Over the Influence

This essential book is a rallying cry for women to recognize and reject the ways social media is being weaponized against us and instead wield it to empower ourselves.

Many women and girls feel that social media has too much of an influence on our daily lives–everyone’s trying to unplug, from low-tech weekends to Instagram hiatuses and screen time alerts. But disconnecting from the influence of social media is way more complicated than deleting or restricting access to an app.

In Over the Influence, communication professor and CNN Opinion contributor Kara Alaimo demonstrates how social media affects every aspect of our lives—from our relationships and our parenting to our physical and mental wellbeing. Over the Influence is a book about what it means to live in the world social media has wrought – whether you’re constantly connected or have deleted your accounts forever. Alaimo shows why you’re likely to get fewer followers if you’re a woman. She demonstrates how fake news is crafted to prey on women’s deepest vulnerabilities. And she reveals why so much of the content we find in our feeds is specifically designed to hold us back.

But we can change this. Alaimo offers up brilliant advice for how to get over the influence—how to handle our daughters’ use of social media, use dating apps to find who we’re looking for, use social networks to bolster our careers, and protect ourselves from sextortionists, catfishers and trolls.

Over the Influence calls on women to recognize and call out the subtle (and not-so-subtle) sexism and misogyny we find online, reject misinformation that is targeted to us because of our gender, and use our social platforms to empower ourselves and other women.