Technology

Girls Have Always Had ADHD. We Just Weren’t Looking.

PUBLISHED 8/24/2026 by

A teenage girl watches a 30-second TikTok video by @Clairebear describing “a day in hell” in her life, “ADD edition”:

“I get up and go to work and realize I don’t have gas in my car. I get to the gas station and reach for my credit card and remember that I don’t in fact have my card because I keep thinking it will turn up at some point.”

She continues explaining her day and reveals that these are all symptoms and signs of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The teenage girl in question sees much of herself in that scenario, goes to the doctor and is evaluated and diagnosed.

Welcome to modern medicine.

Don’t Let AI Become the New Sex Educator for Adolescents

PUBLISHED 8/20/2026 by

“Why would I Google it when I can just ask ChatGPT for exactly what I am looking for?” 

A 16-year-old asked me this during a recent conversation with Black adolescents about where they turn for health information. Her answer was striking, but hardly surprising.

As traditional sex education faces cuts in schools and reproductive health services become harder to access—particularly for young people of color in underserved communities—adolescents are increasingly looking elsewhere for answers. AI chatbots offer something schools, clinics and even trusted adults often do not: information that feels immediate, private and judgment-free.

The Grok Generation: The Consent Crisis No One Is Stopping

PUBLISHED 3/10/2026 by

Grok, the AI chatbot used on Musk’s platform X, has been under fire for generating nude or sexualized images of real people, including individuals who are minors. In one estimate, Grok produced one nonconsensual sexual image per minute over a 24-hour period. Prompts such as “put her in a transparent bikini” produced altered images that were then circulated publicly, some accumulating thousands of likes. The targets are real women and underage girls whose images were manipulated without their knowledge or permission.

Elon Musk responded by making a joke, requesting a Grok-generated image of himself in a bikini and reacting with laughing emojis. When the platform’s most powerful figure and one of the country’s most powerful men treats the abuse as a punchline, it sends a message about what is actually harmful versus what he thinks should be considered humor—and provides a tacit granting of consent to young men on the platform to keep making these images.

Much of the public conversation about young people and AI has focused on cheating in school or declining literacy. Far less attention has been paid to what it means when a middle school boy can type a sentence and produce a sexualized image of a female classmate in seconds as a joke or for attention—or to pretend he received it from her for status.

For girls growing up in this online environment, the message is unmistakable: Your image is not protected as yours. Your body can be altered, distributed and consumed for entertainment. Its violation can be dismissed as a joke. 

Teachers, parents, lawmakers and platform leaders are behind. The question is not whether this will shape the next generation’s understanding of power and intimacy—but what we will step in to do about it. 

From DM’s to I Do’s: Five Ways Social Media Is Reshaping Child Marriage

PUBLISHED 3/4/2026 by

As the world goes digital, so does the ancient practice of child marriage. 

More than half a billion women and girls living today are, or were, child brides. Among young adult women aged 20 to 24, one in five was married before age 18.

But that doesn’t mean that child marriage has stayed the same. There has been gradual progress in ending child marriage (around a decade ago, one in four women was married under 18). And technology is playing a growing role, both in cases where girls say “I do” and in cases where they say “I don’t.”

Sundance 2026: The Masculinist and Eugenicist Origins of AI Are Writ Large in Documentary ‘Ghost in the Machine’

PUBLISHED 2/12/2026 by

A fast-paced Sundance documentary, Ghost in the Machine traces how modern AI’s obsession with “intelligence” and innovation is rooted in the eugenicist, sexist and racial hierarchies that have long shaped Silicon Valley and its technologies.

(This is one in a series of film reviews from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, focused on films by women, trans or nonbinary directors that tell compelling stories about the lives of women and girls.)

Raped, Recorded, Shared—Then Abandoned by the System: ‘Once It’s on the Internet, It’s Out There’

PUBLISHED 2/3/2026 by and

Survivors of online sexual exploitation and abuse are not just confronting individual perpetrators—they are up against systems that were never designed to protect them.

A new report by Equality Now and the Sexual Violence Prevention Association documents how survivors who report tech-facilitated sexual abuse routinely encounter jurisdictional dead ends, outdated laws and opaque platform policies that leave harmful material circulating indefinitely. For many, the abuse does not end with the assault itself, but continues through repeated viewing, sharing and threats—often with devastating financial, professional and psychological consequences.

The report also makes clear that this harm is not inevitable. Survivors point to concrete policy solutions that could meaningfully change outcomes: consent-based laws governing the online distribution of sexual material, clear and enforceable takedown obligations for tech companies, survivor-centered reporting systems and access to free legal and mental health support.

Accountability is possible, but only if lawmakers and platforms choose to act.

Musk Isn’t Stopping Grok From Creating Explicit Photos of Minors Using AI. Here’s What Can Be Done.

PUBLISHED 1/12/2026 by

Since the end of December, X’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, has responded to many users’ requests to undress real people by turning photos of the people into sexually explicit material. After people began using the feature, the social platform company faced global scrutiny for enabling users to generate nonconsensual sexually explicit depictions of real people.

The Grok account has posted thousands of “nudified” and sexually suggestive images per hour. Even more disturbing, Grok has generated sexualized images and sexually explicit material of minors.

X’s response: Blame the platform’s users, not us.

What 200 Gen Z Women Told Me About Birth Control Should Alarm Every Woman in America

PUBLISHED 12/17/2025 by

Birth control is the single most powerful tool for women’s economic mobility and autonomy in modern history. It changed everything: When women could plan if, when and with whom they wanted to have children, college enrollment soared, dropout rates fell and poverty rates declined. The ability to access contraception has been directly tied to women’s ability to stay in school, build careers and make decisions about their own futures.

So why, in 2025, are we finding ourselves in a messaging war on birth control?

What Ariana Grande’s Weight-Loss Discourse Gets Wrong

PUBLISHED 12/17/2025 by

We can’t afford to look away from changing beauty norms in our society, and how they are fueling eating disorders. 

Jennifer Rollin, an eating disorder therapist based in Maryland, says, “What I hear from a lot of clients is that when they are trying to recover from their eating disorder in this society, it almost feels wrong, because ‘everyone around me is talking about Ozempic,’ and ‘all the celebrities are talking about their big amount of weight loss.’”

But while it can feel cathartic to criticize or distance ourselves from prominent women who seem to be conforming to dangerous beauty standards, that criticism is harmful and does not bring us any closer to addressing the problem.