Digital Girlhoods

by Katherine A. Phelps

Tween girls in America today are growing up on social media, posting selfies and sharing “stories.” In Digital Girlhoods, Katherine Phelps emphasizes tween girls’ agency on social media vis-à-vis identity formation, content creation, and community building. When a tween girl posts a video on YouTube asking the world, “Am I pretty or ugly?”, she is also asking, “Who am I?” This content makes visible the pitfalls and potentials of these tweens creating their own digital narratives—and it asks us to take them seriously.



Featuring in-depth interviews with a cross section of tween girls, Phelps allows them to give meanings to their relationships with social media and their peers in their own words. As tween girls embody and negotiate the many contradictions of American girlhoods through social media participation (for example, the “Pretty or Ugly” YouTube trend), Phelps asks, how are tween girls living and experiencing girlhoods in the digital age?



The processes of experiencing and enacting tweenhood and girlhood online are explicitly gendered. Digital Girlhoods thoughtfully considers what tween girlhoods look and feel like in America today.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Sociology, Womens

235 pages, Hardcover

First published January 31, 2025

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was the book equivalent of "this meeting could have been an email"... this could have easily been an article.

Furthermore, the author's opinion that parents are "indoctrinating" their daughters to believe there are predators online when it's "a rarity and children are most often abused by people they know" is a grossly irresponsible take on the subject. I don't disagree that this may be true, but let's not criticize parents who are trying to keep their kids safe online.

I'm actually quite disappointed that Goodreads chose this as an option for their March, women's history month challenge.

[Sharon Beck]

This topic is important however the book is written at a college level and reads like a thesis or textbook. The language and tone often make the author's points inaccessible, especially for the casual reader.

[Haley Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible work that critically examines the experiences of American tween girls who navigate the culturally-created liminal space between childhood and adulthood in both the physical and digital realm. The age-old question that reverberates in this liminal space is ”Who Am I?”: an inquiry asked by all young girls who exit childhood and enter a world where their bodies become ”culturally fraught spaces, the sites of so many enduring social anxieties”.

The author brilliantly questions our impulse to regulate young girls digital engagement as a means of protection by arguing such restrictions perpetrate hegemonic gender norms.

She argues that society repeatedly constructs girls as both vulnerable and dangerous, painting them as either passive victims in need of our protection or as provocative figures, responsible for tempting males. The protectionist discourse (”a contemporary moral panic”) is not new, but rather a recycled and reconstituted cycle of gendered control.

I felt this novel shows that our collective fears for young girls in the digital world are symptomatic of the long-lived awareness of gender violence that has caved in on itself, transforming into a self-perpetuating form of misogyny that dismisses girls from public spaces, both physical and now digital.

5. Stars.

[Rah Reads · Rating 1 out of 5]

0 stars, this should not exist.

After reading other reviews, I agree with most of their assessments. This truly reads like a poorly written and highly biased thesis. It's so bad.

This book is a woke portrayal of the presence of tween girls online. The author admits ignorance and then pridely discusses the subject with a clear lack of any real experience with modern tween girls. I started it partially because it was one of the only books on Goodread's women's history book list that I found even the least appealing, but also because it's a subject I care deeply about.

I am disgusted. The internet is a dangerous place, especially for young girls, and the author seems adamant in trying to normalize sexualizing this age group and diminishing the dangers out there. Borderline encouraging underage sex at times while also being adamant that tween girls are like her when she was young and just want to play with barbies. Which is it? Are they children or girl bosses who have power to make wise decisions about sex? So many more contradictions than even this. I couldn't figure out if the goal was simply to manipulate tween girls into accepting their own predation and making themselves victims.

Let it be noted that I very quickly into this book, began skimming and skipping the rest. So technically, a DNF. Nevertheless, I don't believe it is worth anyone's time and goodreads should be ashamed for being an online platform that would promote this kind of book.

[sav ❁]

DNF at 15%. After reading the first chapter I felt like this “book” was going nowhere fast. This was an expanded undergrad senior thesis at best, and if I were reading it in that context I may have been more engaged. The writing was just… so dry and lacked any personality in its academic style.

To top it off, I didn’t necessarily agree with a lot of the conclusions being drawn and found many of them contradictory. Admittedly the book and author acknowledge the rapidly changing landscape of social media and her own limited perspective on tween engagement with it as an outsider looking in, but somehow fail to account for those limitations in the conclusive statements made. For example, the author repeatedly states how socially powerless tween girls are, yet goes on to say how much power they have through consumption habits, trend setting, and their social media knowledge - which is a clear type of social power, no?

Emphasis on the author -repeatedly- making statements. After reading the first chapter, I felt like there was nothing more to gain because of how circular many of the conclusions were. In general, there wasn’t a lot of substance but there was a whole lot of verbiage.

To be fair, as a girl who spent her tweenage years with social media present, maybe I’m not the audience since a lot of this seemed like no brainer information to me. Either way, I couldn’t imagine gaining too much insight from this book other than a compilation of sources on the subject.

⭐️1.5 stars

[Ellie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Message - 3, the message of the book is great. It was clear—but in my opinion WAY too clear. It repeated itself over and over, not to mention it is not new information that young girls experience body image issues exacerbated by social media.

Insight - 1, I just did not receive information that I either didn't already know or couldn't have figured out myself. I didn't find it particularly profound either, because again it basically just circled back around on itself regurgitating the idea that tween girls have ingrained ideas about gender and performance of self.

Tone - 2, I think it was meant to make the reader feel sadness for the girls but it was honestly hard to tell. As much as the author inserts her personal thoughts, the entire thing felt so impersonal and distanced. It literally felt like reading a textbook, and not even an interesting one.

Style - 1, the writing style made me want to rip my eyes out. It was boring, it was not engaging, and it made me want to skim to the end. There was no personal tone or style and it was just hard to read. The writing made me want to stop many many times.

Utility - 2, I definitely will not be thinking about this book again. It didn't change anything about my life, beliefs, perspective, or actions.

9/25
1.8/5

[Casey Giffin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read only to achieve my bookmark lol interesting yet not interesting

[Linnéa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting, super cool topic! A bit dense? Which is to be expected from this type of writing but I definitely had to Think about what I was reading, which isn't a bad thing! I was also hampered by reading on my kindle and therefore thinking I was only halfway through when in fact I was nearly done (notes, references and index took up the last 35-ish percent) so it kind of felt like a battle to get through. But a really interesting topic and field of study, made me once again think about if I would want to get into academia lol

[megs · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would actually rather be water boarded by the CIA than read the words “Girl Power!” “post-feminist neoliberalism” and “Pretty or Ugly YouTube trend” ever again.




this is such an interesting research topic however the execution was incredibly poor in my opinion. It’s far too wordy and repetitive. It’s written very academically, which isn’t always an issue but it is in this case as it makes it so unnecessarily complex and the constant repetition took away from the essence of the book/research. It was literally less than 200 pages but it just dragged and I was in struggle city the entire time… I really should’ve DNFed but I’m really not good at that ….

there were some really interesting points, and I did highlight a few bits, but overall this missed the mark completely and I really hoped for more :/

[Steph B · Rating 1 out of 5]

For such a short number of pages, it was the longest, most boring read ever. I only read this as it was a book choice option towards a Goodreads challenge and I regret that choice. Was written more like a research paper for University. While the topic itself has merit, you could’ve pulled out all the references written into the book, along with all the big fancy words, and made this much shorter and useful. But seriously, don’t waste your time trudging through this monotonous book.

[Sarah]

*DNF*

So badly written i couldnt bring myself to waste my time reading all 200 pages

[Nothingtoread · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a non-fiction book, this is incredibly repetitive, badly organised, and lacks rhythm and editing. As an academic essay, this is very poor (and it’s incredibly repetitive, badly organised, and lacks rhythm and editing).

When your research consists of 20+ qualitative interviews that have not been systematically and properly analysed (or such analysis is not described), you can’t say “my research demonstrates” and you can’t make statements in the form of “tween girls do this and that” based on your data. Oh! Towards the end the author finally says “my sample is small and not generalizable”. About time! Go back and tone down all those previous statements.

Content-wise, some of the author points are astonishing. Turns out the Internet is now a lovely place and these tweens they all make a great use of it. Oh wait, then we are saying that some videos you’ve seen are rather cringe and you hope these tweens are being careful… What is with all these very badly articulated contradictions?

I also missed some developmental psychology context. Calling these subjects “tween girls” ends up being an euphemism, but they are first and foremost children. This is completely overlooked throughout. Without invalidating the girls voices, some perspective taking into account their (normal and expected) lack of experience, knowledge, and brain maturity would have been good.

Goodreads, why was this suggested as part of the March challenge? This is for me the worst book of the year so far.

[Noni Vaidyanuvatti · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought it very well cited commentary on tweens, social media, and digital girlhood overall but I was often unengaged because many points were repetitive. I think this book is great for someone who is newly exploring this idea and wanting to go deeper because they unfamiliar with these ideas and concepts.

[Brenna Buckner · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn’t get past the first few pages. The writing was too much and really didn’t have a point other than to say there’s good and bad to having the internet and social media for young girls.

[Sarah McMullan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am forever glad I am not growing up now, and especially glad to be not growing up in America. Add in my joy at having been able to choose to not to be a parent and my trifecta of happiness is complete!
Flippancy aside, being a woman has never been easy and it seems to start younger & younger. This book reminds us of the role we play in looking out for those that follow us no matter who they are.

This is (obviously) a very American text, and being neither an academic in this field or a parent, I am curious as to how closely teens in NZ mirror their American counterparts. My suspicion is. based solely on limited date from related studies in my fields of interest (classification & harmful digital media & young people ) & friends with kids, is that the same potential issues ate out there for our girls, they are just a little slower to become glued to their phones and the developmental identity aspects that Phelps outlines in the book.

I was (pleasantky) surprised but the need to create & curate their own image online, and that it largely seemed to be for them about them at this young age. The cynic in me hopes this this is about a healthy belief in their right to take up space and not an inherent desire to become an influencer but that's for another study!
From a parental point of view, I can see allowing that freedom could be challenging - especially when legally under 13s arent supposed to have accounts. (And we all know Australia has addressed that!).

A fascinating read. If you find it tough at first persevere: you'll get into the swing of the academic lite format pretty quick, and Phelps provides some very insightful, reasoned, sensitive information that i think is helpful to anyone who deals with tween girls and young women - or will be, be they parents, teachers, medical providers, social workers, advertisers, coaches, religious advisors or just people like me. interested in what growing up is like these days.

[omgitsgarry · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not what i thought it was going to be. I spent so much of this book trying to remember the “am i pretty or ugly” trend on YouTube. I honestly don’t remember it and YouTube has always been a main media source for me so it was really hard to get into.

Pros: it was free on kindle

Cons: it was disorganized and just generally messy. She circles around the topic several times and after a while you feel like you’re getting hit over the head with her point instead of her moving on. Like we get it. She also goes off on these long tangents that have nothing to really do what she is talking about. When she finally gets to her interviews, she doesn’t touch on them for long. She’ll probably do a small paragraph on something someone she interviewed said, then she’ll write a long tangent about it reusing the same points over and over. The girls she was interviewing at times also read as uncomfortable when she pressed for more details about something being “bad” or “inappropriate.” They would immediately shut her down and she would write an entire tangent making a big assumptions on why they didn’t want to answer her, instead of maybe reading the room that they, a minor child who sometimes was as young as age ten, may have just been uncomfortable with her asking those things. Sometimes things are just not that deep.

Overall, if you took out the amount of word salad and tangents in this book had, I think the overall paper would be about forty pages of her findings and the rest just opinions and assumptions. I had to have the kindle audio assistant read it to me because sitting and reading it myself made me want to drop it immediately.

[Leah F C S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not at all what I was expecting. Dense, overly-academic, and repetitive. But nonetheless an interesting read about tween girl agency and use of social media in the context of dominant media portrayals of online harms.

I'm perhaps not the target audience for this book, since I was indeed a tween girl using social media at the time the interviews informing this book were taken (2012-2013). As such, much of the findings of this book feel pretty common sense to me; the fact that tween girls are generally very particular about who they let follow their private social media accounts and are aware of the need to be cautious about who they interact with and what they post online is nothing new. Dominant media portrayals of tween girls inviting offline and online harm due to their lack of caution has always seemed like a joke considering the amount of online safety guidance we were subjected to from the from 2010 onwards.

I got this e-book through Amazon Prime to get the 'Her Story' Goodreads Achievement. The most I think I got out of this was perhaps a further indication of how much of a strange child I was. I was (and deffo still am) so unsociable and would spend time watching random YouTube videos instead.

Overall though, this book was an interesting research project and I would have perhaps enjoyed it more if it was published more as an academic journal. The methodology was interesting, but produced little of new knowledge in my opinion.

[Michelle Duffy · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 stars. Ah man, this book killed my reading mojo! It wasn’t really a book but a book disguising a thesis - a very, very, long drawn-out thesis. I didn’t want to read a thesis. I didn’t need tween defined or the ethics explained or how the interviewees were selected. I didn’t need chunks of what the girls said. That is fine for a thesis but for a book you can take it as given if the author says they’ve conducted research. You know that all the t’s have been crossed and i’s dotted. It’s the nitty gritty of the research I was looking for. I found the author stuck on pretty or ugly video clips but none of the girls she interviewed had put them up. There were so many other questions she could have asked or things she could have delved into but didn’t. I’m surprised she didn’t interview the parents too to get their perspective. I feel I’m none the wiser after reading the book.

The sentences were long with big, unnecessary words. The book seemed to go round in circles and I really struggled to read it. It wasn’t reader friendly and the author missed her target audience. I wouldn’t recommend this book at all. If the author wants to get her work published she should consider writing an article for a journal. At least then the word count is lowered completely and she might get to the point quicker before we fall asleep while reading.

[Emma-Louise Clements · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Tween girls are half adult half child eating a lunchable while at a fancy hair appointment”
In some ways social media is great for young girls, it allows them to follow trends, communicate with friends, boost self confidence and learn from others. However, on the other hand it can be detrimental to self-esteem, reduce body confidence because of celebrity influences and negative comments from strangers and opens them up to predators posing as friends or young boys.
I grew up in a generation that has used various social media apps such as MySpace, Bebo, MSN, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok. I have known friends to have issues but I think sometimes it comes down to how conscious you are as a person.
Some parts of this book were interesting but most of it was repetitive, boring and full of annoying references that took up too much space.

[Joe Bolton · Rating 3 out of 5]

​ I enjoyed the centering of teenage girls' voices and the subsequent analysis of them. It offers refreshing critical thoughts on a complex topic that is definitely not researched enough, given the extent to which teenage girls' lives are comprised of digital spaces.

​The author, however, has made a great piece of analysis really difficult to digest, especially in the first and second chapters, which used overly verbose language. The text is full to the brim with assumed knowledge of concepts and terms, such as the 'Madonna-Whore Myth'. It would have been more impactful if the author had taken the opportunity to write their research in a simpler way; this would have fully utilised the medium of a book, rather than a research article or textbook, making it more accessible to a wider audience.

[Diksha Patel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Digital Girlhoods explores the complexities of growing up online and the ways the internet shapes identity, self-worth, and connection. It touches on important themes around social media, girlhood, and the pressures of existing in digital spaces, which felt relevant and timely.

There were moments that really stood out, especially when the book examined how curated lives and online validation can impact the way young women see themselves. Those insights felt sharp and worth reflecting on.

However, the book didn’t fully land for me. At times, it felt a bit surface level, and I found myself wanting more depth and nuance in how these ideas were explored. The pacing also made it harder to stay fully engaged throughout.

It’s a good read with an important message, but I wish it had gone deeper into the emotional and psychological layers it hints at.

[Emziethebookworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now I was a little disappointed in this book as I thought it was going to go on for alot longer, instead we got quite a lot of pages filled with the notes that were used to make this book I assume instead and the actual book ending under 190 pages.
I really do feel that this book could of went on for another few chapters, which In my opinion would of been brilliant.
Will keep my eyes open for more works by this author in the future.

[Alberto Madrassi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite shambolic. I was expecting something different from a book titled “Digital Girlhoods”. There is too much focus on the “Am I Pretty or Ugly?” phenomenon; a chapter could have been more than enough. It overlooks many aspects that contribute to the creation of Digital Girlhoods. I can’t believe a researcher didn’t consider (or didn’t have the time) to go deeper into such an interesting subject.

I'm glad I was able to get it for free.

[Sasha Schievink]

I chose this as my pick for International Women's Day because I teach middle school and have first-hand experience with seeing kids grow up online. I was interested to see what this author had to say about the topic. Unfortunately, this was tough to get into and I had to DNF it. It reads more like a thesis paper, and at times was extremely repetitive, which is too bad because it's an important topic.

[Hannah Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was interesting and extremely well researched, but a little dry and academic for a casual read. It did absolutely influence my opinions on social media and is well worth a read if you have, or work with, tween girls. It is important for all of us to understand how underlying patriarchal frameworks influence how we view femininity

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

This absolutely should not be in the list for women’s history month. It reads like a teenager’s book report that needed to be longer before they could hand it in. There are so many repetitive points and nothing that was mentioned was new, surprising, or interesting.

Finished only for my Goodreads achievement or I would have DNF’d at 8% read.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Digital Girlhoods is a dissertation! If you're familiar with ethnographies, I think this one leans a little more technical than many I have read. I could see this being used in a WGS course or an Anthro-course.

Does it provide some meaningful insights and opportunities for discussion? Yes. Will the average reader enjoy reading this? Probably not--- it's very dry, and the citations really clog up the reading space.

[Orlagh Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

the most boringest thing to read in my entire life! Only read it to complete the Goodreads challenge and I found it for free online! Was insufferable maybe because I’m not interested in American girls use of social media😭😂 but I got a headache twice from reading lol! Glad it’s over and I have my award never again!!

[Ida Electra · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book... is just not accessible. The writing style is very academic, there is no clear message being sent that is accessible for the layman. At least not for me. I have spent over 5 hours with this book, have not made that much progress, and do not remember any of it really. Unfortunate, but this book is clearly not for me.

[Lope Orire · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beautiful idea and a subject I actually love… young people, social media, digital culture. I really wanted to enjoy it. But the writing felt too complex and dense, and it made the reading experience harder than it needed to be. Sadly, I just didn’t enjoy it.