16AR21-15

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AR 21:15 - the devastating toll of social media on American girls

In this issue:

ISLAM - lessons on coexistence a bitter pill for liberals

RELIGIOUS CONVERSION - unbridled bias sinks atheist's analysis

TEENAGERS - a book-length secular account of the disaster being wrought by social media

Apologia Report 21:15 (1,288)

April 14, 2016

ISLAM

"The Islamic Dilemma" by Ross Douthat -- compares the barriers to Islam's coexistence and "transition to modernity" with those faced by evangelicalism and Mormonism. In doing so, Douthat comes up with a pretty good analysis that can be adjusted and more broadly applied:

1) we don't understand belief systems from the inside

2) we're divided about what civilization stands for

3) we're divided about where faith fits in

4) we have a hard time articulating what fitting in means

Douthat also shines a strong light on a liberal double-standard which also frustrates coexistence: "Devout Muslims watching current Western debates ... might notice that some of the same cosmopolitan liberals who think of themselves as Benevolent Foes of Islamophobia are also convinced that many conservative Christians are dangerous crypto-theocrats whose institutions and liberties must give way whenever they conflict with liberalism's vision of enlightenment."

His conclusion is also hard to dispute: Working through all this can hold real promise for Islam. "But it has to set aside the sword." New York Times, Dec 13 '15. <www.goo.gl/BH0so8>

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RELIGIOUS CONVERSION

Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion, by Susan Jacoby [1] -- reviewer Garry Wills, emeritus professor of history at Northwestern University, is disappointed that Jacoby (2010 winner of the Atheist Alliance International's Richard Dawkins Award) makes no attempt to restrain her personal bias. "By the time she was 14, the writer Susan Jacoby realized that there is no God, and ever after, she has been working to share that insight. Her new book studies the phenomenon of conversion, since she is upset that people still find ways to accept 'goofy religious myths.' Sometimes she writes as if it is a personal insult to her for people to have any religion."

For example, "She reduces a subtle and rich book [William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience (2)] to nonsense, so she can dismiss it as nonsensical. ...

"She justifiably spends a lot of time on the crueler forms of compulsion, which recur distressingly often in history. But she thinks that all conversions are coerced, however softly or subtly. ...

"The trouble with being a know-it-all at 14 is that there is so little new to learn." New York Times Book Review, Feb 28 '16, p10. <www.goo.gl/zQQbvZ>

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TEENAGERS

American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers, by Nancy Jo Sales [3] -- the publisher's promo reads: "The dominant force in the lives of girls coming of age in America today is social media. What it is doing to an entire generation of young women is the [author's] subject...."

Sales "provides a disturbing portrait of the end of childhood as we know it and of the inexorable and ubiquitous experience of a new kind of adolescence - one dominated by new social and sexual norms, where a girl's first crushes and experiences of longing and romance occur in an accelerated electronic environment; where issues of identity and self-esteem are magnified and transformed by social platforms that provide instantaneous judgment." Coming of age online "has normalized extreme behavior, from pornography to the casual exchange of nude photographs...."

Kirkus calls American Girls "an excellent primer for understanding how the crucible of adolescence has moved to the digital world. This is not the first such book, but Sales impressively balances the specifics of what is happening online currently with the broader implications for boys and girls [and] makes a compelling case for understanding the differences in both the quantity and quality of today's online dangers. ... The author discovered that, despite conflicting statistics, there's an extremely high likelihood that most teenagers have watched pornography online - or will soon. [T]his book is an ice-cold, important wake-up call." [5]

Publishers Weekly adds that Sales "finds dismaying evidence that social media has fostered a culture 'very hostile' to girls in which sexism, harassment, and cyberbullying have become the 'new normal'.... [H]er interview subjects, ages 13 to 19, clearly articulate the ways in which 'social media is a nightmare,' a strange 'half-reality' that produces self-consciousness, narcissism, image obsession, anxiety, depression, loneliness, drama, and 'the overwhelming pressure to be perfect' or at least 'to be considered "hot."' Teens value social media as a revolutionary tool for collective action, but Sales finds that across race, class, and region, social media reinforces a sexual double standard; its use reduces communication skills, and its users exhibit continual disrespect for women hand-in-hand with 'an almost total erosion of privacy. ' She deftly analyzes the causes of this phenomenon of self-objectification - among them the 'pornification of American life,' the hypersexualization of teens, and broader trends towards impulse gratification - as well as its consequences, including rising rates of STDs, self-harm, exploitation, and a deterioration in girls' ability to cultivate relationships, intimacy, and a rich interior life." [6]

American Girls is featured on the cover of the March 27 New York Times Sunday Book Review (page BR1) <www.goo.gl/AvVxJS>, alongside a review of Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape by Peggy Orenstein [4]. <www.goo.gl/d9LYWB> See also Sales's widely cited article "Friends without Benefits" in Vanity Fair, Sept 26 '13. <www.goo.gl/Ji47tp>

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion, by Susan Jacoby (Pantheon, 2016, hardcover, 512 pages) <www.goo.gl/zekLvi>

2 - The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James (CreateSpace, 2013, paperback, 396 pages) <www.goo.gl/oQG9lM>

3 - American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers, by Nancy Jo Sales (Knopf, 2016, hardcover, 416 pages) <www.goo.gl/RASCnv>

4 - Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape, by Peggy Orenstein (Harper, 2016, hardcover: 320 pages) <www.goo.gl/9sb8U0>

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