The narratives and stereotypes we see online don’t always match up with real life, and that’s especially true of today’s kids in Gen Z and Gen Alpha. It’s easy to label them as iPad kids, lazy, entitled, or whatever the insult du jour happens to be.

Girls, perhaps, are the most misunderstood of all. That’s why the Girl Scouts released a major report based on a survey of 3,000 girls ages 5 to 13 from a wide range of racial backgrounds, income levels, and geographic regions. The findings paint a picture of what it’s really like to be a girl today—and what we’re all getting wrong about today’s girls.

Here are three big myths about modern American girlhood that the landmark report shatters:

1. The ‘male loneliness epidemic’ is getting all the headlines. Girls are lonely, too.

We tend to think of girls as more social and better at forming deep relationships. But surprisingly, 70% of the girls surveyed reported feeling lonely, including 64% of girls ages 7 and younger. That’s a striking statistic, considering children this age attend school and are surrounded by peers almost every day.

Alana Officer of the World Health Organization told Education Week that there’s a difference between social isolation and loneliness. Adults who have limited contact with peers or only a small number of friends may experience social isolation. But loneliness is more of........

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