Salon.com > Adolescence

Tween booted off Facebook starts his own social network

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:09:00 +0000

Even though he was two years too young to join the social network, 11-year-old Zachary Marks signed up for Facebook, anyway. Less than a week later, this happened:

I spent all my time on the computer chatting with friends. Then, I made mistakes. One of my adult friends cursed and posted something inappropriate, and I cursed back. Also, I friend-requested grownups who I did not know. About a day later, my dad found out. He was really mad. I had to deactivate my account.

And so begins the story of Grom Social, the social networking site for the 15 and under set that Marks founded after being summarily booted from Facebook. Even though there are other kid-friendly networks he could have joined, none really appealed to the preteen. "They were all childish," he told the "Today" show.

The HPV vaccine won’t turn your daughters into tramps

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 15:58:00 +0000

You can rest easy, folks. Apparently protecting our daughters from the HPV virus — and, by extension, the threat of cervical cancer — won't turn her into a raging slutmonster. A new three-year Kaiser Permanete/Emory University study published this week in the journal Pediatrics reveals that girls who've been vaccinated with Gardasil at ages 11 and 12 showed no higher rates of pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections and contraceptive use than girls who hadn't. The results of the study made major headlines Monday, with CBS News reassuring us that "HPV Shots Don't Make Girls Promiscuous." MedPage declared, "HPV Vaccine No 'License for Sex' in Girls." So I guess it's cool to vaccinate them after all! Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find Doctor Who, because I need a Time Lord to explain to me why this crap is still even an issue in 2012.

If only I knew what the lyrics meant

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Everyone has in their head, I’m pretty sure, certain songs that knocked them sideways when they were really young--songs that were beyond them when they first heard them and that always carry the peculiar sensation of knowing and not-knowing that can coincide in the mind of a child. It was the thrill and danger of emotional taboo, the sonic equivalent of sneaking a cigarette butt from an ashtray and taking that first filthy drag. This was music about the messy things that grown-ups got themselves into, and there was the adult world, on garish display for the child to witness.

The arbitrary exposure to certain songs was such a fine way to see the chinks in the adult facade. This is one thing radio has always been so good for. You’re thrust into vicarious experiences by the chance timing of the flick of the dial. I’m not just talking about songs about sex, although those were certainly initially a thrill (“Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir,” “The girl’s a super freak…” etc.). But songs just about sex got boring after a while. It was the dirtylowdown underside of things that made it compelling, the mess and confusion of it all, the lingering effects of bad decisions.

Sunscreen: Worse than cigarettes?

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 20:45:00 +0000

Sucks to be you, tanning industry. Sure, people are still using tanning beds, but with melanoma rates on the rise, you're being restricted from peddling your golden promises to adolescents in several states. And now Pennsylvania is considering requiring you to post warnings about the dangers of your services. These days, you're more associated with leathery New Jersey moms than the glow of good health. No wonder you're so pissy lately.

Why is tweenhood so fraught with “drama”?

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

They're not the carefree years. They're not the everything-is-awesome years. They are, as Haley Kilpatrick explains, the drama years. It's that uniquely turbulent time in a girl's life between childhood and adolescence, when friends become frenemies, when hormones run amok, when the pressures of school and activities ramp up, and Mom and Dad suddenly just don't get it anymore. Welcome to middle school, kid.

Kilpatrick understands. While still in high school in her small town in Georgia, she founded the national peer mentoring organization Girl Talk, mostly as a means of helping her younger sister navigate the social minefield she herself had only just departed. With its emphasis on helping tween girls learn from teens who've survived their own drama years, Girl Talk now has chapters in 43 states and six countries.

Girl, uninterrupted

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:45:00 +0000

Of the many questions formed while reading Caitlin Flanagan’s “Girl Land,” most pressing is why it was written at all. One convincing answer comes not from its pages – which are filled with gauzy pronouncements on female adolescence, the occasional literary or even historical close reading, and no particular argument or thesis -- but from an interview on Vogue’s website. In it, Flanagan says, “I didn’t write this book from the perspective of being a parent; I wrote it from the perspective of my girlhood being so intense for me.”

Flanagan works as a critic, was once a teacher and counselor at an elite private school, and is the mother of two boys, but somehow nothing has matched the intensity of that girlhood; it forms the only authentically compelling material here. Roll your eyes all you want, and I did, at declarations like “one of the signal differences between adolescent girls and boys is that a boy does not fetishize the tokens of his childhood.” (Flanagan appears to have missed the past couple of decades in popular culture.) But then comes the quiet horror of Flanagan's unerringly detailed recounting of an attempted rape she experienced at 16, and what it taught her about power and control and shame.