Social media tears down girls. According to a UNESCO report, there is a direct correlation between how much time a girl spends online and increased emotional damage. A Facebook study found that a third of girls say when they feel bad about their bodies, Instagram makes them feel worse. Girls are 50% more likely than boys to report being cyberbullied. Plus — stop the presses! — TikTok is addictive.
How to combat such a widespread, happiness-destroying influence? In Chicago, one of the most powerful forces for good known to humanity is being sent into battle, a voice of comfort and wisdom going back to the beginnings of time:
Grandmothers.
"I come here every Tuesday to sit with the young ladies and do different projects — planting flowers, or making different objects they like," said Delores Durham, 62, waiting in the office at Wendell Smith Elementary School on West 103rd Street in Pullman, bearing donuts. "Just having normal conversation to see where their mind is at. What goals they have in life. I'm just trying to be an encouragement to them. I raised two daughters on the West Side of Chicago myself."
A volunteer who joined Grandmothers Circle last year, Durham was met by Erinn Boone, a licensed clinical professional counselor and coordinator of the program run by the Juvenile Protective Association, a venerable Chicago social service agency founded by Jane Addams in 1901. Originally the Juvenile Court Committee, its purpose was to provide probation officers to the first juvenile court in the nation, founded here in 1899 to keep children from being sent to adult jails.
She hands around a piece of paper showing various emojis: happy, angry, bored, surprised.
"I need you all to tell me how you're feeling," Boone says. "Pass it around."
The girls warm up. They are happy and tired. Goofy and tired. Quiet and tired. Boone detects a theme.
"Everybody's tired — is it the weather?" she asks.
Or maybe something else. Students at Wendell Smith face troubles beyond social media — 94% live in poverty, according to the Illinois State Board of Education, and almost a quarter are homeless. The chronic truancy rate is 32%. And layered upon that, all the usual pressures facing middle-school girls.
"I was having a conversation with another school and we started talking about friendship, and how you can tell someone is a friend," says Boone. "Then we started talking about rumors, and how rumors get started and drama — but I know that's nothing you all deal with here, right?"
That challenge — preventing the adult world from getting its hooks into kids — continues.
Durham and Boone go to greet nine sixth grade girls, ages 11 and 12, just finishing lunch on trays — chicken fingers, applesauce, cartons of milk. The girls barely register their arrival.
"Y'all energy seems real low today," observes Boone. "It's a very Monday kind of Tuesday."
That challenge — preventing the adult world from getting its hooks into kids — continues.
Durham and Boone go to greet nine sixth grade girls, ages 11 and 12, just finishing lunch on trays — chicken fingers, applesauce, cartons of milk. The girls barely register their arrival.
"Y'all energy seems real low today," observes Boone. "It's a very Monday kind of Tuesday."
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Made me tell myself, "I wish I had a grandma like that." Come to think of it, I did have a grandma like that, one who constantly encouraged me in my supposed vocation, dried my tears when necessary, and admonished me to treat my mother and sisters well and to never, ever ride one of those horrible machines (referring to motorcycles). I wish she had hung around a few more years to scare me off temptations far more alluring than motorcycles.
ReplyDeletejohn
My grandma emigrated from Russia during WWI. She was sweet and kind and a wonderful cook and a seamstress in the factories (she even sewed ammo belts in a war plant), but I would have no more come to her with my troubles than I would have gone outside and shouted them to the moon.
ReplyDeleteGrandma Rose had enough troubles of her own. Widowhood,, poverty, a rebellious teen--age daughter (my aunt, who was farmed out to a relative in Brooklyn for a while). And hen, in the early Forties, losing her whole family, back in the old country. The letters just stopped coming, after they all went up the chimney.
So I leaned on my own mother for advice and for emotional support. This royally pissed off my old man, who was the last person I would ever ask for help or guidance. He was a real piece of...work...who earned a good buck but who treated his wife and kids like dirt. Had a father, but never had a dad.
These girls have had two strikes on them from birth. Poor and females of color. I feel sorry and sad for them. Social media is not doing them any favors. It's as harmful as any drug.
An uplifting column and an excellent and charming photo to accompany it here, even better than the version in the paper.
ReplyDeleteAm I correct in guessing that it's not often that you take a staff photographer with you to a story, but end up also using one of your own photos, NS?
Thank you. Regarding the photos — and this is an area that requires tact, not always my strong suit. When you lay out a story, there is a main photo and then you can put secondary photos in the text. I used the photographer's photo as the main photo, not wanting to roil the waters, and mine as the secondary. But someone in the chain of command swapped them. I did feel my photos better captured the energy of the room, but didn't want to bigfoot a professional photographer. It all worked out.
DeleteThanks for the reply, NS. I love the inside baseball stuff about how the sausage is made. Is that a mixed-enough metaphor?
DeleteI wasn't sure if you'd mind answering that, but figured you just wouldn't post it if you did. If I may ask another question -- what was your thinking with regard to your photo with this EGD post and atop the blog today, as compared with your very similar one in the paper? In other words, why didn't you use this one in the paper?
They're similar photos — I chose the one in the paper because I thought there was something distracting about the expression of the girl in the white t-shirt. But upon reflection I decided it helped animate the shot, as did seeing the girl at the far left. Plus Durham had a better expression. I thought of swapping this into the paper, but that would have involved bringing on an editor, late — I can't do those things myself anymore, under the new system — and I decided the one above wasn't so much better that it warranted doing.
DeleteI agree with all 3 of the things you mention about the photo above.
DeleteI really appreciate your responding to both my comments. Thanks again!
Three strikes - poor, female, of color.
ReplyDeleteYes, I thought of that, too, but combined two of them into one.
DeleteHave already been accused of sexism and racism at EGD.
Not going down those roads again. It was safer this way. Trust me.