Do you know what your children are doing online? Youve savvy enough to admit that its likely you dont know the full extent of it. In many homes, the Internet gives kids their first taste of real freedom, as they wander down unfamiliar virtual side streets and meet new people maybe people parents wouldnt allow over for a play date. This lack of control leads to worry, which translates to full-blown hysteria when its processed by the media or, as we call it these days, the Internet. Stories abound about young people misbehaving online or becoming victims of bullies, predators and kidnappers. And more often than not, at the center of these morality tales is a teenaged girl.
Shayla Thiel-Stern says this moral panic about young women is nothing new; in fact, it dates back more than 100 years, when parents and the media fretted about the popularity of dance halls among young people. Her new book, From the Dance Hall to Facebook: Teen Girls, Mass Media, and Moral Panic in the United States, 1905-2010 (University of Massachusetts Press) posits that the real problem was not with the girls behavior, but with the medias demeaning coverage of young women to titillate a perverse and judgmental adult audience. Through historical research and interviews conducted with teenagers and former teenagers, she makes a compelling case for more measured media coverage of young people, noting that the way the media treats women on the edge of adulthood sets a standard for limiting their political and social power for the rest of their lives.
Thiel-Stern is a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Minnesota.
MinnPost: Journalists have been trained to be more conscious about the way they report on issues involving race, gender, and older people but perhaps not younger people. What things would you want a journalist to consider when writing about teenagers?
Shayla Thiel-Stern: I think many journalists are still fairly wary of speaking to minors in a lot of cases because they are so sensitive to maintaining their privacy and because they dont want to represent them in a way that could bring them harm or ridicule. This is not impossible, though. Some reporters really do a fantastic job of including quotes from teens in the articles they write about them using social media; for example, Katie Humphrey of the Star Tribune and Jan Hoffman of the New York Times always include quotes from young people in the stories that they write about them, rather than just quoting experts and officials. They tell more compelling stories as a result.
MP: You seem to criticize journalists for quoting, verbatim, teen subjects using "youth slang," saying that doing so places teen girls at the margins of society. But the emergence of slang often comes from teenagers, who may revel in its use precisely because it is their own language. Might they appreciate the opportunity to affirm their belonging to the teen world?
Shayla Thiel-Stern
ST: There are appropriate uses of quoting sources using slang and poor English. In the historical cases in my book, the journalists were choosing quotes that tended to demonstrate the teen girls lack of education and taste to fit within the larger narrative of their stories. For example, the few times the young women going to dance halls were quoted included broken English and slang that at the time in history was considered a mark of their working-class background. In the stories about teen girls and Elvis where they were screaming or calling him the most, the reporters usually were fitting the quotes into a larger adult narrative about how youth today were so hard to understand and their taste so questionable. Most articles that adults write about their daughters love of One Direction still do this. Its fun to read, but it certainly questions and minimizes girls taste and reinforces the trope that teen girls are silly, nave and not to be taken seriously.
MP: You begin by exploring the dance hall culture of a century ago. Is there a modern equivalent to the dance hall?
ST: The modern equivalent to the dance hall is found on the Internet and mobile apps. Right now, parents wonder about all the selfies their daughters are posting on Instagram or sending on Snapchat, and worrying about how they are portraying themselves in a fairly public space. That was definitely the worry at the time of dance halls in the early 1900s. There are huge differences between what was happening then those teen girls were rarely in school and often supported their families; women couldnt vote then and their political and cultural power was more limited but the moral panic over what girls are doing in public recreational space is still very much the same.
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'Dance Hall to Facebook' calls for more measured media coverage of young people