OVER THE INFLUENCE: WHY SOCIAL MEDIA IS TOXIC FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS

Kara Alaimo’s new book is a rallying cry for women to recognize and reject the ways social media is being weaponized against them — and instead wield it to empower themselves and other women. Please join us for a conversation with the author about this urgent topic.

In Over the Influence, communication professor and CNN Opinion contributor Kara Alaimo reveals how social media is affecting every aspect of the lives of women and girls—from our relationships and our parenting to our physical and mental well-being. Over the Influence is a book about what it means to live in the world social media has wrought—whether you’re constantly connected or have deleted your accounts forever. Alaimo shows why you’re likely to get fewer followers if you’re a woman. She explains how fake news is crafted to prey on women’s vulnerabilities. She reveals why so much of the content we find in our feeds is specifically designed to hold us back. And she explains how social media has made the offline world an uglier place for women.

But we can change this. Alaimo offers up brilliant advice for how to get over the influence—how to handle our daughters’ use of social media, use dating apps to find the partners we’re looking for, use social networks to bolster our careers, and protect ourselves from sextortionists, catfishers, and trolls. She also explains what we need to demand from lawmakers and tech companies.
 

Kara Alaimo is associate professor of communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she created the university’s programs in social media. She has written for CNN Opinion about the social impact of social media and issues affecting women and girls since 2016. She’s also a former communicator in the Obama administration and United Nations. Jane Greenway Carr is an opinion editor at CNN.com. She was previously an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Public Fellow and a Contributing Editor at New America, where she helped to produce The Weekly Wonk. She is the co-publisher of The Brooklyn Quarterly, a digital magazine of literature and public ideas.

This event is co-presented by Labyrinth Books, The Princeton Public Library, and the Phyllis Marchand Leadership Lecture Fund. It is cosponsored by Princeton University’s Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies.