MaryAnn Harlan |\u00a0February 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n I see we are at the stage in the media narrative where we are once again worried about our\u00a0girls. On Feb 13th the headline at the Washington Post declared \u201cTeen Girls \u2018engulfed\u2019 in\u00a0Violence and Trauma, the CDC finds\u201d.<\/a> I don\u2019t mean to make light of the CDC data on Youth\u00a0Risk Behaviors<\/a> because there is concerning data. But as someone who investigated media\u00a0narratives about girlhood I couldn\u2019t help but heave a heavy sigh. Are we really back here? It\u00a0seems we are.<\/p>\n What was interesting is that after the first few paragraphs about an uptick in experiencing\u00a0sexual violence the article focused on the mental health findings; significant increases over ten\u00a0years in behaviors that could be considered symptoms of depression and suicidal thoughts and\u00a0actions. It was left to the reader to correlate the uptick with the increase in suicidal ideation and\u00a0depressive behavior. And that isn\u2019t the correlation the article went on to make.<\/p>\n I was particularly frustrated by the gendered analysis. Girls, according to the WaPO expert,\u00a0are more attuned to their feelings and therefore more likely to self-report depressive symptoms.\u00a0Boys are more likely to \u201cmask\u201d symptoms and be aggressive. Not to mention, according to the It is convenient to focus on girls\u2019 emotions and so-called capacity to name their depression.\u00a0But it ignores larger issues that CDC\u2019s survey doesn\u2019t address. Others will address some of these\u00a0issues related to the actual questions, the stats, and what is missing from CDC\u2019s report and\u00a0problematic data, but I worry about the narratives the media creates.<\/p>\n Narratives about girls at risk quite frequently ignore race, class, age, geography, gender\u00a0identification (beyond the binary), sexual orientation, disability, etc. As we saw the last time the\u00a0girls at risk media narrative dominated the headlines, the imagined girl is generally white and\u00a0middle class, not to mention able-bodied and cis. Monies, policies, programs flow into \u201cfixing\u00a0the imagined girl\u2019s problem and left behind are girls who don\u2019t fit this narrative.<\/p>\n Furthermore, it doesn\u2019t take into account girls, or frankly all youth\u2019s, own capacity to state\u00a0what they need, to articulate what their actual problem is and act on it. The narrative becomes\u00a0embedded in popular narratives, news articles heavily reliant on anecdote, after school special\u00a0type plot lines on television and in books, popular nonfiction, and parenting advice.\u00a0It is nothing short of disinformation using imagined girls as props. And I guess I am left\u00a0asking who benefits from this narrative? Because that is in my estimation the real danger to\u00a0youth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Response to CDC\u2019s \u201cTeen Girls \u2018Engulfed\u2019 in Violence and Trauma\u201d Report MaryAnn Harlan |\u00a0February 2023 I see we are at the stage in the media narrative where we are once again worried about our\u00a0girls. On Feb 13th the headline at the Washington Post declared \u201cTeen Girls \u2018engulfed\u2019 in\u00a0Violence and Trauma, the CDC finds\u201d. I don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160840"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160848,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160840\/revisions\/160848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nsame quote, girls are more likely to be vulnerable to social media. Except the report didn\u2019t\u00a0actually ask about social media. So, we don\u2019t really know if this is why girls are reporting higher\u00a0rates of attempted suicide based on CDC\u2019s data or that boys aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n