State of the Georgia Girl Report

A New Landscape The digital environment surrounding Georgia girls as they come of age has no historical parallel. The sharp rise in adolescent mental health challenges over the last decade began in tandem with the rise in teen social media use around 2012 , particularly as image-based platforms and social feedback mechanisms such as likes and shares became central to daily life. Studies which randomly assign young people the task of significantly reducing social media usage consistently find improvements in mood and well-being and those improvements are largest among adolescent girls, who consume image-driven social platforms at higher rates than boys (Twenge, 2022). The notion that digital experiences are universally bad, however, also misses the point: a study from Georgia State University finds that teenagers who use social media more frequently show higher levels of empathy (McDonald, 2026). Similarly, a comprehensive study uncovered the multi-faceted complexities of social media use by adolescent girls - benefits from ‘active digital socialization’ that increase a girls’ sense of belonging and the consequences of connectivity (Belfort, 2026). This section names both sides of that terrain – the costs Georgia girls carry from managing multiple personas and the genuine benefits digital life delivers – so that adults, educators, and policymakers can respond with proportionate support and action rather than avoidance or alarm. This is, after all, the new normal.

DIGITAL WELLNESS OF GEORGIA GIRLS

65%

of girls who use voice-assisted devices see them as a friend. Girl Scouts of the USA, Survey: Girls and Artificial Intelligence, 2026.

• 95% of U.S. teens say they have access to a smartphone at home • 1 in 4 teen girls across the country use TikTok “almost constantly” • Two-thirds of girls use an AI chatbot, with 3 in 10 using it daily • Nearly all girls say they use the internet daily, with 2 out of 5 online “almost constantly”

Quick Stats

Pew Research Center, “Teens, Social Media, and AI Chatbots”, 2025.

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THE 2026 STATE OF THE GEORGIA GIRL REPORT