From Books to Feeds: What Shapes Us Now

Reference Article: Le Coin des Dames – July 27th, 1915

When Françoise des Bois warned young women in her July 27th, 1915 article about the quiet influence of “bad books,” she was not really talking about paper and ink. She was talking about unexamined influence about stories that slip past our defenses, reshape our expectations, and blur the line between what is real and what is performed. Read today, her concerns map almost seamlessly onto social media.

Where she saw sensational novels and glossy magazines, we now have curated feeds, viral trends, and algorithm-driven content. Like the books she feared, social media presents itself as harmless entertainment. And like those books, it rarely announces its deeper effects. It works slowly, privately, repeatedly shaping ideas about beauty, love, success, morality, and self-worth.

Young girls and women are especially vulnerable to this pressure. Social media turns comparison into a daily habit and visibility into a form of currency. It rewards appearance, performance, and emotional intensity, often at the expense of complexity or truth. What looks like connection can quietly become self-surveillance: watching oneself through the imagined eyes of others, measuring value in likes, followers, and approval.

Des Bois warned that romanticized stories distort reality and leave young readers unprepared for life as it actually is. Today, filtered images and staged authenticity do much the same. They create expectations that no real body, relationship, or life can consistently meet. The result is not simply disappointment, but anxiety, self-doubt, and a persistent sense of inadequacy.

What is striking is her insistence on discernment, not prohibition. She believed that what we return to again and again becomes a companion and companions matter. This insight feels urgent now, when content is constant and withdrawal is difficult. The question is no longer whether young women are influenced, but whether they are given the tools, language, and support to understand how they are being shaped.

Read intergenerationally, this column becomes a reminder that every era has its seductive narratives. The medium changes; the vulnerability does not. What women once tried to guard against with booklists and moral warnings, we must now address through digital literacy, boundaries, and shared responsibility.

What we carry forward is not fear of media, but respect for its power and the recognition that protecting young women’s inner lives has always been part of women’s work. The difference today is that this work must be collective, explicit, and no longer borne quietly or alone.

Pages: 1 2