Instant Identity: Adolescent Girls and the World of Instant Messaging

by Shayla Thiel Stern

Instant Adolescent Girls and the World of Instant Messaging explains how girls use instant messaging – a primary mode of new media communication for their generation – in order to flirt, bond, fight, and generally relate to peers in ways that both transcend and play into their culture’s dominant gender norms. Examining IM conversations and interviews with the girls, Shayla Thiel Stern demonstrates exactly how girls use IM to construct identity and negotiate sexuality, as they constantly move between childhood and adulthood in their language and actions online. This book is among the first of its kind to truly explore the millennial generation’s prevalent use of instant messaging and its implications for the future.

144 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2007

Reviews

[Summer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting little study of the ways teenaged girls use instant messaging technology as both a communications tool and a memoir of sorts. I do wish that the author had used a broader subject pool, but this was a quick and interesting read regardless.

[Jacqueline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stern has asked me to write a review of her book for the Journal of Communication Inquiry.