5

COMPLEX CONNECTIONS

Bullying, “Drama,” and Friendship

“Girls depend on close, intimate friendships to get them through life . . . [but] girls can be excruciatingly tough on other girls. They can talk behind each other’s backs, tease and torture one another, police each other’s clothing and body size . . . and can promote a strict conformity to the norms and rules of idealized femininity, threaten rejection and exclusion, and reinforce gender and racial stereotypes.”

—MIKEL BROWN 2003:109

“But this was girl world . . . [and] in girl world, all the fighting had to be sneaky.”

—MEAN GIRLS (2004)

Recent years have seen heightened concern about young people and the matter of safety on social media, and amended moral panics on the part of adult stakeholders have reified a presiding public discourse of social media as harmful to adolescents (Barry et al. 2017; Ging and O’Higgins Norman 2016; Keles, McCrae, and Grealish 2020; Marciano et al. 2022). In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory surrounding the effects of social media on youth mental health (Office of the Surgeon General 2023). Conceptualizing harm is complex and varied, ranging from increased risk of mental health symptoms such as depression and anxiety to issues with sleep, addiction to devices, feelings of isolation, and the potential for cyberbullying. In this chapter, I focus on public perception of cyberbullying and whether perceptions of online aggression align with or diverge from how tween girls themselves feel about bullying behavior online, as well as their homosocial experiences with other girls online more broadly.

Both my YouTube textual analysis and my interviews with tween girls revealed gendered (cyber)bullying as a prominent theme. Bullying was often cited as a reason why a girl may post a Pretty or Ugly video, and at multiple points during interviews, participants brought up the matter of girls bullying girls, both online and offline. Tween girls have complicated feelings about social media; they see it as a place where bullying can and does occur, as well as a place that creates “drama.” However, they also characterize social media as a site of respite from bullying (especially bullying in physical settings such as school) and negative gendered relational behavior, an important tool for maintaining strong connections with friends, and a means of seeking out and offering homosocial support and affirmation.

A central reason tween girls use social media is to remain in nearly constant connection with friends and peer groups—predominantly groups they know in physical spaces (Farrell 2022; Kennedy and Lynch 2016; Lenhart et al. 2015; Malvini Redden and Way 2017). The blurring of physical and digital worlds is more prominent than ever, as tween girls emphasize and engage in continual communication with one another via interactions on social media (boyd 2014; Buckingham 2013b; Palfrey and Gasser 2016). While these interactions are unequivocally recognized as important and a big part of how tween girls communicate with each other today, girls do not see them all as positive. Rather, tween girls may experience and enact a complex spectrum of relational behavior with one another that ranges from bullying to manufactured drama to homosocial affirmation and support, with social media being a medium for the production and mediation of all these things. My findings demonstrate that tween girls accentuate the role that connection with friends on social media plays in trumping negative aspects, mitigating gendered bullying behavior, and cultivating homosocial support.

Competing cultural models of girlhood manifest in this dynamic relational behavioral spectrum among tween girls. These models intersect with the dominant “mean girl” cultural paradigm that effectively naturalizes bullying among girls and assumes girls relate to and engage with one another in primarily toxic and virulent ways (Bailey and Steeves 2015; García-Gómez 2011; Hadley 2004; Hey 1997; Ringrose 2006; Simmons 2002). In the 2004 film Mean Girls (which has seen a contemporary resurgence in popularity, with a 2024 version of the film that is notably queerer in its imagining and design), girls undercut one another, scheme, behave passive aggressively, and generally treat each other duplicitously, all while seemingly acting as the best of friends (“Love ya!”). As the protagonist Cady Heron intimates, “[In] girl world, all the fighting had to be sneaky.” The work of psychologist and educator Lyn Mikel Brown takes this culture of meanness to task in her 2003 book Girlfighting: Betrayal and Rejection among Girls, arguing that a “girls will be girls” explanation of this behavior is negligent; rather, a sexist society that cultivates competition among girls for male attention is a crucial culprit.

I examine how American society perceives the matter of bullying and cyberbullying among youth in specifically gendered ways and investigate how these perceptions converge with or diverge from how my interviewees articulate perceptions and experiences of girl versus girl bullying, both online and offline. I also consider how girls view social media as a catalyst for starting gendered drama (Marwick and boyd 2014; Remillard and Lamb 2005; Wiseman 2003) and how they navigate and manage drama in online spaces. Finally, I explore how tween girls highlight connections with friends as a primary motivation for being on social media, emphasizing the importance of homosocial support and affirmation in their online communities. While tween girls characterize social media as a site where bullying can and does occur, they also view social media as a crucial tool for maintaining continual connection with friends, especially in terms of seeking and offering homosocial support and affirmation.

Classic “Frenemies”: Forging Toxic Girlhood Culture

American tween girlhoods are a series of contradictions and entanglements between empowerment and disempowerment girls grapple with across social arenas and institutions including school, media, peers, and the Internet. These entanglements are necessarily affixed to how tween girls relate to one another in their social worlds. Internalization of protectionist discourses and the innocence model may manifest in girls policing one another toward respectable girlhood femininities (especially surrounding sexuality, sexual expression, attention seeking, and associated behaviors), which are profoundly interwoven with White centered, cis-heteronormative, ableist, and classist notions of ideal girlhood (Bailey et al. 2013; Marwick and boyd 2014; Ringrose and Harvey 2015; Sylwander and Gottzén 2020). Meanwhile, the “Girl Power!” model encourages girls (via consumptive practice) to just “be themselves,” fostering a digital values system that Others girls for coming across as fake, self-absorbed, or inauthentic.

Paradoxically, the “Girl Power!” model is defined by postfeminist neoliberal sensibilities of individualism, personal responsibility, and competition, which can result in heightened comparative practices between and among tween girls (Farrell 2022; Mascheroni and Ólafsson 2014; Mascheroni, Vincent, and Jimenez 2015; Gill and Orgad 2017; Ringrose et al. 2013). Engaging in processes of Othering, girls differentiate themselves from one another and establish in-groups and out-groups based on certain values and behaviors (García-Gómez 2018). Tween girls are encouraged to improve and empower themselves via body and beauty work and, in a heteronormative social structure, compare themselves to one another in the competitive pursuit of male sexual attention.

Tween girls must learn to navigate these entanglements as they are called to both protect themselves and make themselves visible in suitably feminine ways. Within the framework of the competing cultural models of “Girl Power!” and innocent girls who need protection, tween girls must be up for a good time and appropriately modest or prudish. They must be pretty but not know it or outwardly advertise it. They must make themselves seen but in socially acceptable and respectable ways that align with ideal femininity (e.g., appear sexy but not slutty) (Miller 2016; Mishna et al. 2020; Payne 2010; Tanenbaum 2015). How girls attempt to meet the demands of these paradoxes, and interact with one another in the process, manifests in a complex spectrum of relational behavior that ranges from covert and overt girl-to-girl bullying to relational drama to friendships characterized by homosocial affirmation and support.

American society tends to view adolescent girlhood as a time marked by inherent toxicity between and among girls. Popular culture is stacked with examples of girls bullying girls, tween and teen girl drama, and girls being vicious and aggressive toward one another in blatant and arcane ways (e.g., Mean Girls, 2004; The DUFF, 2015; To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, 2018; Booksmart, 2019). From popular films to reality television shows, the “mean girl” paradigm reigns as the titillating narrative that enthralls young people regardless of gender, serving as the script by which society expects girls to interact with each other (Mikel Brown 2003; Oppliger 2013; Ryalls 2012).

The difference between how boys bully one another and how girls bully one another is well established in academic literature, though more investigation into how bullying behavior maps onto social media use in gendered ways is necessary. Certainly, there needs to be increased inquiry and critique surrounding the boy/girl gender binary and the harm it perpetrates in reproducing patriarchal and heteronormative gendered scripts that render girls, gender diverse, and LGBTQIA+ youth more vulnerable to bullying victimization both online and offline (Birkett and Espelage 2015; Hlavka 2014; Nilan et al. 2015; Pascoe 2013). It is socially and culturally recognized that gender identity and expression inform how bullying and cyberbullying are carried out and experienced, with boys positioned as more likely to externalize aggression and engage in physical forms of bullying (Khan et al. 2020; Mishna et al. 2020; Viljoen et al. 2005) and girls more likely to bully via relational means (Khan et al. 2020; Mishna et al. 2020; Raskauskas and Stoltz 2007; Snell and Englander 2010; Viljoen, O’Neill, and Sidhu 2005). Mishna et al. succinctly note,

Girls, especially tween and teenage girls, have been socially constructed as all at once innately caring, nurturing, “sugar and spice and everything nice,” and naturally mean or toxic to other girls. Citing the work of Emma Renold (2002, 2006) and Jessica Ringrose (2006), Ging and O’Higgins Norman suggest that “female aggression is understood, paradoxically, as the expression of that which is repressed within girls’ ‘innately’ caring and nurturing personalities” (2016:808). Further, as Renolds’s work helps illuminate, entrenched gendered and sexualized cultural discourses are how young people both create and traverse cis-het normative hierarchies and exchanges of power. The relational aggression girls may demonstrate toward one another is often discursively situated as an intrinsic symptom of being a girl rather than a product of the deep-seated cis-het normativity that structures girls’ worlds (Ging and O’Higgins Norman 2016; Letendre 2007).

Girlhood studies scholarship largely agrees that female adolescence is a time in which girls question who they are, experience issues with low self-esteem, increasingly compare themselves to each other and adult women regarding appearance and presumed attractiveness to the male sex, and, because of these things, behave toward one another with heightened aggression. This aggression is expressed in culturally acceptable ways associated with girlhood such as gossip, insults, rumor spreading, withholding friendship, and character sabotage (Currie, Kelly, and Pomerantz 2007; Hadley 2003; Mikel Brown 2003; Simmons 2002; Simmons 2018), all of which reprint seamlessly onto social media platforms. Not unlike “boys will be boys” ideology, toxic girlhood and girls’ bullying behavior are naturalized in American culture as a rite of passage:

Youth and gender development researcher Martha Hadley argues that adult response to girls’ relational aggression generally manifests in one of two reactions: 1) So, what’s new? or 2) How is this possible?! She writes that “the tension between these two reactions—familiarity and dismissive disdain versus disbelief and shock—is at the crux of the muddle surrounding aggression and girls” (2003:368). And, as Simmons (2002) points out in the rite-of-passage framework, common gendered bullying practices are recognizable in behaviors among adult women, including gossip, passive aggressiveness, the “silent treatment,” and compulsion toward bodily comparison, fat talk (Nichter 2000), denigration, and normative discontent (Rodin, Silberstein, and Streigel-Moore 1984). Bullying and relational aggression, then, are not discrete or natural passing phases of adolescent life but rather highly gendered cultural norms that permeate multiple life stages for women and girls. For tween girls, this permeation is particularly salient, as they are navigating the liminal space between childhood and adulthood. Ging and O’Higgins Norman argue that “we cannot divorce girls’ relationships or sense of self from a wider post-feminist culture, which continues to stereotype women as narcissistic, submissive, and emotionally complex and men as aggressive and emotionally straightforward” (2016:808).

Bullying among tween and teen girls most often centers on conditions such as sex (how much someone is having, whether too much or not enough), body image and appearance, and being perceived as inauthentic or fake (Miller 2016; Mishna et al. 2020; Payne 2010; Simmons 2018; Tanenbaum 2015). The vitriol and contempt that distinguish toxic girl culture in the United States and naturalize gendered bullying are rooted in deeply contradictory gendered expectations born out of a postfeminist, neoliberal, consumer-driven social structure and enduring cis-heteronormativity that positions girls in competition with one another for male attention and approval.

Defining Cyberbullying: The Problem with Gender

Bullying among youth has long been viewed as a normal part of growing up, one that may not merit much attention (Limber and Small 2003). Only within the past three decades or so has bullying become a national conversation, with more adult-centered emphasis on curtailing, preventing, and intervening in “school yard” bullying (Campbell 2005). In recent years, more societal consideration has been paid to cyberbullying, which, like traditional or conventional bullying, has multiple and sometimes contrasting definitions. Palfrey and Gasser define cyberbullying as “the intentional use of any digital medium, including text-messaging, email, and phone calls, to harm others” (2016:100). Hinduja and Patchin of the Cyberbullying Research Center define it as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices” (2015:11). Both define cyberbullying by intention or will to harm, but one definition suggests that the harm must be repeated or ongoing, while the other does not. For the purposes of this research, when analyzing how my interviewees think and talk about (cyber)bullying, I use Hinduja and Patchin’s (2015) definition because it aligns with how the tween girls I spoke with gave meaning to bullying behaviors as persistent or ongoing.

As cyberbullying has gotten more headline attention over the last decade, a significant amount of academic and journalistic research has been conducted, but this emerging body of knowledge still has abiding gaps in understanding, mixed results, and discrepancies in research findings (Chang 2021; Ging and O’Higgins Norman 2016; Khan et al. 2020; Mishna et al. 2020; Wade and Beran 2011). There is no clear picture of how prevalent cyberbullying is, in part because research studies routinely define the matter in different ways (Sheanoda, Bussey, and Jones 2024). Cyberbullying research and findings are afflicted with inconsistencies; cyberbullying runs the perpetual risk of being either over- or underexaggerated in the public imagination, especially in terms of prevalence and overall potential impact on young people.

A 2016 national survey conducted by the Cyberbullying Research Center found that among a sample of 5,700 middle and high schoolers in the United States, approximately 34 percent indicated having been cyberbullied during their lifetime (Patchin and Hinduja 2016). A 2018 Pew Research report surveying 743 thirteen- to seventeen-year-olds indicates 59 percent of respondents have experienced cyberbullying, the most common reported forms being name calling and rumor spreading (Anderson 2018). Yet another recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics presents findings from a nationwide survey of twelve- to eighteen-year-olds indicating that 15 percent of those surveyed have experienced cyberbullying either online or via text messaging (Seldin and Yanez 2019). Some studies and reports treat cyberbullying as a separate entity from more traditional forms of bullying (Lenhart 2007; Waasdorp and Bradshaw 2015). Others conflate cyberbullying with traditional bullying and define them in similar terms, electing not to separate them in survey questions (Seldin and Yanez 2019). Still others conflate definitions of bullying and harassment, and there is ongoing debate as to whether definitions of bullying require a component of differential power between victim and perpetrator (Kowalski, Limber, and McCord 2019; Smith et al. 2008; Ybarra 2012). Some report solely on respondent behavior and impacts of bullying, while others consider the specific mediums and platforms used to enact cyberbullying behavior (e.g., text messaging with cell phones versus social media).

There also remains a lack of qualitative research on cyberbullying, the majority of studies using quantitative methods and aggregate data from large-scale surveys (Snell and Englander 2010; Vandebosch and Van Cleemput 2008); there has been more attention paid to qualitative research design for studies on cyberbullying in recent years (Balt et al. 2023; Ranney et al. 2020; Sheanoda, Bussey, and Jones 2024). Operationalizing cyberbullying remains a persistent problem in the literature. Discrepancies matter when trying to understand the overall picture of youth bullying and cyberbullying behavior in terms of prevalence, impact, and potential intervention and prevention. Often, public response and policy response to bullying and cyberbullying are gender blind and do not address central social conditions that influence how bullying behavior is enacted and experienced (Marr and Duell 2020; Ringrose and Renold 2010). Crucial to note is that what researchers and adult authorities consider cyberbullying might not be what survey respondents consider cyberbullying. And, as I explore further here, tween girls themselves perceive cyberbullying and traditional bullying in multivalent and incongruent ways (boyd 2010; Ging and O’Higgins Norman 2016; Nilan et al. 2015; Ranney et al. 2020).

The line between cyberbullying and bullying in physical space is often blurred. Cyberbullying tends to overlap with more traditional or conventional modes of bullying (Waasdorp and Bradshaw 2015), and individuals who experience bullying at school are more likely to experience cyberbullying, often by the same perpetrators (Khan et al. 2020; Olweus and Limber 2018). As is the case with traditional bullying in physical spaces, cyberbullying most often occurs between friends and acquaintances. The highest likelihood of cyberbullying perpetration comes from close, personal connections: people who know each other and have relationships offline (Felmlee and Faris 2016). In the case of tween girls, bullying one another online largely happens among girls who know each other in physical peer networks.

Some studies suggest tween girls experience cyberbullying, both as victims and perpetrators, at higher rates than boys in the same age demographic (Felmlee and Faris 2016; Snell and Englander 2010; Thompson 2018). Other findings remain inconclusive surrounding how gender mediates cyberbullying behaviors and impacts (Ang and Goh 2010; Beckman, Hagquist, and Hellström 2013; Chang 2021). The data on whether gender is a mediating factor in how young people experience cyberbullying (whether as perpetrator, victim, or bystander) is messy and inconclusive, even when controlling for social media and Internet behavior.

Findings that show girls experiencing higher engagement with cyberbullying as both perpetrators and victims may be due in part to how cyberbullying often takes forms that match societal expectations and conditions of tween girls’ bullying behavior; that is, online experiences reflect offline conditions of life (Nilan et al. 2015; Waasdorp and Bradshaw 2015). Girls are less likely to enact physical violence on one another and instead bully through language and various social strategies such as rumor spreading, gossip, purposeful exclusion, name calling, and passive aggressive comments. Digital platforms are uniquely suited for these types of behavior to translate from offline to online space. Additionally, as Mishna et al. write in their work on gender and cyberbullying, “gendered and sexualized bullying and cyberbullying have been defined variably, leading to a constellation of terms such as harassment, aggression, violence, and bullying to describe similar behaviors and experiences” (2020:404). Ranney et al. (2020) find that young people often reject the term cyberbullying as they associate it with suicidality and severe depression, instead favoring language such as online conflict, which they connect with a broader spectrum of peer violence and negative relational behavior, reflecting my own findings in how tween girls articulate different points on this spectrum.

The definition of these terms is necessarily political and shapes how we perceive and respond to behaviors. Ging and O’Higgins Norman suggest,

How might incongruencies converge with or diverge from how tween girls perceive and experience girl-to-girl bullying behaviors?

Tween Girls’ Perceptions of (Cyber)Bullying

Tween girls are socially conditioned to relate to one another in ways that naturalize and normalize toxic girlhood culture, and my research demonstrates that tween girls recognize, and sometimes experience, bullying by other tween girls offline and online. They understand and seem to accept that, just as in physical space, bullying can and does occur on social media.

Brooklyn, a thirteen-year-old Black girl, tells me during our conversation that she herself has not been bullied, but she has seen bullying happen at her school and at basketball practice. She says, “I’ve seen some people yelling at or picking on other people and stuff. And I’m just thinking, like, ‘Why do they let that person run over them?’ Why can’t they just tell them to stop?” Brooklyn interprets putting a stop to bullying behavior in simple terms. I am a little surprised by Brooklyn’s response because on first meeting her, she is quiet and reserved; now she speaks with the sort of self-assuredness that suggests she would respond with strength in such a situation, though she tells me she has not been the victim of bullying herself. She clearly advocates for people standing up for themselves in the face of being bullied. I am curious whether she sees cyberbullying in the same way.

KP: Is bullying face-to-face like that different from how bullying happens online?

BROOKLYN: Yeah. Bullying online, they can like, well, the bully can just keep calling you ugly and start some drama. Pretty much they’re going to run over you online.

KP: So, it can keep going online? Like, can bullying keep happening?

BROOKLYN: Yeah. I think when it’s happening like, right here, face-to-face, you can stop it easier.

KP: Can you say more about that?

BROOKLYN: Well, like you can just get in someone’s face and tell them to stop. But you can’t really do that online.

Twice during our discussion of bullying, Brooklyn uses the language of someone running someone over or being run over. There is a strong presence of differential power in how she talks about bullying (Smith et al. 2008; Ybarra 2012). Additionally, Khan et al. remark that “the online realm is perceived as anonymous and invisible, and it offers a lack of personal boundaries. Punishment, repercussions, and consequences of these actions are also thought of as slim in the virtual world” (2020:1). Brooklyn perceives the nature of online space as making it easier for bullies to exercise power and continue bullying behavior versus a face-to-face bullying interaction, where a victim might stand up to their bully in a more direct or assertive way.

Jazz, Black and ten years old, has an entirely different take on offline versus online bullying. About halfway through our interview, the topic turns to bullying. I ask her if she thinks bullying at school is different from bullying online. She responds,

Jazz and Brooklyn have seemingly diametrically opposed ideas of whether offline or online bullying is worse. While Brooklyn thinks face-to-face bullying can be more readily stopped, Jazz declares the opposite, suggesting that a victim of bullying on social media could simply delete the bullying content. In both cases, the girls see stopping the bullying behavior or responding to it in straightforward terms (“get in their face” or “delete it”), but the context of online versus offline colors their perceptions of bullying in markedly different ways.

Meanwhile, my interviewee Starr does not consider traditional bullying and cyberbullying to be notably different. Starr, a Black twelve-year-old, talks about bullying specifically among girls with noticeable exasperation. She audibly sighs before speaking.

STARR: So, if you have social media, you can get cyberbullied. But you can also get bullied in person. It makes no sense to me because they are both bullying, so either way you’re going to get bullied basically. [It’s] hurtful either way it goes.

KP: So, you don’t see much difference between them?

STARR: No, it’s like, not that different. It’s still hurtful. Like, we watched a video of it happening, like, getting bullied online.

KP: Who is “we”? What was the video about?

STARR: My friends. We watched this video called “Cyberbully.” And you could see how her face changes when people send her mean comments and stuff. And she never wanted to tell her mom or anything because she was scared. But like, I still don’t think they are that different. You can still get bullied at school too.

KP: It was a girl being bullied? In the video?

STARR: Yeah, it’s usually a girl.

Returning for a moment to my interviews with Jazz and Brooklyn, I am compelled by how, like Starr, they both emphasize the intragender nature of bullying behavior, as well as how girls are often represented as primary victims of bullying (Ging and O’Higgins Norman 2016; Mishna et al. 2020). I ask Brooklyn, “When you see bullying happening on social media or at practice, do you see girls bully each other? Or boys bullying girls? Or . . . ?” She matter-of-factly responds, “Oh, it’s girls bullying girls. I think it is mainly what girls do.”

Jazz reinforces Brooklyn’s statement when she talks about the bullying she has seen at school and in movies.

JAZZ: Girls in particular are the ones getting bullied.

KP: Why do you think it is girls in particular getting bullied?

JAZZ: Well, if I’ve seen boys getting bullied it’s for very different reasons than girls.

KP: What do you mean?

JAZZ: Like, in most movies you see a girl being bullied and then somebody trying to help her, but, and she ends up dying because she’s getting bullied. That’s when you know you have to stay away from those type of situations . . . [You] got to make sure that you safe and you all right. You can’t just end your life.

While Brooklyn, Jazz, and Starr all have notably distinct perspectives on differences between cyberbullying and face-to-face bullying, and whether one kind of bullying is worse or more negatively impactful than another, all three of them emphasize a shared perspective on how girls are bullying girls. Furthermore, Jazz and Starr’s responses imply that their perceptions and knowledge of cyberbullying specifically are gendered. Girls are the victims of bullying behavior in the cyberbullying films they have seen. Starr associates fear with cyberbullying, suggesting that the girl she saw in the video was afraid of what was happening to her, and fear precluded the girl from reaching out to a parental figure for help and support. Jazz instead draws focus to death as a possible outcome of being bullied, which speaks to how public media and news media often represent (cyber)bullying as dangerous and potentially deadly (Hinduja and Patchin 2018; Nilan et al. 2015).

I ask my interviewee Noelle, Black and age thirteen, if she can tell me about her thoughts on cyberbullying. She says,

In Noelle’s definition, the impacts of being cyberbullied translate from digital to physical space, carrying over to the school environment and again possibly resulting in death. The fact that multiple girls reference videos they have seen on the matter indicates that media representation plays an important role in how tween girls perceive bullying behavior and impacts as they intersect with gender.

Suicide is prominent in these representations, especially in recent productions such as the highly popular television show 13 Reasons Why (2017), which focuses on sixteen-year-old high school student Hannah Baker committing suicide in response to a series of traumatic incidences including salacious rumors about her sexual behavior, stalking, and a violent sexual assault. Other recent films such as Odd Girl Out (2004), Cyberbully (2011), Girl Fight (2011), and A Girl Like Her (2015) further showcase narratives of tween and teen girls as the primary perpetrators and victims of offline and online bullying behavior.

The news media proliferates stories of cyberbullying and trumpets the issue, particularly if the cyberbullying case in question results in suicide. News reports of these stories do not necessarily encapsulate the complex realities of how bullying behavior interacts with suicidal ideation and intention, and this interaction is still being teased out in academic literature. Cases of suicide caused solely by cyberbullying are rare, with cases of bullying-related suicide most often involving multiple forms of bullying and mixtures of off­line and online aggression as well as high incidence of preexisting mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression (Brailovskaia, Teismann, and Margraf 2018; LeBlanc 2012). The relationships between bullying and suicidal ideation, intention, attempt, and completion are complex and often mediated by an accumulation of existing factors such as depression, abuse, low self-esteem, isolation, poor school performance, and anxiety (Dorol-Beauroy-Eustache and Mishara 2021; Elgin 2014). In a recent Common Sense Media report on girls and social media, findings show that

Positive mental health has been shown to mitigate negative potential impacts of cyberbullying victimization (Brailovskaia, Teismann, and Margraf 2018; Nesi, Mann, and Robb 2023), and a variety of support measures can help to shield young people from the harmful impacts of (cyber)bullying.

The matter of youth and suicidal ideation, attempt, and completion must be taken extremely seriously. An influx of research in recent years has brought further attention to the issue, with a new term, cyberbullicide, coined by Sameer Hinduja and Justin Patchin of the Cyberbullying Research Center. The term notes suicides “directly or indirectly influenced by online aggression or cyberbullying” (Schonfeld et al. 2023). The COVID-19 pandemic has brought further attention to the question of young people and mental well-being (CDC 2022; Marciano et al. 2022; Tanner and Wang 2023). Interventions, support, and resources must be channeled to demographics of young people who are most likely to experience social isolation, targeting, victimization, and discrimination and who have less access to crucial resources such as mental health care. Research has yet to bear out the weight and relationship of social media as a direct cause of suicidal ideation, intention, attempt, and completion (Bauman, Toomey, and Walker 2013; Hinduja and Patchin 2010; Kim and Leventhal 2008; Klomek, Sourander, and Gould 2010; LeBlanc 2012; Van Geel, Vedder, and Tanilon 2014), in particular as it relates to gender. In a systematic review of the literature on cyberbullying and suicidal and self-harm behaviors, Dorol-Beauroy-Eustache and Mishara report,

Considering cyberbullying as a sole or direct cause of youth suicide is a crucial question, and further inquiry is necessary to critically conceptualize this relationship. Accounting for many variables is prudent, as arguing direct causation can cloud the complexity of how sociopolitical realities and identities influence how young people experience their digital worlds and strip back the positives of social media participation regarding self-presentation, agency, community building, and connection (Austin et al. 2020; Berger et al. 2022; boyd 2014; Erigha and Crooks-Allen 2020; Farrell 2022; Nesi, Mann, and Robb 2023; Kelly 2018). Evidence suggests that there is an increased possibility of suicidal ideation and intention when there are multiple and coexisting risk factors (Alavi et al. 2015; Elgin 2014). How cyberbullying cases are reported, in company with popular culture representations of the issue, can make it seem as though most teens and tweens experience cyberbullying as symptomatic of just being on social media (Briggs 2012; Ybarra 2012) and that girls are most at risk of its harmful impacts. More research is necessary to understand if and how gender differences result in higher risk and likelihood of suicidal ideation, intention, attempt, and completion in relation to cyberbullying.

The whole notion of cyberbullying, as both lexicon and area of inquiry, is still tremendously new, and thus it is difficult to draw any definitive conclusions on the impacts of cyberbullying. That said, because some existing literature on cyberbullying does suggest that tween and teen girls are at heightened risk of cyberbullying as both victims and perpetrators (Dorol-Beauroy-Eustache and Mishara 2021; Felmlee and Faris 2016; Mishna et al. 2020; Snell and Englander 2010), more needs to be done in terms of tailoring cyberbullying responses and interventions to the uniquely gendered ways tween girls relate to one another. I emphasize once again that dissonant definitions of cyberbullying may obscure the scope and prevalence of the issue and create more cause for alarm among parents and adult authorities than is perhaps productive, especially because girls themselves may not define or characterize (cyber)bullying in the same terms as academics, health professionals, and educators. Exchanges of drama among tween girls online can look remarkably like hallmarks of gendered bullying (gossip, rumors, exclusion, etc.) in the eyes of parents and concerned adults, but tween girls themselves do not see such exchanges that way. They frame drama as a highly routine part of their normal social media practices—but the tween girls I talked with are definitely “over” the drama.

Relational “Drama”

Bullying and drama are sometimes understood by adult authorities as being one and the same (boyd 2014; Mishna et al. 2020), but tween girls generally view them as distinct from one another. Bullying is roundly viewed as something uniquely harmful and persistent that can have very real and damaging impacts on its victims, including death. According to the tween girls I spoke with, bullying is not something that happens to everyone, but girls learn about it, see it happening in media and in their lives, and articulate specific outcomes of bullying that render it different from relational drama. Conversely, drama is framed by tween girls as a highly normative—albeit annoying and sometimes frustrating—part of everyday existence. Tween girls lament social media as a vehicle for creating and heightening drama in their lives.

As part of the dominant “mean girl” narrative, American society associates drama with tween and teen girls (boyd 2014; Marwick and boyd 2014). boyd defines drama “as various forms of interpersonal conflict that ranges from insignificant joking around to serious jealousy-driven relational aggression” (2014:137). Drama on social media is performance in that it takes place in front of some kind of audience, whether on a public platform or within a private group of friends. Both offline and online drama among girls may reproduce gendered norms and reinforce gender scripts of heteronormative girlhood, particularly surrounding seeking male attention and ascribing to certain standards of feminine appearance (Marwick and boyd 2014).

While drama often includes elements of what adults might see as gendered bullying behavior, such as gossip and rumor spreading, girls themselves see drama as set apart from bullying. This is not to suggest that experiences wrought by drama between and among girl peer groups are somehow devoid of harm but rather to emphasize that tween girls themselves make discursive distinctions between bullying and drama and how these things are felt in their lives. There may be some social desirability bias happening in girls’ responses, as some research (and my own experience as a tween girl) demonstrates that tween girls may be drawn to drama as they test boundaries in their relationships, navigate friendships, and continue to self- and socially develop (Ging and O’Higgins Norman 2016; Hey 1997; Letendre 2007; Nilan et al. 2015; Shields Dobson 2011). It was interesting to find that the girls I interviewed actively express disdain for drama on social media while simultaneously viewing it as a normal part of how they relate to one another—a part they would ostensibly prefer to do without.

Dani, thirteen years old and Black, almost exclusively uses her social media accounts to interact with friends and family rather than post public content. She strongly dislikes the drama she sees on social media and explains how when drama happens among her friends online, she takes control of the content on her Facebook feed and deletes or blocks it.

DANI: If it gets, like, that serious with this drama, I just delete it off my Facebook. Even if it’s not me, even if I’m not involved in the drama, like if I just see it and it’s just like, ugh, then I just block it off my Facebook because I don’t like to see it.

KP: So, drama is a bad part of being on Facebook?

DANI: (laughs) Some people just don’t know how to use social media correctly.

KP: Can you tell me what you mean?

DANI: Like, they use it in a negative way, you know? Like to start drama. Or they advertise drama when they shouldn’t be like that. They should just talk to people or share what’s going on in their lives.

Chrissy, also thirteen years old and Black, similarly points out how Facebook is a platform for drama.

CHRISSY: I’m so over the drama. Facebook is just too much drama, so I just stay on Snapchat basically, so I can just talk to my friends.

KP: Snapchat doesn’t have as much drama?

CHRISSY: No, because like, you just send snaps to your friends, and they send them to you. It’s more chill. I have more of my close friends on Snapchat.

KP: Does Facebook feel different? Like, in terms of talking and connecting with friends?

CHRISSY: It’s just like, bigger. You see more of what people got going on. I like knowing what’s going on, but I don’t like the drama. I don’t really like it too much, so I just stay off Facebook for the most part.

In addition to Dani and Chrissy, other girls suggest that social media can contribute to the escalation of drama among friends and peer groups. The social nature of the platforms creates more mechanisms for people to see drama-related content and potentially incites participation. When this happens, girls may remove themselves, emotionally and literally, from the platform in question or remove the content to disengage and indicate their desire to not get involved.

Drama comes up again in my interview with Jessie, a funny and animated Black twelve-year-old. When we talk about how people her age use social media, Jessie launches into a tirade about relationships, gender roles, and drama. She explains,

Jessie seems authentically irritated at how other girls behave and sets herself apart from them. The gendered nature of drama is evident in how she expresses her negative feelings about these interactions and performances. Girl-specific drama is related to stolen boyfriends and physical appearance, reinforcing a heteronormative script of tween girl concerns. Jessie indicates that she sees drama playing out among relationships at her school but that girls are engaging in relational drama in online space as well.

Jessie adopts a second-person point of view at the end of her rant, suggesting that girls her age should be focused on doing well in school rather than on what she sees as petty or frivolous concerns with boyfriends and looking a certain way. There is a “Girl Power!” ethos at play here. Jessie emphasizes doing well in school and effectively distances herself from girls who occupy themselves with things like boyfriends and physical appearance. Likewise, my interviewees respond to the Pretty or Ugly trend by setting themselves apart from producing that kind of appearance-related content on YouTube. They recognize attention seeking as a motivation behind why some tween girls post Pretty or Ugly videos and largely disassociate with such online behavior. Referencing a 2014 study by Brandes and Levin, Ging and O’Higgins Norman reflect on research findings with teenage girls on friendships and what it means to be a “good girlfriend,” including, “knowing whom to friend, avoiding danger and conflict, showing support, and not posting too many trivial or attention-seeking statuses or selfies. There was consensus that if a girl posted sexual or self-indulgent photos of herself, she was asking for criticism” (2016:807). More needs to be explored about how tween girl relational drama as a gendered performance on social media (Butler 1990; Marwick and boyd 2014) intersects with social and cultural expectations that tween girls make themselves visible online.

There is a compelling connection between my interviewees’ disdain for drama on social media and the digital authenticity values system they often leveled against the girls in the Pretty or Ugly videos. The feeling I got from my interviewees is that drama among friends and peers on social media is generally viewed as shallow, superficial, and attention seeking—not unlike how many of them describe the content of Pretty or Ugly videos. There is a clear value difference in how tween girls characterize posting publicly on social media about personal passions and interests, such as dance and art, and posting more gender laden and loaded content, such as dating and appearance, that could catalyze drama.

None of the girls I interviewed articulated an appreciation for or desire to be involved in drama. The girls position themselves as “above” the drama they see happening around them (again, at least in terms of what they shared with me). They see it as an expressly negative and unappealing aspect of participation on social media, but one set apart from bullying in the sense that it is less harmful and more routine, something that “comes with the territory” that they have come to expect as part of being active online. They find ways to remove themselves from drama by staying off certain platforms and by blocking or deleting drama-related content from their social media feeds. So while tween girls do define social media in part by the possibility of witnessing and experiencing social conflict either through (cyber)bullying or relational drama, neither of these aspects are enough to annul their desire to stay connected online. Indeed, the girls regularly verbalized connection with friends as their primary motivation for signing on.

Staying Connected: Friendship, Homosocial Support, and Affirmation

Returning once again to my interview with Jessie, I am compelled by how she levels a diatribe against girlhood drama on social media but a few moments later shares a story about posting her own appearance-related content, not publicly on YouTube but on Snapchat. She explains why one day she decided to post her own version of a Pretty or Ugly video to a small circle of friends on Snapchat:

Girlhood studies scholars widely acknowledge the gravity of connection, friendship, and support among tween girls during crucial developmental years (Hadley 2003; Hinkelman 2017; Mikel Brown 2003; Simmons 2002), and maintenance of friendships online relates to bolstering girls’ self-esteem (Brandes and Levin 2014; Letendre 2007; Shields Dobson 2011; Wade 2019b). Even while recognizing gendered bullying behavior and relational drama as unfavorable aspects of social media participation, tween girls characterize social media as a place where they seek respite from bullying and drama, support and affirm one another, maintain strong connections to existing friends, and in some cases, make new friends.

Jessie frames her Pretty or Ugly snap as a spur of the moment decision but sees it as a mechanism for seeking social support from a group of friends on social media. She talks about the drama in her life, the stress associated with school, and how she turns to friends in moments when she is feeling downtrodden. Unlike how girls in the Pretty or Ugly YouTube trend position their friends in physical networks as untrustworthy in offering objective assessments of appearance, Jessie tells me she can trust her friends to tell her the truth. She explains to me how her friends always “like” each other’s content on social media as a “way to support one another.”

My conversation with Kendra stays with me long after our interview ends. I meet Kendra, Black and age thirteen, at her after-school program. It takes her a while to warm up in our conversation. She gets perceptibly closed off during our interview, and it is clear that she is uncomfortable talking about her experiences at school. Kendra tells me that every day at school, people call her ugly. She shifts around in her chair and looks down at her feet. When I prompt her to say more if she is willing, she gets quiet and indicates that she would rather not. She clearly experiences pain and discomfort connected to the politics of appearance and the social and cultural value associated with being a pretty girl. Importantly, Kendra indicates to me that her experiences of being bullied occur in the school environment, not on social media.

Kendra uses several social media platforms daily (Snapchat in particular) and articulates that her favorite thing about being online is being constantly connected to her friends. She tells me, “I can just be myself. I can send pictures and videos to my friends. We can just talk and be good. It just makes me feel good.” Rather than experiencing social media as a medium of bullying, Kendra finds solace through participation in online space. Tween girls use social media to seek out connection and support one another—a crucial counterpoint to the “mean girls” narrative that dominates popular culture representations and public perceptions of tween girl relationships.

Throughout the interview process, girls often talked about or showed me how they interact with their friends on social media. Many literally pulled out their phones and showed me Snapchats, images, and short videos they sent to their friends. Some of the content was completely unintelligible to me, and when I asked about ask what it means, I got smiles and coy responses, suggesting that some girls create almost secret languages with friends on social media using emoji, images, hashtags, and special words to ensure group privacy and foster deeper connections (Thompson 2018). The content I did understand ranged from mundane, everyday exchanges to silly expressive content, gentle ribbing, and inside jokes to obvious affection, affirmation, and support.

Noelle, the thirteen-year-old Black girl who loves nail art, tells me that she, along with two of her friends who share her passion, exchange pictures nearly every day, showcasing their own nail art or expert nail art to one another for inspiration. She shows me a series of photos that she and her two friends shared in a Snapchat group.

KP: Is that something you like about social media? Being able to share pictures like this?

NOELLE: I love nails, like doing my nails in different ways. When I send pictures of my nail art to [my friends], they support me, or like, tell me what I need to do better. I do it for them too.

KP: What else do you do with friends on social media?

NOELLE: I can talk to my friends and ask them for advice, like whenever I need help and stuff. Maybe we can connect to hang out and study and do stuff like that. And other than that, we just be talking to each other all the time. I’ll be on Snapchat and just be on my phone, chillin’ with my friends.

Noelle uses social media to contact friends to study or spend time together, but she also describes Snapchat almost as its own tangible space, as though it is not entirely unlike being with her friends at school or the mall.

Snapchat operates in such a way that users can send and watch content in real time (Common Sense Media 2024). If tween girls are on Snapchat with a circle of friends at the same time, they can send short burst images and video content to each other quickly enough for it to feel like a regular conversation and continual flow of information. Noelle is not the only interviewee who implies a fluidity between the physical and the digital—or the importance of using social media to facilitate spending time with friends in physical space. Toward the end of our interview, I ask Black twelve-year-old Starr to tell me how she would feel if she did not have social media anymore. She responds,

Some of this feeling may be a function of Starr’s age as she gets older and spends more time independently with friends and peers with less adult supervision, but the ability to contact friends to see them in physical space registers as an important function of social media. Tween girls also suggest that they want interactions to continue beyond the boundaries of the physical. As Sinead, a ten-year-old Black girl, explains,

Like Sinead, other girls indicate a sense of concern that they would feel disconnected or isolated if they no longer were able to use social media to communicate with friends. Brooklyn, Black and thirteen years old, expresses,

Tween girls place significant emphasis on being able to stay in contact with one another outside of school and on knowing that they can reach out to one another if they need (Anderson and Jiang 2018a; Bulger et al. 2021; Vogels, Gelles-Watnick, and Massarat 2022; Wade 2019b).

Tania, a Latina eleven-year-old, tells me, “It’s really important to me to be able to stay in contact with my friends. Like, it’s literally the only reason I have [social media], is so I can talk to my friends.” Research corroborates how young people think about social media as a critical platform for staying in touch with friends (boyd 2014; Lenhart et al. 2015; Thompson 2018). Not only do they use it to stay in regular contact with friends, but the user-generated nature of social media and the possibilities of self-representation online also help tween girls engage with one another’s content in meaningful ways, allowing them to know more about what is going on in each other’s lives and understand how each other are feeling.

Tween girls commonly reference using social media to prevent feelings of isolation and emphasize belonging. Though I did not address race in a critical way in my interview guide or explicitly bring up racial identity during the interview process, the majority of my interviewee participants identify as girls of color (thirteen Black girls and three Latina girls) and place clear significance on friend relationships and community in digital space (Barner 2016; Brown 2013; Erigha and Crooks-Allen 2020; Kelly 2018; Wade 2019b). The dynamics of Black girls’ friendship communities on social media is an area ripe for continued sociological inquiry toward disrupting hegemonic constructions and limiting tropes that position Black girls as deviant or delinquent (Morris 2015; Wade 2019b). Both Jazz (Black and age ten) and Michelle (Black and age eleven) offer thought-provoking perspectives on why social media is important to them for feeling connected and supported. Jazz tells me,

Relatedly, Michelle explains how social media helped her adapt after a big transition in her life:

Social theorist Barrie Thorne, in her work Gender Play, positions children as agential social actors, suggesting, “Children’s interactions are not preparation for life; they are life itself” (1993:3). Social media participation, for American tween girls, is the stuff of life in contemporary society, and they use it to feel more connected to one another. There can be safety in how tween girls create homosocial spaces in the digital realm—where girls can be real, silly, sad, or struggling (Nesi, Mann, and Robb 2023; Tanner and Wang 2023). They can share experiences, publicly or privately, with friends and/or other tween girls via the digital girlhoods they produce and participate in. Social media can literally function as a safe space for girls, and tween girls consistently use their friend communities on social media to bolster and offer homosocial connection, support, and affirmation. Bullying at school or in other physical spaces may be an impetus for increased social media participation among girls, which can be a very positive thing. For some girls, connection on social media can make all the difference.

Conclusions: The Importance of Social Media in Maintaining Friendships

The spectrum of tween girls’ relational behavior—from intragender bullying to relational drama to friendship, homosocial affirmation, and support—occurs across social media with nuance. Bullying remains a serious social issue that must be addressed with care as well as consideration of how youth define and characterize bullying experiences. Research is this area needs to continually center experiences and voices of young people, who may define bullying behavior and relational aggression in ways set apart from the adults who care about them. Without consistent definitions and measures of (cyber)bullying across inquiries, it is highly difficult to ascertain broader impacts and implications for American tween girls within different identity categories. Questions of gender and sociocultural conditioning of young people within a cis-hetero patriarchal system must be considered as we address (cyber)bullying as an ongoing social problem. As Ging and O’Higgins Norman argue,

Tween girls demonstrate that despite the possibility of having negative social experiences online, social media is unequivocally important in their lives, and they largely use it to stay connected with friends and find support within existing peer networks. Young people, especially those in the tween and teen categories, are likely to spend more time interacting with their friends than with their parents (Davis 2010; Palfrey and Gasser 2016), and they are doing a significant portion of this interacting in digital space. While realities of increased time online among youth may heighten feelings of concern among adults, my findings show that it is important for tween girls to make themselves visible on social media and interact with other girls in digital spaces, in no small part to maintain friendships, connections, and support one another.