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I was recently walking around with a friend and saw a girl (who looked to be around nine years of age) wearing a shirt that proclaimed “Born to be SEXY” – which caught me off guard.  Not to be a prude, but it bothers me that cultural messaging strategies continue to induce girls to think of themselves primarily (or even partially) as a commodity that can possibly (or actually) sexually benefit others.  I think that this is problematic even if a grown woman is wearing it.  Justin and I have seen anecdotally through screenshots collected by our research team as they scour Facebook and MySpace that girls who present themselves in line with this message seem to have more online “friends,” and receive more Wall posts and comments on their profiles.  This attention and feedback consequently reinforces and promotes the behavior, and provides the affirmation and validation that we are all looking for and hoping to receive – albeit in different ways.  The major concern I (and many others) have is that feelings of self-worth and identity will be tied somewhat exclusively into physical attractiveness and sexual exploration/experimentation.  This, as psychological research has shown, may lead to future victimization – or, at least, unhealthy and even exploitative attraction and interest from boys and men.  The APA Report on the Sexualization of Girls details this phenomenon in a fascinating writeup, and our colleague Rachel Simmons discussed it recently on her blog.  I was curious if any of our readership has been unsettled by similar observations, and would love to hear some balanced thoughts on this issue.

We’ve discussed different elements of the Phoebe Prince case a number of times on this blog. Recall that Phoebe was the 15-year-old girl who committed suicide in January after being bullied and cyberbullied. She moved to South Hadley, Massachusetts, from Ireland at the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year. Being the new girl, she had attracted the attention of some of the local boys, resulting in resentment from some of the girls at the school. As a result, several students began relentlessly bullying Phoebe until she couldn’t take it anymore. Media reports exclusively zeroed in on the bullying as the cause of Phoebe’s suicide; the teens involved were charged criminally, and the actions taken by the school prior to the suicide were scrutinized. It appeared to be another heartbreaking case of teen suicide that was caused, or at least encouraged, by experience with severe bullying.

Emily Bazelon from Slate magazine just published an in-depth, three-part investigation of the events leading up to and following Phoebe’s suicide. (You can see more articles in her series on cyberbullying here). In this inquiry Bazelon reveals many aspects of the case that hadn’t before been publicly discussed. Like many of the previous cases of teen suicide tied to bullying, there is more to the story than the simple equation: “experience with bullying=suicide.” Bazelon thoroughly details the emotional and psychological struggles and interpersonal conflict that Phoebe was dealing with: She cut herself. She was prescribed medication to help with mood swings. She first attempted suicide the day after Thanksgiving by swallowing a bottle of her pills. Her parents and the school say they were on watch. During all of this she had dated at least two of the popular boys at her new school who had recently been in relationships with other girls. These girls apparently became jealous and along with others began harassing her at school and online. It appears that the bullying was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

Of course none of this new information justifies the bullying behaviors or discounts the tragedy of incident. Phoebe did not deserve to be bullied—no one does. Without a doubt, adolescence is a challenging developmental period. We know that some teens are better able than others to deal with the challenges. Our research shows that some youth are not negatively impacted by their experiences with bullying and cyberbullying. Others, however, are very much affected, feeling angry, frustrated, depressed, and even suicidal. For example, a forthcoming paper of ours found a significant relationship between bullying/cyberbullying and suicidal thoughts and attempts, but it is important to note that experience with bullying explained less than 5% of the variation in suicidal thoughts and attempts. So there are many other influences that also need to be considered. In fact, we are not aware of a single case where experience with bullying and cyberbullying was found to be the sole cause of an adolescent suicide.

At the same time, these experiences cannot be ignored. Would Phoebe have committed suicide if she hadn’t been bullied? We have no idea of knowing the answer to that question. There is little doubt that she was tormented by some of her classmates. Those experiences, coupled with the other challenges she was working through, were a recipe for disaster. A lot of seemingly little things can quickly add up to something huge in the eyes of an adolescent. Technology can magnify these so-called “little things” by exposing the target to a wider audience and by creating a perception in the victim that the whole world is against them. It also makes it harder to escape because technology can follow a person everywhere. In the eyes of some youth there appears to be no easy way out. It is the responsibility of all of us to be there to show those who are bullied that there are other options. We understand the pain that it causes and we need to do all in our power to stop the bullying behaviors and protect the victims. We owe at least that much to Phoebe and all of the other youth who felt they only had one option.

I hardly ever blog about my upcoming presentations, but I am particularly excited about my next one and so I thought I would let you know about it.  I am giving a keynote at the annual Stop Girl Bullying Conference this Sunday in San Antonio, Texas, and hope that you can come if you are in the area.  The online victimization of adolescent girls is a phenomenon that Justin and I have studied for years, and working to prevent it is one of my strongest passions.

My talk will focus exclusively on the latest cyberbullying research related to teenage girl targets and aggressors, and will share strategies of how to work with these populations to reduce the problem.  I am also giving a breakout session after my keynote where I will focus in on the unique experience of girls on social networking sites, along with a discussion of how sexting affects them.

Increasingly, we find ourselves partnering with organizations that do gender-specific work.  It is very refreshing to hear their perspective and the stories that drive them to concentrate on helping girls navigate the difficult waters of adolescence in the midst of some very dysfunctional messages from American and popular culture.

We are also formally researching more specific issues related to technology misuse that affect teenage girls – such as dating violence and stalking experienced through social networking sites and via cell phones.  We will keep you updated on our findings.

I just read an interesting article covering a topic that is frequently brought to our attention when we speak at conferences – cell phones and sexually-explicit images of teenagers being circulated among peers.  The bottom line is that we have got to figure out the best way to get kids to think hard and seriously about the implications of content they create or post or send getting into the wrong hands.  It is largely inevitable, but youth naively assume that it will stay private and protected by a small, intended audience.  The image started out “as a summertime joke between the ninth-grader and her friends.”  How many of us have taken a picture of ourselves naked – even as a joke?  Wait, don’t answer that.  In keeping with my previous post – this picture could be tagged (with her name? with her contact information?) and shared on one of the numerous photo-sharing and photo-gallery web sites out there, and she would suffer the rest of her life from the humiliation.  Let’s hope law enforcement are able to confiscate every device on which this picture is found, and scrub those flash memory cards and hard drives minty clean.  And let’s try to remind everyone that possession and transmission of this sort of stuff is usually a Class I felony across the United States.

Both Sameer and I will be at the Ophelia Project National Conference in Evanston, IL, Thursday and Friday this week (Oct. 16-17) talking about cyberbullying.  We will be presenting a couple of breakout sessions covering issues related to preventing and responding to cyberbullying incidents and legal issues facing educators.  If you are there, stop by and say hi!