She Has the Juice: Tween Girl Visibility and Social Capital on Social Media

• In Event: 40816 - Digital Lives and Social Ties: Examining Identity, Agency, and Influence Online

Abstract

Mapping a tension between empowerment and disempowerment onto tween girls’ social media use, this paper (a chapter from my monograph Digital Girlhoods (2025) explores how the “Girl Power!” cultural model, which emphasizes individualism, empowerment, and confidence via consumption, has fostered the expectation that tween girls make themselves visible online. However, tween girls are notably policed (often by other girls) when modes of visibility resist or subvert conventional and/or acceptable performances of femininity (Attwood, Hakim, and Winch 2017). Tween girls both conform to and resist the conventions and gendered politics of these economies of visibility (Banet-Weiser 2015) in various ways. Visibility on social media has become a normal part of girls’ daily routines but also a significant and widely recognized (and sought after) form of social capital among their peers. They exercise control over their self-representations on social media and strategically use social media to engage their interests and build social capital. Tween girls keenly balance the desire to be seen with the pressure of presenting themselves in culturally specific and socially acceptable ways.

Author

• Katherine A. Phelps, University of Wisconsin-Madison