosmetic procedures
skyrocketed in the 2000s, with a 98% increase in procedures overall from 2000 to 2012,
according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The second most popular
procedure for women ages 40 to 54 in 2014 was breast augmentation. The
hypersexualization that has enveloped the lives of American girls seems to have also
ensnared their moms.

One factor in sexualization that is too often ignored is the rise of online porn. Studies
have reported that American children start seeing online porn as young as 6, and a
majority have watched it before they turn 18. When kids have easy access to porn and
are watching porn, it’s not surprising that they are posting what might be identified as
porn. In 2014 Vine, the video-sharing service on which users share six-second looping
clips, banned “sexually explicit material” after reports that children were posting
sexually charged videos of themselves on the site, including girls who looked as young as
9 or 11 years old.

Periodically in the news we hear about a “sexting ring,” in which nude photographs of
teens are circulated among wide groups of kids, as at a Cañon City, Colo., high school in
late 2015. But these sorts of amateur pornography sites, known to kids as “slut pages,”
have actually become common and existed at every school I visited.

Some young feminists have argued that photos by girls in sexual poses are a valid
expression of their sexuality. “Choice feminism” maintains that whatever a woman
chooses is inherently a feminist act. But this doesn’t take into account questions of
exploitation surrounding images of underage girls—not to mention the fact that girls’
nudes are often shared nonconsensually, which can wreak havoc on girls’ lives.

No matter how various theorists try to minimize and even glamorize girls’ participation
in social-media culture, it is girls who experience the reality of its troubling effects.

Sales is the author of American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Life of
Teenagers (Knopf), out this month, from which this article was adapted.
Copyright © 2016 by Nancy Jo Sales.