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If building a social media presence is similar to building a brand, then it makes a warped kind of sense that girls are promoting their online selves with sex

“We’ve transferred high school popularity into social media measurements,” Zoe, a 16-year-old living in L.A., said. “The popularity contest — it’s never been a good thing — and now we have the actual numbers, we’ve become greedy. We want more attention.”

To get that attention, they often turn to classic methods: sex hasn’t stopped selling in the social media age. Whether a teen girl posts a seemingly innocuous selfie with a come-hither expression (what 13-year-old Sophia described as her “brand”) or a picture of her butt or breasts, the result is almost reliably the same.

“More provocative equals more likes,” said Greta, a 16-year-old who lives in L.A. Even sixth-graders are “posing sexy” these days, a 13-year-old said.

“If building a social media presence is similar to building a brand, then it makes a warped kind of sense that girls — exposed from the earliest age to sexualized images of women and girls — are promoting their online selves with sex, following the example of the most successful social media celebrities,” Sales writes.

The Kardashians were referenced by teens in almost every chapter. “Girls will post, like, pictures of their butt and say, ‘It’s art,’” said 13-year-old Melinda who lives in Montclair, N.J., “But really, it’s just their butt.”

“They’re just trying to get more likes,” her friend Sophia said. “It’s like a cool girl’s way of being like the Kardashians.”

The teens described taking dozens of photos to get the right look, and even then feeling like they had to use filters and apps to enhance their butt and face, or edit the pictures themselves in Photoshop.