First published 2016
Social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and Tinder now shape how American teenage girls experience adolescence. Award-winning Vanity Fair journalist Nancy Jo Sales traveled from Montclair to Los Angeles, from Florida to Kentucky, interviewing over two hundred girls between ages thirteen and nineteen. Her investigation reveals how digital platforms have transformed teenage identity, romance, and self-worth. Girls now navigate first crushes through screens, face instant online judgment, and grow up in a culture where sharing nude photos has become routine. Sales documents how this electronic environment accelerates sexual experiences while stunting basic social skills. She explores beauty gurus, slut-shaming, and exhibitionist trends that cross all racial and economic boundaries. The book exposes a generation coming of age in hypersexualized digital spaces where pornography sets expectations and feminist empowerment gets twisted into self-exploitation. Sales shows how technology reshapes the fundamental experience of being young and female in contemporary America.
Genres: american, adolescence, social-issues, non-fiction, 21st-century, social-media
Vibes: intimate, investigative, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, social-commentary
Setting: Montclair, Los Angeles, Florida, Kentucky
Period: 21st-century
406 pages · Hardcover · Knopf
Content warnings: sexism, sexual-content