Why are British teenage girls so unhappy? Here’s the answer (Caitlin Moran, The Times, Sep 13 2024)

"The report, by the Children’s Society, found that British 15-year-old girls are the most unhappy in Europe.

British girls aged 10-15 are “significantly less happy” with their life, appearance, family and school than the average boy — and their happiness is still declining.

Boys’ life satisfaction, meanwhile, remains broadly stable. (…)

But I still didn’t have an “aha!” moment about why this so disproportionately affects girls until… I talked to some teenage girls.

It was at a party, and I went to vape with them on the patio. Because I take my nicotine like children do.

“Duh — it’s the boys,” one said when I brought it up, as all the others agreed.

“The boys?” I asked.

My last book, What About Men?, had been all about how much boys struggle these days: their loneliness; their suicide rates. I’d spent the past year feeling very sympathetic towards boys.

“Yeah, well, who do you think they’re taking out their unhappiness on? It’s us,” another girl said.

“One boy at school used to draw a picture every day of how ugly I was,” a third girl said. “Every day for two years.”

“They’ve all got ‘Rate The Girls’ polls on their WhatsApps,” the first said. “They mark you down for weight gain, haircuts, what you say.”

“But then, if you’re hot, it’s just as bad, in a different way, because they’ll be talking about how they want to f*** you.”

The girls discussed coping techniques. Bad news: none of them worked.

“The only way you can stop them is if you become ‘one of the boys’ and hang out with them. But then,” the second girl said with a sigh, “all the other girls call you a slut. Because you’ve gone over to the boys’ side.”

“Surely it’s not all the boys?” I said. “There must be some nice boys?”

“Oh, yeah,” one girl said. “But they keep their heads down. Because… well, look.”

She showed me the Instagram account of her friend. Under every picture she posted of herself — smiling in a new dress; with her dog — dozens of anonymous accounts had replied with the most rank abuse.

“Fat.” “Slut.” “You gonna try and kill yourself again, for attention?”

“They’re all boys from her school,” she said. “And look, this one boy tried to defend her.”

I saw a series of messages from a brave teenage boy, posting things like, “You’re all big men, leaving these replies under anonymous accounts.”

As I could see, this boy immediately became a target too. Mainly accusations that he was “white knighting” this girl: “You wanna f*** her, bro?”

“So,” I asked, “you don’t think it’s social media pressure to be beautiful, or the economy, that’s making girls so sad?”

“Well, yeah, them too,” the first girl said. “But, Monday-Friday, 9-3, I’m not on social media. I’m not… in the economy. I’m just with these boys. And no one talks about how horrible they are.”

I thought about another recent report, showing a 30 per cent ideological gap between Gen Z men, who are increasingly conservative, and Gen Z women, who are increasingly progressive.

I thought about Andrew Tate, who has nine million mostly young male followers — and faces human trafficking charges, which he denies.

And I thought: maybe these girls are on to something. Maybe more people need to vape with teenage girls and ask them for the school gossip."

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

Experienced both. And both are bullying.

Politicians and school admins seem to think that kids are always bullying each other over brands, and anon thinks they're just deflecting from the real social reasons behind bullying, such as racism, homophobia, fatphobia, ableism, etc.

This is asking about clothing, accessories, gadgets & gizmos, etc.

–

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

oh hey nightmares from the hell that was 1999-2000

with adhd/autism it's funny like. people will call you weird all your life, people will bully you for your "outlandish" behaviour, people will criticize literally everything you do as "not normal", BUT THE SECOND YOU GET DIAGNOSED (or suggest you might have it) they're like "huh what but you're so normal, you're literally the most normal person I've ever seen, you're literally so normal and absolutely nothing is wrong with you? why would you have that now all of a sudden???"

God Shit OP

image ID: Tags that read #i think what this boils down to is #they’re upset that you are no longer weird in a way that is socially acceptable to bully #and now they have to feel remorse god forbid #because it turns out you weren’t just eccentric or melodramatic. you were disabled. end image ID

Not to make a Christmas Post but Santa did everything right re: the Rudolph situation and every time I see some edgelord slander talking about “the lesson of Rudolph is that your differences will be punished until the powers that be find them useful” I just assume that person is a little thick and misunderstood a song written to be so simple babies can understand it

One of the most basic things they teach you in Teacher School is that if you know a kid is being bullied, bringing all the other kids together and scolding them for being mean and excluding That Kid is a great way to escalate it from “they don’t let this kid play with them” to “they are beating up this kid.” If you actually want to address the problem, the other kids can’t know they’re being told what to do. A good way to address it is to create a situation where the bullied kid gets to be the big cool hero in a way that benefits everybody, then put the bullied kid in that situation and let them save the day. Santa, in “Rudolph,” is essentially doing the same thing that any teacher does when they have a class jeopardy game with a pizza party riding on it, and give the last question to the weird kid who’s bullied for being super into anime, and that question happens to be about that kid’s favorite anime, and they get it right, and now EVERYBODY gets pizza, thanks to Anime Kid! Creating a situation, among a community of christmas-loving deer, where christmas can only happen because of the thing that’s special about Rudolph, was literally LITERALLY him intervening on Rudolph’s bullying. Do you think Santa, an immortal time-bending elf-saint who is sanctioned by god to monitor the children of the world and deliver them toys, is unable to navigate a foggy night? You really think his offering Rudolph, an untested rookie, the glamor post was an act of last resort? Do any of you know ANYTHING about Pedagogy or Classroom Management? These are deer. BABIES understand this song.

“Haha isn’t it funny that Neil Gaiman is the only celebrity we haven’t run off this site?” Actually no, it isn’t funny that tumblr has repeatedly launched harassment campaigns against every vaguely popular person who dared to be accessible and no, we didn’t “decide to let Neil stay”, he’s received a metric shitton of harassment he just refuses to be bullied off of social media by a bunch of teenagers with nothing better to do than to be shitty to people online just because they’re there

there’s a lot of really, really good writers on here who aren’t white, straight, or male. they get less attention and even more harassment.

always punch up at power, not down at those life has knocked down

x

people who say offensive things and then go “it’s okay! it’s just satire” really need to look at these two images

pls

The fact that they’re still tight about this after all these years is so funny to me like they must think about it every single day

Man it wasn't even the copypasta. I saw folks eviscerating the guy for daring to write YA stuff. Teen love for teens. And how that made him a pedophile. Like that's what's being talked about here. Not the cock monologue. It was the endless hate and vitriol like I remember distinctly my dash being flooded with "he's a grown man who writes stuff for kids. That's super sus of him" and him literally being called a pedophile and other such smears. Like the cock nonsense was the absolute least of what happened. Don't be a derisive dick. If you're referencing that then obviously you were around to see all the toxic bullshit too and you should know all of this

But oh noooo! It was obviously the goofy taste of balls post that did it! Because tumblr is good and always correct /s

It is particularly cruel to me that John Green was harassed essentially off of the internet in the way that he was because the poor man has OCD and is very open about it.

The way he was treated is horrible and disgusting for anyone at all, but John Green has for years and years (along with his brother Hank) tried to make the world a measurably better place while living with a horrific mental illness. A mental illness that makes something like being called a pedophile over and over again horrific in ways that unless you have OCD, or are very very close to someone who does, you will never understand because OCD targets whatever you value and makes your world a living hell over it.

And you know what? He still writes his novels, and he is still out here doing absolutely everything he can to make the world a measurably better place. The cock monologue was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

--

Also if anyone did this to my brother I would never ever forgive anyone involved. Never. The fact that they are still engaging with the internet in the way they do, with vulnerability and kindness is remarkable.

The notes on this post are shit so just to be clear: if you’re following me and you think it’s funny to harass someone, or that it doesn’t count if the victim is above a certain age or if the harassment happens online, or that it’s worse to speak out against harassment than to harass someone, unfollow me because I don’t fucking want you to interact with me

On the positive side, here’s two replies that are actually decent:

"Harassing someone non-stop for months, including graphic sexual harassment and disturbing baseless accusations of child abuse, is funny as long as I think the victim is annoying!" -a lot of people, apparently

Here is a statement that I sincerely and deeply believe to be true: enjoying harming other people makes you a bad person.

No matter what the context, or the situation, or the reasons. It does.

Now, this does not apply to things like kink or boxing or football or whatever other sometimes painful activity consenting persons might engage in, because ‘hurt’ is not the same thing as ‘harm’. It doesn’t apply to things like setting a broken bone, which hurts but is beneficial, not harmful. It does not apply to harm inflicted in self-defense, or duty, or obligation, but harm inflicted for the pleasure of doing so.

Using the word ‘harm’ to connote willful damage, injury, distress, inflicted on an unwilling person, I want to be really clear... 

If you get pleasure out of causing any form of harm to another being, you are a bad person. 

No other qualification is needed. Enjoying torturing John Green or another celebrity online is ethically exactly the same thing as enjoying torturing a kitten, or a child. The fact of enjoying inflicting harm is the defining characteristic, not the choice of target. 

The nature of the target is completely immaterial. To enjoy causing harm is ethically and morally wrong in and of itself. To quote Vimes “You couldn’t say ‘We’re the good guys’ and do bad-guy things.”

You weren’t bullied because you liked anime, you were bullied because you were locked in a prison with 1,000 other teens and a combination of institutional frameworks and environmental stressors led to the construction and enforcement of brutal social hierarchies

sometimes i think about how “alpha wolves” are only a thing in captivity, and then i think about public schools

you know how some parents do that toxic thing where they don’t notice or reward kids for improving their behavior, but every screw-up gets remarked upon and used to inflict shame? so you’re stuck in that awful cycle where there are no rewards, only the inevitability of eventual punishment?

and how that makes it extremely hard to judge your own actions or grow into a better person, because there’s no one to confirm that you actually are doing better, and are capable of improving, and are not doomed to forever be a terrible person incapable of growth?

ok so: I don’t know how to explain to you that we’ve built a social media culture that treats people the same way. with the same abusive cycle.

That sounds like cancel culture

I don’t know what to call it anymore. people get heated about terms like “purity” or “cancel” or “call out” culture, or can’t seem to agree on a meaning. I’m not talking about like. no longer supporting rich and powerful celebrities when their abusive actions come to light. I’m not talking about holding people accountable, or warning people about active abusers. but I am seriously concerned about how we treat social media users once they get even a small amount of attention, even in small niche spaces.

I am concerned about this culture of combing through years of people’s social media accounts, looking for “problematic” shit they’ve done. I am concerned with the whole culture of using “call outs” as a tool to harass and ostracize users large and small. I am concerned about the malice we spread behind people’s backs, in screenshots and posts they aren’t able to see. I am concerned with this culture of demanding apologies for things said years ago, things already outgrown and regretted, and of ignoring those apologies even while pilling on more censure. I’m concerned about this whole culture of accusation and misinformation, where the most outrageous claims and holier-than-thou performances are rewarded with notes and views, even as facts are ignored and context removed. I am concerned about the lack of accountability, the way the accused is given no opportunity to defend themselves from the onslaught, the way their responses and explanations go ignored, the way any charge can be made at any time on any evidence, with no ability to appeal or exonerate. I’m concerned about the way this culture targets minority users and turns their own communities against them. I’m concerned about the actually harmful and predatory behavior that gets lost in the bog, and how we have lost the ability to distinguish between shades of gray with any level of sanity. And I am concerned by the sheer number of people who fail to realize they are perpetuating bullying and harassment.

I am enormously concerned with the way people who are “called out” are never forgiven, never allowed to make amends, never allowed to grow, how their efforts to learn and do better are ignored even while strangers callously repeat and reblog and retweet the same criticisms ad nauseam.

And I see this everywhere, happening to anyone. And yes, this applies to larger accounts and youtubers and “influencers,” and a bunch of content creators who may or may not be making a decent living off of their work, but who are certainly not “rich and powerful celebrities.” (Because apparently we spend so much time in online microcosms that ya’ll can’t tell the difference???) Christ, my blog isn’t nearly as large as some people seem to think, it’s obscure by most measures, and still I’ve been the target of mass harassment for years. I’ve seen bad and watched others go through worse, seen users with far larger and far smaller followings driven off of this and other platforms—driven off with a violence and bloodthirst that had nothing to do with making a community safer and everything to do with a toxic culture gone wrong. Fucking fix this already.

Abuse is still abuse when it happens online, when done by strangers, when done en masse, when sanctioned by a community, and when done with “good” intentions. Do BETTER.

oh, and to anyone who has reblogged this and similar posts I’ve written with the “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point” meme? that is literally an example of the behavior this post is criticizing. you are literally just punishing good behavior instead of allowing people to grow and do better. I’ve been the subject of smear campaigns for years, and I’ve lost track of the number of times someone has added that meme to one of my most carefully worded, thought-out, sincere and earnest posts, posts on serious social and mental health issues. It’s exhausting, it’s not helpful, and guess what? It’s just plain bullying. Do better, and allow others to do better too.