Nancy jo sales from the instamatic to instagram

Signs of life essayessay“from instamatic to Instagram: social media and the secret lives of teenagers” Nancy Jo Sales, pg. 429- 435 Notes/ main ideas Sexists reasonings for women getting cameras in earlier years.Same connections made for more recent years as the use for the appShowing off what a girl has “pictured” perfectly

4HannaiPhone. Social media also enforces the idea of buying new things with ads that constantly popup, implanting the idea of getting their product into teenagers. Joseph Turow touches on this inhis article “The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry Is Defining Your Identity andYour Worth,” where he states, “You may notice that some ads seem to follow you around theinternet…” (Turow 394-395). These adds test the patience of social media users, especiallyteenagers who are still developing their immediate gratification versus deferring gratification.The enforcement of social media and the excuse of other people across the internet buying aproduct has a negative effect on teenagers’ immediate gratification versus deferring gratificationand supports the idea that our relationship with technology is relatively unhealthy andproductive.The third criterion important to evaluating the health of teenager’s social media use ishow it affects meat space interactions.In short, interactions in the real world is one of the mostimportant part of everyday life.When teenagers can communicate between people their age orolder, they are participating as fully as they can grow in their life.On the other hand, if teenagersallow themselves to be distracted, they end up risking their connections with people and becomeanti-social.Since we aren’t born with the ability to speak and have a conversation, and since thisability is crucial to life, teenagers should remove whatever has a negative effect on it and makesure it never comes back.So, does social media have a social or anti-social effect on teenagers inthe real world?I believe that social media has a positive effect on teenager’s meat space. Social mediaallows people to share their thoughts and their stories to whoever they want, whenever theywant. This allows anti-social people to be more open to others, since no one can see their face,allowing them to think that there’s no risk opening up. Nancy Jo Sales talks about how social

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“From the Instamatic to Instagram: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers”
By Nancy Jo Sales
1 The historical narrative of the Kodak Instamatics symbolizes the Instagram and modern-day characteristics of its usage. According to Sales, the Kodak instamatics were inexpensive relative to the Instagram app which is also easy to use, weightless and portable. Moreover, girls are the key market drivers of Instagram just like instamatics that directly targeted girls. Teen girls used Instamatics to become popular a trend seen among teenagers currently as described by Sales who are possessed with likes and media popularity by faking their real ident

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"It's really sad, posting pictures all the time. What kind of life is that?"

So says a young woman named Debby, one of the many teenage voices that serve as a clarion call — or an alarm bell — in Nancy Jo Sales' new book American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers (Knopf, 375 pp., ***½ out of four stars).

The teen years have always been challenging, with young people standing on the precipice of adulthood as they deal with hormones gone haywire and countless insecurities. But toss social media into the mix, and childhood seems to have become downright terrifying.

Sales painstakingly draws on scholarly research and numerous interviews with girls from New Jersey to California to offer a harrowing glimpse into a world where self-esteem, friendships and sexuality play out, and are defined by the parameters of social media.

Social media’s ubiquity is apparent whatever your generation. Twitter. Instagram. Tinder. The array of apps and sites is dizzying, and there are grandparents who check their messages non-stop and scroll through Facebook in the middle of a work day.

But Sales’ work allows young women to divulge the extent to which their lives revolve around a virtual reality, and the sometimes traumatic effect it’s having on their interactions and aspirations.

“I really wonder what’s going to happen to our generation,’’ a young woman named Kayla says. “We’re not learning how to communicate well or deal with our problems with each other.’’

There are the countless girls who pose provocatively on Instagram, seeking a tiny bit of the digital fame attained by Kylie and Kendall Jenner, or their big sister, Kim Kardashian West, who personifies our selfie-driven culture like few others.

There is the jittery anxiety over missing a tweet, or posting a picture that fails to get enough “likes.’’ There’s the troubling influence of online pornography on the behaviors and expectations of girls, as well as boys, and the creation of a misogynistic vocabulary —  with phrases like “slut shaming'' that have joined the teenage lexicon.

Shadowing it all is the specter of cyber bullying, and the vicious cycle in which many girls, having been tormented online, then seek to build self-esteem through more “likable’’ photos and postings on those very same portals.

Sales' steady string of vignettes can be numbing at times, with one girl after another talking about boys asking them for “nudes,’’ the lack of romance in a culture that revolves around “hook-ups,’’ and the pressure to constantly project a virtually approved image of perfection.

But that repetition, interspersed with many young women’s poignant reflections, powerfully conveys how pervasive these experiences and feelings are among American girls.

Sales offers a prescription at the end, noting that innovators in Silicon Valley should do more to stop cyberbullying and the exploitation of children online. Young women also need to gain a firmer understanding of the principles of feminism, she says, so that they can be empowered to recognize and challenge sexism and abuse.

And perhaps grownups need to put down their phones, and talk with their children.

Charisse Jones is co-author of Misty Copeland's Life In Motion.