Book

Sofia Cordon of Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2020) writes:

"Adolescence, Girlhood, and Media Migration by Aimee Rickman is a concisely written deep dive into how rural, female adolescents interact within the sphere of social media. Feelings of isolation, misunderstanding, surveil lance, and ignorance pushed adolescents into online spaces that fulfilled their social and informational needs. The concepts explored in this book are integral to understanding how geographic location can influence social media use and a teenager’s sense of autonomy and independence. Rickman provided valuable information about how teenagers form their identity in a time where social media presentation is inseparable from presentation in real life. Rickman’s deci sion to profile the adolescents as having real and mature thoughts and behaviors contrasts the ways that they are typically viewed by society. They also contrast with how research examines the place of social media in adolescence, which tends to center on mental health concerns and victimization. ...

Through understanding and legitimizing their thoughts and actions, Rickman exposes youth’s agency and competency when dealing with life’s unknowns. (T)his book explores an understudied population of adolescents and presents their feelings and emotions as valid. Social media is becoming an integral part of society, advertisements, and popularity and caters towards youth directly. The interactions between youth and social media provide platforms for social interactions and popularity but, most importantly, provide access to knowledge, social justice, and independence when it is out of reach offline."

Maureen Ebben of Women's Studies in Communications (2020) writes:

"Rickman’s analysis demonstrates that although the girls use social media to escape marginality, their participation in social media reinscribes their exclusion in new ways. Scholars and teachers of feminism, gender, social media, rural youth, and those who work with adolescent girls will find this text valuable. ... There are at least two implications from Rickman’s conclusion. First, we might examine why it is that adolescent girls consider social media to be their best option for being themselves, rather than doing so in their own communities. Second, as social media takes on increased import and users (of all ages) gain awareness about the ways in which their autonomy is manipulated online, we need to demand better both for girls and from the technology."

Sabrina Sanchez of Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2018) writes:

"Rickman gives the reader insight into the lives of her participants with each chapter, allowing for real-life instances of each category covered in that given chapter. The result is a thought-provoking book on the constraints that US society places on young girls and how girls attempt to negotiate this limited power and respect online, as well as explicit reasons and rationales girls have for entering the online sphere and the actions they take once in it."

Ann Abbott of The Clay County Advocate Press (2018) writes:

"If nothing else, in the last chapter, read 'An Ending Note.' 'Throughout my research,' Aimee writes, 'I have been continually struck by the feelings of powerlessness expressed by my interlocutors, and the ways that they discussed their social media involvements in opposition to the disappointing attitudes and opportunities they experienced offline.' The rest of this subsection will give you a lot to ponder. Most of all, I suggest approaching the book--and teenagers themselves--with an open mind. We see them struggle. We might not see our role in those struggles. And in their solution."

Freedom. For me, that word describes being a teenager in Clay City during the 1980s. My friends and I drove a lot--dragging Main, going back and forth to out-of-town ball games, driving to the movies in Olney and Effingham and meeting up at each other’s houses to hang out. You could go uptown and roam, ending up in the pool hall, spending quarters on pinball and Pac-Man. The advances in technology that most affected us were record players, eight-track tapes, cassettes and then the Walkman.

I hope teenagers in our small towns today still feel free. After all, things are pretty safe overall, there are still other kids to hang out with and you end up making your own fun anyway. But there are big differences: in the 1980s, we didn’t have the internet, cell phones or social media.

That’s why I drove to Olney last week and donated a book the Olney Public Library about teenagers and social media. It was written by my friend Aimee Rickman and is titled Adolescence, Girlhood, and Media Migration: US Teens’Use of Social Media to Negotiate Offline Struggles. You can check it out.

It’s an academic book, so I thought I would offer a guide to a non-academic reading of the information it contains. In the first chapter, there is a subsection called “Participants.” If you read through the description of the girls Aimee interviewed for the book, I think you’ll see girls who probably look a lot like girls you know in your town. For example, “Cassidy is a 17-year-old senior…She describes herself as a ‘very nice, shy person. Always wanting to do my best and help others. Friendly. She uses Facebook.”

Although Aimee didn’t do her research in Clay and Richland counties, the descriptions of the rural towns where the girls do actually come from sound a lot like Olney, Flora, Louisville, Clay City, Noble and even Wynoose, Sailor Springs, Xenia and Ingraham. (Aimee does not use the real names of the girls or the towns.) For example, Cassidy is from “Willow, population 975.” I think Aimee’s study can help us understand adolescent girls--and our towns.

Each of the following chapters opens with a vivid description of Aimee’s interaction with the girl she is interviewing, the place she lives and the way she thinks. Truly, those opening paragraphs are like diving into a novel. They have fascinating characters, meaningful dialogue, portentous settings and a narrator who endeavors to give you the big picture. If you don’t feel like checking out the book and taking it home to read, just sit in the Olney Public Library and reading those opening chapters for a window into the complexities of girls’ lives.

I learned a lot by reading this book. Chapter 2 introduces the contradictory feeling that the girls in these small towns experience: crowded isolation. “This Is About as Good as It Gets” is the title of chapter 3 which tackles the girls’struggles in their offline lives. Chapter 4 teases out the ways girls both skirt and engage in controversy. In Chapter 5, the girls talk about safety and risk on social media. Each chapter theme is important for today’s adolescent girls and for those of us who know and love them.

If you have the time, read the whole chapter, or skip to the final section of each chapter. Aimee wraps things up neatly with each chapter’s conclusion, tying together the bigger issues of adolescence, girlhood, social media and life in rural Illinois.

Finally, if nothing else, in the last chapter, read “An Ending Note.” “Throughout my research,” Aimee writes, “I have been continually struck by the feelings of powerlessness expressed by my interlocutors, and the ways that they discussed their social media involvements in opposition to the disappointing attitudes and opportunities they experienced offline.” The rest of this subsection will give you a lot to ponder.

Most of all, I suggest approaching the book--and teenagers themselves--with an open mind. We see them struggle. We might not see our role in those struggles. And in their solution.