The book by Nancy Jo Sales known as ‘American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Life of Teenagers’ delves into a raw synopsis of interviews of American girls who are teenagers. The raw interviews enable the readers to uncover the secret lives of teenagers especially girls from America and the experiences they undergo while using the internet and social media platforms. Social media networks are important internet platforms to the lives of every individual in the country. The use of social media is highly intense within the teenagers, and for this, it has impacted their lives both positively and negatively. Andreassen, Pallesen, and Mark (2017) asserted that it is not a secret that social media and the internet at large are influencing every individual regardless of age. From Sales book, it is clear the American girls are experiencing terrible events in their lives due to the social media. The book reveals the main fractures in the culture of the United States that teens together with those who are working with them have to encounter so as to continue living, both physically for certain teens or emotionally for everyone (Sales). However, most of the contingencies as well as the written exchanges between the interviewees can leave one in shock. I noticed this book is crucial to any individual who is working with teenagers. Generally, the book is well-written, and it is organized in a logical manner to provide exceptionally important insights into the mentality of this cohort especially for girls.
The book, however, has not come out clearly to distinguish between adolescence sexuality and child pornography. Nancy Sales has combined these two aspects and referred to them as child pornography. Ethically children, especially in their teens, are not expected by their society to engage in sexual activities. This means that even teenagers exposed to pornographic materials and activities regardless of them being in adolescent age is referred to as child pornography. However, adolescence sexuality is a special stage in human development when begins to explore and experience sexual feelings (Sterzing et al. 3).
Adolescence sexuality is something that one is not able to overcome since it is natural. Teenagers are the main culprits of adolescence sexuality, and the girl child faces major consequences such as rape, sexual abuse, and pregnancy. Social media sparks adolescence sexuality of teenagers since it is from the social media that they easily access the pornographic materials that enhance their sexuality. This group of people may be at risk since the cognitive skills that let them analyze messages from the social media critically and make decisions based on the possible prospective outcomes are not fully developed (Minor 309). In connection to this, I find it possible that teenagers would do anything to satisfy their sexual urge. This is one aspect that has not come out conspicuously from the book.
Generally, adolescence sexuality has not been adequately studied, and it has been amalgamated with child pornography like Sales have done in her book ‘American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Life of Teenagers.’ Adolescence makes a teenager to voluntarily engage in sexual behaviors without coercion from any external factor. Therefore, a teenager at his or her adolescence period will look for avenues that enable him/her achieve the sexual desire. This is where social media comes in, and since it is the best platform to engage in sexual matters, teenagers have immensely utilized social media. Among the teenage girls that Sales interviewed, I believe most of them were among the adolescents that are experiencing and are exploring their sexuality. It would have been important for Sales to distinguish this aspect that would have enabled analysts to make adequate and fair conclusions about teenage girls and teenagers in general. The book is generally against child pornography, but it would have also recognized this group of teenagers that are having no control over their sexual urge.
Because of their freedom to engage in sexual activities online, teenagers have made pornography a habit. Within that cohort, pornography is a normal way of life to them whereby anyone outside that lifestyle is seen as not civilized. From my point of view, social media is changing the American culture. With the coming of social media, there were no restrictions designed to help in protecting and maintaining the American culture. America is a nation known for upholding moral values and mores. Pornography is one of the underlying social problems that people and leaders of our society are shying away to fight against in public (Attwood 220). Ordinarily, pornography is meant for the adults and adults are those who have attained the age of eighteen years according to the US constitution.
The interviews conducted by Sales in this book ‘American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Life of Teenagers’ elaborate how pornography has been normalized by the teenagers. Social media has made it simple for people to share the pornographic materials and in turn, normalized the behavior that is gradually turning to become a culture. Like Nancy Sales is against this vice, I am also concurring with her. There are pornographic materials that are too strong for these teenagers to consume. The average age of exposure to pornography is around 13 years, and at that age one is still not prepared to differentiate the messages they face in the pornographic materials they receive from the web (Minor 309). Using them would expose them would affect them mentally and change their psychological setup. Normalization of pornography has destroyed the American teenage girls as they have been subjected to forced sexual activities or turned into a sexual object.
A research study has shown that there is a correlation between use of pornography at a younger age and incidence of sexual violence (Saulawa, 47). From my own perspective exposure to pornography establishes expectations which are not realistic to the teenage girls when taking part in sexual activities and this could be a good driver for sexual assault among the American teenage girls. I, therefore, assert that the society should accept that pornography has taken roots in our American cultures and it is growing. This indicates that there is a lot that needs to be done to avert the problem. Installing parental controls on the mobile phones and computers is not an adequate solution especially with the present teenagers who have discovered means to avert it. I believe facing the issue with them is the best way as it would change their psychological way of thinking. By doing this counseling, one will be able to correct the corrupted mind of a teenage girl by the pornographic materials. This would enable the teenage girl to understand, become aware of pornographic materials and become reserved even when it comes to issues with pornography.
Pornography has been extensively discussed in Nancy Sales’ book ‘American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Life of Teenagers,’ and I think a crucial take away from the book is the impact of normalization of the online pornography. From my own point of view, whether or not one is seeking out pornographic material from the internet, the chances are she would view images depicting pornography popping up on her social media accounts that are circulating as images, appear on the news feeds or spasm from the pornography web pages. Generally, I can deduce that Sales is asking what it is like to be a girl growing up in a society flooded with pornographic materials. However, I believe the same way the girl-child is affected so is the boy-child.
In as much as the girl-child is vulnerable to issues like pornography, the boy-child is also vulnerable because it interferes with the mentality of either gender. It would be imperative for research to be done on the boy-child to find out the problems the boy-child is encountering when it comes to pornographic matters. Finding a solution on how to curb porn problem involves both genders, and since they play a primary role in the field, they would help in finding a sustainable solution or a manageable solution. Nancy Sales has only touched little on the side of boys, yet they are also part of the equation. I would challenge Sales to publish a similar book that would be focusing on the boy and social media. It is important to find out which gender influences the other on issues of practicing online pornography.
In as much as research is showing that girls are the ones using the social media at a higher percentage compared to the boys, reading this book left me wondering what triggers teenage boys or girls to share their private parts to one another using the social media platforms. I compared Sales work and Dana Boyd’s work that covered same topics in 2014 with ‘It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens.’ From Boyd’s work, it left me feeling parents were overreacting; I should accept that social media is where teens are interacting, and they require the online spaces away from their parents watch. However, from Sales’ book, I felt like not allowing teens, especially girls, to own devices that would connect them to social media and even close all the social media accounts they are possessing.
Conclusion
In general, ‘American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Life of Teenagers’ by Nancy Jo Sales provides in-depth analysis of the problems American teenagers and specifically the girls are experiencing because of their association with the social media. One glaring problem these girls are facing is pornography which has exposed them to several other problems hence making them have dark secrets about social media. Social media platforms have exposed them to sexual predators who have always taken advantage of their adolescent sexuality weakness as well as their younger age to misuse and abuse them sexually. Pornography is gripping the American teenagers who meet these pornographic materials on the social media platforms. Thus, it is a normal occurrence to them due to repeated exposure to the porn materials. Normalizing pornography would imply that it is a culture that is emerging and it is bad for the moral values, and ethics society is expecting. It is important for studies to be conducted to manage teenagers on social media and especially those in their adolescence stage.
Works cited
Andreassen, Cecilie Schou, Ståle Pallesen, and Mark D. Griffiths. "The relationship between addictive use of social media, narcissism, and self-esteem: Findings from a large national survey." Addictive Behaviors 64 (2017): 287-293.
Attwood, Feona. "PL-33 Pornography Use Among Young People." The Journal of Sexual Medicine 14.5 (2017): e220.
Minor, Angela D. "Sexting Prosecutions: Teenagers and Child Pornography Laws." Howard LJ 60 (2016): 309.
Sales, Nancy Jo. American girls: Social media and the secret lives of teenagers. Vintage, 2016.
Saulawa, Mu’azu Abdullahi. "Cyber Pornography: An Analysis of the Legal Framework." Global Journal of Politics and Law Research 3.2 (2015): 45-56.
Sterzing, Paul R., et al. "Social ecological correlates of polyvictimization among a national sample of transgender, genderqueer, and cisgender sexual minority adolescents." Child abuse " neglect 67 (2017): 1-12.
