[Lifestyle] Group chat ghostings, unrequited crushes and dating your friend’s ex: the teen girl problems being solved by adolescent agony aunts

[GlaD1]

This summer two 17-year olds started a blog to answer their peers’ most common problems. Then it took on a life of its own…

ia Sugimoto and Sophia Rundle, both 17, met in their freshman year at high school in Washington State, four years ago. They had mutual interests, such as hanging out; they both really liked going to the beach. When they talk about it, I get a Technicolor flash of the intensity of teenage friendships: because it’s not really about the beach, it’s about what they talked about at the beach. Adult affiliations are so functional by comparison.

Barely two months ago, Sugimoto had an idea: to start Girlhood, an advice site where teenage girls helped other teenage girls with their dilemmas. “It came from the Barbie movie,” she says. “I felt a feeling of comfort, a safe space around me full of girls, women from my age to their 80s, all crying.”

Within three weeks, they had had 20,000 advice submissions, 8 million views, and 85,000 people had followed them on TikTok. “We’ve had over 6,000 people who want to volunteer,” Sugimoto says, which is fortunate as they couldn’t possibly do it all themselves. Indeed, they are both by necessity now mainly in operations, and the volunteer army does the wisdom.

They are not registered advice-givers, they stress. “We’re not going to give advice on eating disorders, sexual assault, things like that,” Rundle says. We don’t want to harm our volunteers or the people we’re giving advice to.” Instead, the submissions are the elemental questions of becoming an adult: am I doing this right? Do I have enough friends, am I nice enough to them, are they nice enough to me? How do I get over this guy, or get him back, or get rid of him, or trust him? Am I achieving enough, or am I destined to be a failure?

Despite the international reach – they have had messages from Sweden, New Zealand and a number of Asian and African countries – the first volunteer inquiry was from the UK. “A lot of girls have issues that are very similar to ours,” Sugimoto says. Rundle adds: “We both wanted to create a website that encompassed the spirit of big‑sister advice: you can talk to us because we’ve had experiences similar to the ones you’re going through.”

If there’s anything dispiriting about reading the problems, it’s how many of them speak to a power imbalance between girls and boys: a lot of heaviness about boys seemingly swimming in and out of relationships without a care in the world, while girls have tried everything to get over them, and are out of ideas. I thought gen Z had somehow reshuffled the deck on who held all the cards. Rundle and Sugimoto both shoot me a look of great patience, before Rundle explains: “We try not to get into the realm of activism, but the submissions are extremely telling about society. Women, psychologically, have a harder time getting over guys, that’s what I’ve seen in Girlhood and in general.” Their advice usually boils down to: “You’ll get over him when you stop thinking about him.” It emphatically doesn’t go with: “Get fake eyelashes and flirt with his best friend”.

Other problems a gen X could guess at but not remember: the mind-bending insecurities created by everyone else on social media looking so happy, all the goddam time. It creates all these anxieties; how come you only have three friends, when everyone else has 26? How are you ever going to get into a top university, when that person just hand-reared a panda? “Behind every photo and every post, there’s a deeper meaning,” Sugimoto says. “There’s definitely a facade,” Rundle adds. “For the most part, there would be so much more that is hidden: one person who really doesn’t want to be there; an argument that broke out right after the smiling. People are constantly comparing themselves without knowing the reality of what they are comparing themselves with. Part of what Girlhood stands for is a corner of social media that isn’t intoxicated by trying to be someone you aren’t.”

But there’s something else that we, attendant adults, probably could remember if we made more effort. “Adults constantly hold this idea, ‘We’re so much more mature, smarter’, but so many of them forget the visceral feelings that come up when people go through these challenges. It can be heart-shattering. So parents will give you their perspective, their advice, and it’s super bland. If we had one message to tell to adults, if they want to understand the purpose of Girlhood, is that it’s OK not to remember how you felt years and years ago.” It’s OK, that is, to be super bland: but don’t be surprised when your teens get their wisdom elsewhere.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/oct/07/teen-girl-problems-being-solved-by-adolescent-agony-aunts-girlhood