"I'm A 15-Year-Old Girl, And My Social Media Feed Is Full Of Vile Misogyny"
A look at what girls are really seeing online. PLUS: What adults need to know about BuzzBallz, the declining birth rate, and what teens are really doing with those AI chatbots.
Hi Readers!
I’m Christopher Pepper, an award-winning health educator and the co-author of the bestselling book Talk To Your Boys.
I regularly out send curated collections of news stories and essays like the one you are reading right now. Think of me as your friend who keeps up with everything and sends you the most interesting stuff.
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In this edition:
The High-Alcohol Drink Taking Over Gen Z
I Am A 15-Year-Old Girl. Let Me Show You The Vile Misogyny That Confronts Me On Social Media Every Day
Ethnic Studies Courses Linked To Higher Grades, College Eligibility
Deepfake Nudes Are Haunting America’s Teens
710,000 Fewer Babies Were Born Last Year In U.S. Compared With Two Decades Ago
Man Up! Shut Up!
The Camps Promising to Turn You — Or Your Son— Into An Alpha Male
What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots
The High-Alcohol Drink Taking Over Gen Z (New York Times)
By Callie Holtermann: BuzzBallz are hard drinks sold in bottles that resemble phosphorescent billiard balls. They contain around 15 percent alcohol by volume, more than double that of the average beer. And Lucy Rocca first heard about them from her 13-year-old daughter.
It was December, and Ms. Rocca was talking to her daughter and a friend about a shopping list for a New Year’s Eve party. When the girls brought up BuzzBallz, “I was like, ‘Whoa, no way,’” Ms. Rocca, 50, recalled. She asked where her daughter had gotten the idea. “All my friends are drinking them,” she responded.
BuzzBallz have been around since 2009, but today they are practically ubiquitous. You can find them sprinkled like confetti throughout college parties and stacked by the checkout at convenience stores. The fluorescent orbs are easy to spot on a Florida beach during spring break; in a crowded social media feed, they glow like beacons. The drinks are portable, flavored and cheap, a combination that has earned them a reputation as a go-to beverage for Gen Z. READ MORE
From Christopher - WHY DID I CHOOSE THIS STORY? As a health educator and a parent, I have to try to keep up with trends, especially around substance use. BuzzBallz have definitely moved into the “things to watch out for” category.
I Am A 15-Year-Old Girl. Let Me Show You The Vile Misogyny That Confronts Me On Social Media Every Day (The Guardian)
By Anonymous: I’m a 15-year-old schoolgirl and like most teenagers I spend a fair portion of my spare time on social media, often scrolling through short-form videos on apps such as Instagram or TikTok. All of my friends use those apps, and many spend multiple hours a day on them. I actively try to avoid online misogyny, but I am met with it incessantly whenever I open my mainstream social media apps. It only takes a few minutes before there’s subtle or overt misogyny, such as comment sections on a girl’s post filled with remarks about her body, videos made by men or boys captioned with a degrading joke, and even topics such as domestic violence or rape, trivialised and laughed about.
If a girl my age posts any video of herself online, the comments section will be filled with objectifying and hateful remarks about her, regardless of what the topic of her post was. If she wears anything revealing, or just happens to have larger breasts, she’ll be abused and sexualised. Completely unprompted, there might be hundreds of comments insulting specific features she may have, or rating her attractiveness out of 10. “Sub5”, for example, describes someone who is below 5/10 in attractiveness. I’ve seen videos of boys telling anyone who is unattractive that they should end their own life. READ MORE
WHY DID I CHOOSE THIS STORY? This story provides a real glimpse into what it’s like to be a teenage girl online today, and I think we need to pay attention. The fact that this story had to be published anonymously tells you a lot.
Ethnic Studies Courses Linked To Higher Grades, College Eligibility (San Francisco Chronicle)
By Aldo Toledo: Taking a year-long ethnic studies course could be helping San Francisco high school students earn better grades and exam scores, according to a newly released study that examined the program over a decade.
The research, which analyzed San Francisco Unified School District student outcomes from 2008 to 2023, found that students who took an ethnic studies course showed lasting improvement in their grades, particularly among those who previously struggled academically. And the classes even boosted some students’ chances to get into University of California schools, giving the extra edge necessary to pass eligibility thresholds.“ READ MORE
WHY DID I CHOOSE THIS STORY? I was teaching at a San Francisco high school when Ethnic Studies was first introduced, and I saw how powerful it could be as a tool for helping all students feel welcomed and empowered on campus.
Deepfake Nudes Are Haunting America’s Teens (New York Times)
By Jessica Grose: I have been writing about this issue — the creation of deepfake nudes of minors — for two years. It’s arguably much worse now that A.I. image generation tools are ubiquitous, and the images they create are even more realistic. While social media companies may not be able to fully stamp out child sex abuse material (CSAM) on their platforms, they could be doing a far better job of prioritizing the problem, said Arturo Béjar, a whistle-blower and former engineering director on Facebook’s protect and care team. Béjar, who testified for the state in the New Mexico case against Meta, told me that social media companies can prevent a lot of CSAM from being created and shared.
For starters, Béjar said that “You should not be able to generate erotic content in the likeness of anybody unless they have positive proof that that person has very thoroughly given consent in a million demonstrable ways.” This should apply to users of all ages. Béjar noted that social media companies have incredibly sophisticated tools for labeling images, and he thinks that these companies need to use these to properly label sexually explicit images. Doing so would essentially “kill the distribution knob” that incentivizes sharing them, even if it might also cut down on engagement. READ MORE
WHY DID I CHOOSE THIS STORY? This is a real and growing problem, and I appreciate that Grose is exploring potential solutions to change things.
710,000 Fewer Babies Were Born Last Year In U.S. Compared With Two Decades Ago (NPR)
By Brian Mann: Women in the U.S. gave birth to roughly 710,000 fewer children last year compared with the nation’s peak in 2007, according to preliminary data released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The total fertility rate is now well below replacement level. That means not enough children are being born to maintain a stable population without significant levels of immigration. But some economists say it’s unclear whether the trend toward fewer children reflects a permanent national shift.
One possibility, according to economist Martha Bailey, head of the California Center for Population Research at the University of California, Los Angeles, is that U.S. women are delaying motherhood and will have more children later in life. READ MORE
WHY DID I CHOOSE THIS STORY? This data got a lot of attention this week, and generated some meaningful discussion about the U.S. teen birth rate, which hit a historic low in 2025.
Man Up! Shut Up! (I Blame Society)
By Ruth Whippman: At this point, it’s hard to argue that we are not talking about men and boys enough. The “boy crisis” and the “male loneliness epidemic” have dominated the discourse for nearly two years now. To read the news now is to believe that every Gen Z male in America spends his entire life in a darkened bedroom scrolling redpill forums, glancing up only intermittently to remind his AI girlfriend to obey him, and to smash his own jaw with a hammer.
People are clearly scared about the state of modern boyhood, and desperate for answers. Since “Boymom” first came out, I have given probably close to 200 interviews on the topic- for newspapers and magazines, radio and TV and podcasts all over the world. The book went into four printings in hardcover and has sold tens of thousands of copies. The runaway success of shows like Netflix’s Adolescence and Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere followed, the conversation continues to dominate and several states have since set up workgroups to focus on the challenges of boys and men. READ MORE
WHY DID I CHOOSE THIS STORY? Whippman’s essential book “BoyMom” is newly out in paperback, and in this article she explores two ways (“Man up!” and “Shut Up!”) she’s seen people talking about boys online, and why both fail to meet the mark.
The Camps Promising To Turn You — Or Your Son— Into An Alpha Male (The New Yorker)
By Charles Bethea: In the past several years, the phrase “alpha male” has seeped into the language around us, like the contamination of an underground aquifer. By the time former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called Will Smith’s attack on Chris Rock during the 2022 Oscars an “alpha male response,” I was using the term ironically. But there are plenty of American men these days who regard alpha masculinity—or “warrior mode,” or “modern knighthood,” or other such appellations—not ironically but aspirationally. There are now programs offering to help such men achieve these aspirations, or something close.
On a hot morning last August, I tailed a van speeding through the countryside of central Virginia. The vehicle contained nine blindfolded men wearing black, as they had been instructed to do. Each had paid three thousand dollars to take part in a three-day program called RISE, which stands for Ruthless Integrity and Simple Execution. It offers men an opportunity to crawl through mud, carry heavy objects, and, as its website puts it, “CHANGE YOUR STORY & UNF**K YOUR LIFE.” The van’s speakers played a high-volume mashup of construction sounds, Jordan Peterson lectures, Marine Corps drills, and mumbling voices. “All designed to keep them in the present moment and separate them from the life they were coming from,” Brendan King, RISE’s founder, told me. READ MORE
WHY DID I CHOOSE THIS STORY? This is another Manosphere offshoot that we need to pay attention to. When you read the story, I encourage you to think about why guys might think this is what they need in their lives.
What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots (New York Times)
By Kashmir Hill: “If you think your child is not talking to chatbot companions, you’re probably wrong,” said Mitch Prinstein, co-director of the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development at U.N.C. Chapel Hill.
At the beginning of last year, a high school teacher in Chicago told me that some of her students were dating chatbots, and she worried that they were having their first erotic experiences with them. I wanted to find out what teens had to say about that, so I joined communities devoted to social chatbot apps on the online messaging forum Discord. I introduced myself as a reporter and “an old,” and explained that I was interested in talking to young people who used the services regularly. That’s how I met Quentin. READ MORE
WHY DID I CHOOSE THIS STORY? I like stories that try to help adults keep up with the technology that’s shaping teens’ lives, and this story really does that well.
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