Creating A Better Social Media Environment For Young Women

Much has been said about how social media can have a negative impact on younger adults, especially on young women. Lately, many brands and organizations are trying to do something about it by shifting the focus of social media to more responsible and diverse messages. Dove recently launched a campaign “The Selfie Talk” with Grammy award winner and body positive advocate Lizzo, aimed at empowering young women through social media, while creating a positive space.

To aid in this effort of responsible media consumption, Pixability partnered with the Boston-based non-profit organization MEDIAGIRLS to enhance their important work by advising them on building an online community, improving branding efforts and optimizing their YouTube channel. MEDIAGIRLS is a social-media education workshop for girls grades 6-8 designed to empower young women to become more critical social media consumers. Their #REALMEDIAGIRL workshop teaches girls to identify media’s “perfect” girl and think critically about why this representation excludes so many girls and women, including people of color, people with disabilities, non-heteronormative sexual identities, and others. The curriculum helps girls to know their true self-worth, which goes far beyond physical looks. They take a deep dive into the deconstruction of ads that girls are seeing on TikTok and Instagram, and wrap up by helping girls create new rules and a new relationship with social media. They will leave the workshop with a whole new set of skills and tools to change their use of social media to better reflect their authentic selves, and to speak up and use their voice to uplift others — the definition of a #REALMEDIAGIRL.

Over the course of several weeks, members of the Pixability team designed a project plan outlining detailed steps for MEDIAGIRLS to follow in order to have a successful impact on their participants, parents, educators, and overall brand. Pixability explored ways to create an online community for parents where MEDIAGIRLS could post resources, as well as allow for open dialogue and discussion on different topics related to social media. We landed on a few low-cost options that MEDIAGIRLS could easily adopt, including integrations with Wix and Facebook Community Pages. To assist with branding, Pixability created potential audiences, containing specific targeting and messaging so MEDIAGIRLS could understand their core audiences of girls grades 6-8, parents, educators, volunteers, and donors in greater detail and apply this framework when thinking about messaging, content, and recruitment.

Through an audit of the MEDIAGIRLS YouTube channel, Pixability was able to determine three key takeaways that would result in greater organic growth. The first takeaway was to update videos and channel SEO to make videos more discoverable with relevant title, tags, and descriptions, helping viewers find your content. Organizing content into playlists encourages users to continue viewing content, leading to longer watch time and viewing sessions. Lastly, adding a logo as the channel watermark allows viewers to easily subscribe to the channel.

There is a lot of educational, positive media out there for young women, and MEDIAGIRLS is giving them the tools to find it. Pixability continues to support MEDIAGIRLS and their mission to teach girls and young women to become critical media consumers. As we both invest in the future of social media and advertising, we hope to guide the next generation to do so, responsibly.

To learn more about how MEDIAGIRLS is helping young women become more critical media consumers, visit their website here.