(applause)
Thank you for being here, I would like to congratulate you
on this beautiful book!
Thank you, I think it's really important and significant
really because, I think
in general in society
we tend to undervalue the voices of teenage girls
and I think you did a really good job of illustrating a lot of strong
and well informed and important opinions from girls.
And I think that's really really wonderful.
That's really what I wanted to do with the book
and the voices of girls and call it "American Girls"
because I think it's so important that we talk about girls
and not only talk ABOUT them and maybe even change the WAY
we talk about them, but listen to them
and hear them when they talk.
Yeah, I think it's really interesting how much you just use
the word "girl". like you really owned that in a way that
sometimes people are a little hesitant to because it can often feel demeaning
I think.
I mean, if anybody feels
that the word "girl" is demeaning we need to stop right there
and unpack that because what is demeaning about
being a girl?
A girl is a citizen of the United States who is an important part
and an often very vibrant -if you read the book-
very vibrant, insightful part of our national identity.
So, I have no problem with the word: "girl".
Good, good. I don't think we should either.
So tell me about -for people who haven't read the book yet
what you're doing in this story.
The introduction did a pretty good job of explaining:
you talked to over 200 girls from different states
Tell us a little bit about what you're working with.
Well, I have written about teenagers off and on
for about twenty years, starting at New York Magazine
in the 90s and then I came to Vanity Fair in 2000
Off and on I'll do a story about teens based on something
that's happened in the news or some sort of new trend that we're seeing
I've interviewed a lot of celebrities who are also teenagers
that sort of became my beat.
I met Paris Hilton when she was a teenager
I met Lindsay Lohan when she was a teenager
"The Bling Ring" was about a gang of teenage burglars.
So I sort of became identified with that beat.
So around 2012/2013
we started to see a lot of stories in the news
-which haven't stopped- y'know, they continue to this day
unfortunately, and since my book has come out, we see them
more and more.
Stories that involved teenagers, particularly teenage girls
and social media.
And really serious kinds of abuses of social media.
The footage of which would be posted online with comments
sometimes comments from other teens
but also from adults that were really
vilifying and slut-shaming.
There was Steubenville:
infamous case in Ohio with sexual assault and video online.
There was Amanda Todd in Canada
where this young girl was cyberbullied to death.
Now there's a word for that:
it's called "cyberbullicide"
A man had taken a naked screenshot of her and passed it around
and she killed herself famously or infamously
posted a suicide online flipping cards to tell you
what she had gone through and why she was about to do this.
So these were just horrifying things and they were just all of a sudden
bubbling up.
So my boss, Graden Carter, said to me: "What is going on?"
"What are we seeing here?"
Let's find out. And so I went off and did, first a story
on this subject matter. and that became the basis for the book.
Girls really brought me to it because from the very first conversation
that I had with girls in Los Angeles about this
I went out there, y'know, looking for sources, looking for voices
I typically don't go to an organization and say:
"Give me some girls."
I mean, there are a whole bunch of different ways to be a reporter
there's all different ways to investigate something
and I'm not saying one is better or worse than the other.
People put surveys online and there's all different things to do.
I'm very old school, I really just kind of pound the pavement.
I take a lot of trains and planes and automobiles
and run around and try to find girls where they are.
So I went to - not to stereotype - I went to a mall
(laughter)
in LA, called the Grove.
If you know it it's an outdoor mall I saw some teenage girls
coming out of the Cheesecake Factory.
They had just had a birthday party
and they were carrying their leftovers and they looked like girls who...
kinda like how you would want girls to look in this day and age.
Y'know you want them to look healthy and happy,
and it was a diverse group and they went to a good school.
Y'know, so what's going on in your lives.
Well, from that very first conversation with no agenda from me
they started telling me about social media
and how it was really informing their life.
and this is three years ago.
And they were talking about challenges to friendships
and challenges to romantic relationships
and judgments that were made
and sexualization, which became something that I heard
more and more and more about
from girls all over the country.
Sexualization, if you're not aware of the term,
sometimes hyper-sexualization
which you know from reading the book or maybe you're a sociologist
or psychologist and you're aware of it.
You should be aware of it.
Because it's a really important thing to know about in our culture.
What it is is the objectification of women and girls, treated as
sexual objects.
Sometimes with girls WAY before it's appropriate at all.
It has sort of engulfed our culture and it's in everything.
It's in toys and media and music y'know, I talk about Dora the Explorer
My daughter is 16, when she was little Dora looked like a little girl
She was this little square thing with a bowl haircut.
And now suddenly-have you seen Dora?
Dora looks very different. She's been sexualized.
Why? Why? Why?
And this is something that you talk about how this has happened
throughout human history, right? Sexualization.
But it's so much more efficient because of the internet.
It's happened before, but if you think that you're seeing more
sexualized images of women and girls now than you did, like, say 15-20 years ago
depending on how old you might be:
it's true, you are.
There are people, like sociologists, who count this.
There is more sexualization of women and girls in the media
Mass media and now on phones, on the social media
Where girls and boys are spending a whole lot of their time.
In a very very short amount of time their lives have changed
and there's a new kind of childhood, a new kind of coming of age
which simply didn't exist before because the technology didn't exist.
iPhones came out in 2007 Androids in 2008
Widely adopted by 2009/2010 Social media goes online
We're talking about something that's less than ten years
just this blip, this little nanosecond in human evolution
and yet boom. Such an unprecedented influence on our behavior.
On how we think and act and interact.
I think too it's interesting, early on in the book
you talk about how over and over again
you would talk to adults and parents and teachers
and they would express their concerns,
like, yeah! All these kids ever do is spend time on their phone.
And you have this line-something like:
"When pressed, the adults also admitted that they spent a lot of time
on their phones as well."
There's such a weird double standard where we think we're okay
on instagram and checking our facebook
and whatever...maybe just because we didn't grow up with the internet
so it's different for some reason? What do you think about that?
Very early in the book, actually, so I think it's important to note
right away, I talk about the role modeling that's going on
with parents and with adults.
It is true statistically that kids, girls in particular
spend more time on phones than anybody else
and this is across socioeconomic lines and across demographics.
There are girls in my book from all different kinds of places
and all different kinds of families.
And everybody has a phone. But that's just because, like,
they don't have jobs, and they're not raising kids and stuff.
I'm sure that every adult in this room would be on their phones just as much
if they didn't have stuff to do. (laughter)
Y'know? Because it's very addictive. And it's designed to be addictive
I was hesitant to really say that when the book came out because
Like, the research wasn't quite there yet and I'm like...well the jury's still
kind of out on whether this is addictive.
I feel validated even since my book came out
there's been a lot of deep research on this
and now you can pretty much openly say that this is an addictive medium,
that it's, again, DESIGNED to be addictive
particularly dating apps are designed to be addictive.
And it plugs into your brain the same way that, in particular, gambling does.
You're sort of...this sort of game theory of
putting out something and trying to get a response
It's sort of like betting, y'know?
So, it doesn't seem to follow addiction in terms of drugs so much as gambling
although I think there's probably some crossover there.
But the hand-eye coordination thing is like a slot machine or something
If you think about something like tinder,
for example, where it's just totally following the game theory
of gambling.
Y'know, Swipe swipe swipe swipe swipe. I'll swipe swipe swipe
Do you know what Tinder is, everybody?
Yeah, how many people here are familiar like have used the interface, I wonder.
I guess it's kinda hard to see. Can you guys raise your hand
Can you clap? (people clap)
Anyways Tinder is a dating app.
Clap for Tinder, yeah!
If you're an old person like myself and you haven't used Tinder
Then - I mean, I've been on it for research - ONLY
(laughter)
Air quotes "For research"
But anyways, you look at someone's face, you swipe on it
"Yes, I wanna 'date' you"
which really means have sex with you
or "No, I don't want to."
For a lot of men, and this is based on research that I also did
reporting that I did.
for the book and also for another story about dating apps
For a lot of men it's like you cover your averages
The more you swipe the more chance you have of having sex
and so it's like betting.
And then when you match with someone
it goes "BRIIING". Your face and their face go "BRIIING" and they
actually bump together and there's this sound like "WOOOHOO"
So it's like a slot machine.
Right, it's really like a slot machine.
So I started to wonder-what is that doing?
I mean it's objectification of men and women, women in particular
seem to be more objectified, more sexualized on these platforms.
Absolutely, we definitely want to talk about the dating apps more
But I'm a little curious about the creation story of this book.
You say you went to LA, you did the first interview
And that was for a magazine story, right? Or was that for the book at this point?
No, I had a Vanity Fair story that sort of became the basis for the book
The story was called-Oh, I don't write the headlines
It was called "Friends Without Benefits"
"I don't write the headlines" That's fair
It was called "Friends Without Benefits" and when Vanity Fair put it online
it went viral. And I never had that happen to me
before because I usually go in the print and I'm not really so much online
and so now we have more of a presence as a website
It went online and having a viral story is a really strange experience
I've had a few now, since then I've been lucky in that way.
Well, the subject matter is just epidemic and it's just everywhere and
It seems to be something that everyone's
thinking about. You start to get emailed on the website
if you ever want to talk to me about anything: nancyjosephhales.com
I have an email function there. I started to get emails, like scores
and then hundreds a day.
From parents, mostly, grandparents but also kids
And not just in the United States all over
People writing in Australia and saying it's just like that here
We're going through the same stuff here.
And actually, since the book's come out Y'know, I'm not saying this
to promote the book-I'm saying this to underscore the fact that this is a global
phenomenon even though the book's called "American Girls"
I've been on the radio in Ireland and all of these different places
Because I think the reason is, again, the platforms are the same
They are the same. Snapchat is snapchat In Dublin and in New York City and in
New Orleans and in India where I just read in the Hindu-Stan Times
They have, in India now, a terrible problem with girls and cyberstalking
What you hear a lot from social media companies
their public relations thing that they say is that this technology is wonderful
and it's causing all of these wonderful connections and it's bringing us all
closer together and y'know it's just this magic box that's making
our lives great, y'know.
There's some good stuff about social media Don't get me wrong
I recognize what it is-and girls talk in my book about some of the
really great things about social media as well
But before very recently, nobody was talking about the challenges
and the things that are really, I think very disruptive to a healthy childhood
and a healthy high school experience.
So that's...did that answer your question?
Well, what I was wondering was at what point did you know it was
a book? Was it when you were sitting in the mall with your Cheesecake
Factory bags like "Oh my God, this is huge"
I think when the story went viral.
That's when it was-
It was just like: "Woah!" And there was some resistance too!
It's weird to me because I've had this experience with a lot of stories
that I've done where people in the media -I can think of some names, that I
won't say right now- They'll say "Oh, that's not true,
She's just making it up, It's all exaggerated, Nuh uh, not true."
Because oftentimes these are people who somebody from social media
has called them up.
They have their own sources, they write about Tech
And somebody has called them up and said: "Did you see this story
that this woman wrote? That's not true! We're not doing that."
I don't know. Whatever. Sometimes There's resistance and I think there's
a kind of a frog in the pot situation where people don't really understand
that the water's heating up because
they're in it.
So that'll be happening-at the same time I'm getting an email from a woman in Iran
who says to me: "My daughter" -well, they're in New York City, but
they're Iranian.
She said: "My daughter met a boy on facebook. She broke up with him
and he went on this whole revenge porn thing. Tried to ruin her life.
These stories are all too common.
What's it like getting emails like that?
I try to get them to-it's great, in a way because I learn more
and also, if they have some kind of school that they're connected to or
organization that I can help with or be a part of, I try to connect people
when I can. I recently got an email-
It takes you in places you never thought you would go.
Right, yeah. Two days ago I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan
A place I never thought I would go.
(laughter)
I'm sort of a New Yorker
I was talking to the best people these were all people who work in the
Juvenile Justice Area.
These are professionals who are probation officers, people who work in
the court system and foster care. And they're seeing all this stuff
with social media and teenagers, particularly girls coming into the system.
They don't understand what's going on and they need to tell them
I learned so much from them just talking to them
So I like it, I like to take this whole thing in places I never thought it would go
and there's been a lot of that in the last few months.
I think really what's so remarkable about this book is that you do
such a great job of painting a picture of what it's like to be a teenage girl
at Dunkin Donuts at the end of school on a Friday afternoon.
The Dunkin Donuts scene I thought of recently with all of this stuff
that's come out with Donald Trump
because here was Donald Trump -and y'know I'm not trying to say you
should vote for one person or the other person.
But I'm just saying, it's been pretty striking the kind of
well-they're calling it "locker room talk" that's coming out of the mouth
of a Presidential candidate.
I thought of that when I heard the Access Hollywood bus tape
-the infamous bus tape-
I thought of that scene in the Mont-Claire, New Jersey Dunkin Donuts
I thought of those 13-14 year old boys that I listened to standing around
in the Dunkin Donuts just casually buying donuts saying that very same
kind of stuff. One of the things that I'm trying to talk
about in the book is the way in which this sort of normalization
of misogyny-I don't even think I use
the word "misogyny" in the book because even 6-8 months ago
when it came out, when I wrote it I thought: "People don't like that word.
I want people to hear my message. I don't want them to get tripped up on
a word like misogyny or rape culture."
Thank you Michelle Obama! Now we can say these words.
This sort of casual misogyny that was being uttered by these boys in this
Dunkin Donuts. Believe me, I don't blame these boys, I blame this culture
It's bad for them too. It's not like they're "bad boys"
They're growing up in this culture where people like Donald Trump,
Who is running for President, say these things and
a whole lot of people say: "Oh, that's okay, that's just locker room talk
It doesn't matter." I mean, yeah it does, it does matter.
It affects girls... (applause)
Right? So here I am in the Dunkin Donuts Nobody's parents are there
It's where they go in this particular town after school and hang out and
have donuts.
I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska it was a grocery store, so I can relate
So they're all pretty little 13 year olds can look 13 or they can look 11
they're pretty little and they all have powdered sugar on their face
and they're eating donuts and bouncing on the couches and stuff
no parents around. and they're talking like Donald Trump
That was before Donald Trump, so what ran through my mind was like...
Where is this coming from?
The idea that they can't have made it up. They must've heard it
somewhere to be reiterating it.
Of course, and I really don't think it was necessarily from even their fathers
That's the thing You can have a household where
people are pretty careful about how they treat women and are respectful
and how they talk and stuff but then kids go out into the world,
young boys and men go out into the world and they see all kinds of support
for the idea that this is the way you be a man in this culture.
The guy on Entourage and the guy on the Wolf of Wall Street