THE STATUS
OF GIRLS IN
NORTH CAROLINA
Contact Information
General Information:
Amie Hess
(919) 760-8016
hessamie@meredith.edu
Press Contact:
Melyssa Allen, News Director
(919) 760-8455
allenme@meredith.edu
Girls in North Carolina spend a lot of time engaged with both traditional and new media. The percentage of girls reporting a significant amount of television consumption has decreased slightly in the past five years.
However, this has been matched with an increase in girls’ usage of computers and electronic devices for non-academic purposes. While in 2011 there was a significant difference in the rates of teens reporting computer usage between boys and girls, by 2015 the difference in usage rates had disappeared.
Television and Computer Usage
Girls in North Carolina—like young people across the country—continue to watch television. The primary concern over television (and other forms of media consumption) is that when young people are watching many hours of television it is often at the expense of other activities such as school work, play, or physical activity.
Source: CDC, Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2013
Consumption rates across all racial and ethnic groups decrease slightly between middle and high school.40 African American and Latina girls are significantly more likely than their white counterparts to consume large amounts of television on school days.
Sources: CDC, Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2015; CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2011
Just five years ago, males were significantly more likely to use computers (for non-academic purposes) or gaming systems for over three hours on a typical school day than females. By 2015 this was no longer the case. Young men and women also watch television at comparable rates.41
Source: CDC, Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2015
Computer usage now outpaces watching television as a form of recreation among young women in North Carolina. The questions on both television and computer usage ask young people to indicate if they watch television and use a computer for non-academic purposes for more than three hours on a typical school day.42 However, research suggests that many young people consume multiple types of media simultaneously, so this should not necessarily be interpreted as young women spending over six hours on screens on a typical school day.43 The research on screen multi-tasking is mixed in terms of the cognitive, academic and social impacts on youth, but does suggest a relationship between screen multitasking and lower academic performance.44
New Media
According to research from the Pew Research Center, 92% of U.S. teens use the internet daily; almost a quarter report being online nearly constantly.45 The vast majority of teens in the U.S. report using online social networking sites. Girls are more likely than boys to share and communicate via social media whereas boys are more likely to engage in gaming as a means of recreation and as an online social platform.46 Girls are also more likely to have a presence on multiple social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tumblr.
North Carolina teens start out using Facebook and Instagram at similar rates.47 But by age 15, social media usage diverges among young women and young men. Consistent with national trends on social media, more young women in North Carolina have established a presence on Facebook and/or Instagram than young men.
The ways in which teens communicate is changing. Nationally, almost three-quarters of teens between the ages of 13-17 own or have access to a smart phone—an increase of almost 10% from 2011.48 Female teens between 14-17 are the most frequent texters (as compared to young girls or male teens).49 Sixty-three percent of teens report texting every day as a means of staying in touch with friends, while almost 29% of teens nationally report using social networking site messaging systems to communicate with peers. This same research finds that both face-to-face interactions and daily phone calling as a means of communicating with friends are both declining—though phone calls are declining more rapidly. Only 19% of teens report talking daily with a friend on a landline, and 39% use a cell phone daily to talk to friends.
The expansion of technology provides many potential opportunities for the empowerment of young women. Blogs and Twitter are forums in which young women are giving voice to their unique perspectives on society, creating communities of learning and shared experience. However, there is a darker side to social media. Many young people, particularly female, report bullying and other forms of electronic harassment. As noted earlier, one in five high school females and one in four middle school female teens in North Carolina reports being electronically bullied.
Cause for Concern
Concerns about media overconsumption are mounting—from worries about obesity and lack of exercise to girls’ exposure to harmful media images. North Carolina’s African American and Latina young women are more likely to watch hours of television and use computers for non-academic purposes on an average school day than white young women. And though rates of excessive television consumption are decreasing among young women in North Carolina, rates remain high. While media in and of itself is not inherently negative, time spent watching TV or interacting with social media, video games, or consuming other media content is time not spent on school work or engaging in physical activities. In addition, new forms of technology and media allow for unprecedented access to peers. For many of North Carolina’s teens and pre-teens, this results in bullying and negative interactions.
