Freya India > Quotes

“When girls feel anxious and unsure of themselves, industries rush to sell them someone else to be. Only instead of occasional billboards on buildings, or ads in beauty magazines, today these messages are transmitted all day, every day, through a never-ending stream of precisely targeted Instagram posts, YouTube videos, TikToks, Snapchat Stories, and sponsored ads telling girls how to be prettier, happier, sexier, more popular, more productive, each personalized by algorithms to play on their inner most fears and insecurities. It is an onslaught; it is advertising on a scale no previous generation has faced.”
― Freya India, GIRLS®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything

“My generation never knew falling in love without swiping and subscription models. We never got to experience a first kiss or hold hands with a boy before watching Pornhub. We never knew flirting before it became sending Instagram DMs or reacting to Snapchat Stores with flame emojis. We never knew friendship before it meant keeping up Snapstreaks and using each other like props to look popular online. And freedom - we never felt the freedom to grow up clumsily, to be young and dumb and make stupid mistakes without fear they would be posted online. Or the freedom to be unavailable, to disconnect for a while, without the pressure of read receipts and active statuses. We never knew a childhood spent chasing experiences and risks and independence instead of chasing likes on a screen. Never knew life without documenting and marketing and obsessively analyzing it as we went.”
― Freya India, GIRLS®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything

“Because many of us are looking back through our hundreds of thousands of Instagram posts and Snapchat Stories and TikToks not with fondness that we filmed these moments but with regret that we didn't fully feel them. Now the push to post looks more like a marketing strategy. We were told it was about sharing our lives with our friends and family, when really it was about sharing our data with companies so they could target us better.”
― Freya India, GIRLS®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything