Are We Losing Girlhood?
Tanya Kainaat, MA Comparative Literature
The 2010s was an interesting decade to be a teenager. It was a time when social media was still something new and exciting, but didn’t prey on our minds. The internet was something we discovered and explored, not something we were raised on. There was something about discovering the world of the forbidden, the ‘adult’ world with our peers; it wasn’t shoved into our faces. The internet has exposed the present generation to certain things way too quickly, and teen girls are facing the worst consequences of this.
But can we teenage girls truly be blamed for this exposure, or is it the way the system is designed to prey on your insecurities to still keep you hooked? Open any social media app and there are hundreds of posts aimed at teen girls; telling them to look, dress, and talk a certain way if they wish to be noticed. Imagine this rhetoric being continuously thrown your way at an age when you have just started becoming conscious of how you look. Then there is the promise of fame, which exposes young girls to further danger. And need I mention the rampant misogyny of the internet? Granted, cyber bullying is not a new phenomenon. However, the more girls put themselves out there, the more danger they are in; this fame comes at a price. According to SQ Magazine, 22% of global internet users aged twelve to seventeen experienced cyberbullying in 2025. There is something unsettling about girls barely in middle school worrying about likes and views, and knowing more about make up brands than books and toys. It’s almost as if they are growing up too fast.
Child celebrities also spark to mind when discussing whether teenagers are growing up too fast nowadays, as they are the ones who barely get to experience childhood. In a rather unfair trade off for being talented, they are thrown into public life all too soon under the pretext of success. It cannot be easy to preserve your innocence when every detail of your intimate life; what you wear, where you go, who you are with, becomes public information for people to speculate on. This becomes even worse when you are a girl. You learn to be on your toes when you’ve just barely begun to walk. The joys of discovering womanhood on your own are snatched away as you are sexualised before you’ve even begun to understand your own body. Somewhere in the cacophony of makeup routines, interviews and pictures on magazine covers, girlhood gets drowned out.
This finally begs the question, what does ‘girlhood’ even mean anymore? Is it all glittery pink bedrooms, makeup and dressing up, which social media has reduced us to? The internet has taken away the very essence of girlhood. There is nothing wrong with the desire to look pretty, but it should come with acceptance and self love, not comparison. Growing up is a beautiful and inevitable process, but it should happen at one’s own pace, not under the pressure to be somebody else.
