GIRLS®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything

by Freya India

A bold and timely investigation into how it feels to grow up in a world where every anxiety of girlhood has been commodified

Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything is a passionate, provocative, and deeply personal journey into the pressures shaping young lives today. Freya India shows that age-old anxieties of girlhood are now being amplified by modern life and exploited like never before. While previous generations of women were relentlessly sold products and procedures, we have become the product. We display our lives on Instagram, advertise ourselves on dating apps, and package ourselves into personal brands, making anxiety feel overwhelming and unmanageable. We have transformed from girls into GIRLS, from people into products.

Each chapter of GIRLS focuses on a common anxiety in adolescent girls’ lives, from insecurities about our faces and bodies, to our reputation and social status, to our friendships and romantic relationships. Along the way, India traces how rapidly culture and technology have evolved over the past decade.

This isn’t just a book for girls. For young women, it offers a nostalgic, if unsettling, reflection on the world they’ve grown up in and reassurance that they’re not alone in their struggles. For younger girls, it provides context for where these challenges began and warns where they might be headed. And, for parents, teachers, and older generations, it serves as a reminder that these issues have never been so intense.

GIRLS concludes with a message of hope, reminding readers how to reclaim their privacy, defend their dignity, and, above all, return to being people instead of products.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Audiobook, Cultural, Self Help, Politics, Sociology

384 pages, Hardcover

Published May 5, 2026

Reviews

[Madeleine Sachdev · Rating 1 out of 5]

What starts off as disappointing through its lack of nuance and depth, many contradictory points and statistics that feel cherry picked in order to back up points the author is desperate to make, quickly descends into Conservative pearl clutching before ultimately concluding as a manifesto for getting girls back to ‘family values’ and baby making that could be written by Serena Joy of The Handmaid’s Tale herself. The premise of the book is interesting and important, the reason I picked it up in the first place, yet it somehow manages to miss the mark entirely. Side note: I have never read the term ‘age old’ so many times in my life (does no one edit any more?)!

[louz · Rating 1 out of 5]

if i could give zero stars i would.

as someone who loves books about feminism and pop culture, at first glance this one seemed perfect. it starts by mentioning many interesting aspects, so it's even more disappointing that when you read more than the first paragraph of each chapter, it turns into what feels like insane rage-bait mixed with the archetype of "pick-me" energy. plus it's a textbook example for confirmation bias.

this book puts big complex social issues in neat little sections with quirky subheadings, cherry-picks a few random examples and a statistic to underline the point the author decided to make and completely ignores any complexity or layers that topic has to offer. she also fails to connect any of the points to the bigger issues like patriarchy and capitalism (unless she criticises influencers, who seem to be the root of all evil. no matter whether they do bland advertisements or educational, well-researched content –it's all the same to her). in her world, all of the issues she mentions only affect "girls" and now, at 26, she speaks to these young girls in the most condescending tone imaginable.

intersectionality doesn't exist in this book so i cannot say i am surprised this was written by a white, presumably straight, cis, american woman. non-white, queer or disabled perspectives on any of the topics she mentions don't exist. instead, her takeaway seems to be: "therapy and critical thinking is bad - let's all become puritan girlfriends (or even better: wives) to those poor lonely misunderstood men and live a big happy life with our big happy family and a million children where we don't care if half of of our relatives and neighbours vote for right-wing parties or are abusive, misogynistic or general assholes."

honestly i guess this is what i get for buying a book written by a fucking substack influencer (yes, she also is one of those evil influencers she hates so much) who has zero qualifications other than wrong but loud opinions and the ability to look up a fitting statistic or research – not to get a better understanding of a topic, but solely to underline whatever stupid point she feels like making.

if you really wanted to give the author grace, you could say this was written by a deeply insecure woman. but with the amount of anti-"woke", anti-queer and ableist talking points in this, i don't feel like she deserves any.

(she also called christina hoff summers a "feminist" and criticised the students who - understandably!!! - didn't want her to visit their university. i guess freya india can join right in, i doubt any actual feminist would want her on their university campus either.)

[Emma Bayles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks Libro.fm for the ALC! I devoured this in a day.
I’ve read a a lot of Freya’s articles so I was so pumped to see she has a book coming.
In a world where the problems and online challenges of young girls are often trivialized, Freya outlines them in a compelling way to show that while many of the emotional challenges we face are age-old, the context in which we faced them are entirely new and exacerbating.

[Athena · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to LibroFM's educator program for the ARC!

Can't recommend - absolutely not nuanced in any way.

This was incredibly challenging to listen to, particularly as discussion often related to the personal challenges of the author and did not explore the topic from a wider lens. Some of the discussions around mental health and the supposed over-diagnosing was dangerous, especially with the fact that female-identifying individuals are often not diagnosed with ADHD and ASD as regularly and as accurately as their male counterparts. I encourage those who are reading this to take what is said with a grain of salt, and to consider other research and books available. Often, research has a bigger story to tell than the one-sentence summary provided.

[Morgan Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Freya is an undoubtedly a generational talent and a powerful voice for Gen Z! I have never had a book physically make me pull faces of shock / horror reading through statistics like this. Freya has clearly dedicated herself to lifting the veil on the dark reality of growing up the modern world, GIRLS should be a bible for young girls and parents to understand what they are being exposed to and how to push back. Freya practices what she preaches, living a life without personal social media accounts which I have a huge respect for. A young writer with an exciting future! This labor of love needs a place on your bookshelf.

[Lindsey (endless_tbr_list)]

I am so disappointed that this took a turn towards transphobia and anti-“woke-ness” after a somewhat promising start. This could have been both an incredibly important and interesting discussion, if done correctly. Ultimately, if you’re looking for nuance and consideration of any non-white, non-cishet views, don’t look here.

Thank you to Henry Holt & Co. and Goodreads for the ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[Vanessa Valenzuela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Net Gallery & Freya India for allowing me an ARC!
It is a surreal thing to read a book that documents internet discourse that I have vivid memories of. ED/SH tumblr pages, the glorification of mental illness, the rise of the word “stigma” and peoples subsequent abuse of it. Bye Sister, the Facetune Epidemic, brands pretending to care about “self care” to push product, and the use of therapy speak to pretend we know how to process our feelings when really we’re explaining them away.
All of this leading young women to commodify themselves like cows to slaughter.

It’s a good read. Nostalgic and painful. We should stop being products. We should invest in communities and get off this damn phone.

[Ferenc Holyba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to put down.
India accurately describes the commodification and gaslighting of young women in the last few years. Her message of trusting one’s instincts instead of outsourcing thinking and feeling to “experts” is very important to spread to the up and coming generations of girls.

[Anna]

DNF at 72%

This started out strong and with significant promise, but quickly lost me. The author presents contradictory information and seems to have cherry-picked data that supports her positions.

My hope for an examination of the elements of culture that create challenges for girls and young women did not pan out. Instead, it took an unexpected turn and I could not continue reading.

[Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

started out inconspicuous enough, made me question its integrity with a nuance-free “actually we’re TOO aware of mental health issues” narrative, then got deeply transphobic. dnf

[Meg · Rating 1 out of 5]

If this wasn't a library copy, I think I would have burned it in my firepit on a nice summer day, made a smore over it & taken a sip of a seltzer while cheersing my childfree existence.

I cannot even fathom having the concept to write a book about how our generation (Gen Z b.1997-2012) went through a particularly unique experience growing up with the introduction and popularization of the internet/social media and online consumerism, only to hard pivot into things like "gender dysphoria and being transgender is a trend, source: i made it tf up" and "the lost of religion (re Christianity because she never once discusses other religious communities) in girls lives is detrimental to community and values, while also contributing to mental health decline" as well as "flaunting childfree life and villainizing motherhood/birth", and don't forget the part where we "demonize SSRIs and say that getting therapy is now a trend we are being pushed into, but also there is no mental health stigma and we be out here pill popping for no reason", and worry not if you felt like we forgot anything we also have "divorce is bad because think of the kids, but kids don't cut out your toxic relatives because family :)"

I cannot think of a more blatant example of cisgendered Christian White Women feminism, we barely acknowledge the perspective of other races or religions, despite the fact that it would realistically bolster the main argument about the detriment to teens health, instead she avoids it in favor of focusing exclusively on white Christian girls and women.

I recommend reading this only if you want to hate read something that had a good concept but dropped the ball so unbelievably hard that it's actually buried 6 feet under the court.

[Reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

A woman in her twenties with no life experience telling women to get back in the kitchen.

[DARREN AGER · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a Gen X father , some of the statistics in the book were frightening. I also learned what I could have done better in bringing up my children .
However, Freya’s book gives hope and I would encourage parents and Gen Z to read this to get a full understanding on what effect social media has had on a generation & focusing on what really matters will lead to a more fulfilling life

[riti aggarwal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some strong points in here and then a bunch of hodge-podge... it feels like she doesn't know her positions and is mixing many things. The atomization of social life she's referring to is something many on the left would agree with, for instance, but again, all her talk of resistance is about individualistic, not systemic change.

Does she hate late-stage capitalism or social media? What is the problem? Choice feminism or patriarchy?

Bullshit, I fear, with some good writing.

[Jocelyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

so bad i went on a 2000 word rant

Full review: https://writethroughthenight.com/2026...

**i received an alc of this audiobook from netgalley**

[Trevor Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to this book on Spotify.

Holy cow. Bleak but brilliantly written. The argument is that market forces unleashed by the Internet and social media have commodified people—especially young women—and have incentivized and profited from our misery. Social media and beauty apps and wellness apps and therapy apps and tiktok and on and on. They uproot us from our communities to exploit us as items, atoms, commodities. The result is we are living something less than human lives. But there is hope. Return to the real world, serve other people, be human. A brilliant and urgent book.

[Mai H.]

Non-fiction November TBR

Women's History Month TBR

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt and Co.

[Hannah Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A scary honest (and desperately needed) look at how Gen Z girls are being impacted, influenced, and commodified from every angle — media, medications, AI, filters, and pretty much everything in between. Very eye-opening.

[The Reading Raccoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

GIRLS®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything is a non-fiction look at the rapidly changed world that the young women now in their teens and twenties grew up in. They are considered the first generation to never know a world without social media and smartphones, and it’s beginning to show in impacts on their self-confidence, mental health, social skills, and interpersonal relationships. Freya India examines the toll that existing in a world that emphasizes likes and clicks over connection and authenticity has led to young women that are frequently anxious, lonely, and driven to consume. As a parent and someone that works with tweens, this was very eye-opening and addressed many of the concerns I’ve had myself. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in taking a closer look at issues around modern girlhood.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Narrator notes: Girls is read by the author herself, who does an excellent job with the material.

Disclosure: An advanced listening copy was provided by Macmillan Audio for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[Sarah Greene · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The girl boss didn’t die- she became an influencer,
Now success demands even more of us, it means selling ourselves and competing in the market for clicks. Every moment of our lives can be monetized; every ambition commodified. Our ambition today is simply to have an audience.”

[Dhruv · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate as a man I’m not really the target audience here. Nevertheless, there are some good insights in this book about the pressures that Gen Z women go through, written by someone who has first hand knowledge of going through the same things herself. What drags this book down, however, is that there is a lot of repetition - not just with ideas, but the cadence of writing - that makes this book longer that it needs to be and more difficult to read than it ought to be.

[Noah Senthil · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Rating: 3.5)

I love Freya India. I regularly read her Substack, and I’ve been looking forward to this book for a while. India’s audience is young women and girls, so I’m not the target audience, but I, too, care about what’s happening to young women, and she is one of the best Gen Z writers out there, so I was obviously going to read this.

GIRLS offers many of the same insights that she’s written about before, as she wonders, “What’s wrong? And how did we get here?” The book is almost like a cultural history of the West, but focused only on the past 15 years. Her main argument is that modern technology amplifies the age-old anxieties adolescent girls have always felt, and billion dollar corporations have commodified and profited off their exploitation and confusion.

The central argument is definitely correct, and she provides ample evidence to support that claim, writing about social media filters, mental health therapy, the documentation of everything online, loneliness and isolation, dating apps and porn, girlboss culture, etc. The messages that girls are constantly receiving are heartbreaking. And I think this would be a helpful book for young girls, especially teenagers, to read and evaluate whether these major corporations really have their best interest in mind, what’s been lost, and what they’re looking for in life. But, I must say, I was disappointed in the book for a few reasons.

First, I think Freya is a great writer, but it often felt formulaic and repetitive.

Second, she relies too heavily on “data” and surveys and stats. It’s excessive, sometimes contradictory, and doesn’t always help substantiate the point she’s making. I think she should’ve leaned more into personal and anecdotal experiences, giving the book a more narrative structure, with data interspersed when necessary.

Third, the whole book is about the commodification of everything, but she never addresses any larger, systemic questions. Are the corporations just all bad? Is it the capitalist system itself? Are the consumers or the companies responsible for the degradation? This matters because her solution, which comes only in the conclusion, focuses entirely on the individual. Girls, she argues, should focus on the things that really matter in life: family, friendship, faith (in something, even if not religion), and choose not to believe the cultural lies being told and sold.

But this leads to my final critique: the solution is too thin. She speaks of “morals” (e.g. love, loyalty, integrity), but there’s nothing really undergirding this language. Who defines what these mean? Or why we need them? Why should you focus on becoming a “better person”? There’s no clear, broader moral framework. Don’t get me wrong, some morality is better than none, and faith in “something” is better than blind allegiance to Instagram, Kylie Jenner, and Call Her Daddy, but if Freya is right—and companies are pouring billions into stealing your attention, affections, and allegiance—then you’re going to need a stronger moral framework, a thick community, and a really clear way of life, even just to have a chance of resisting the commodification of everything.

But, like I said, this is Freya’s first book, and I think she’s on a journey of her own, trying to figure out what life is all about. I’ll be along for the ride.

[CCB · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of her Substack "Girls" and this book is a quietly subversive intervention into a culture that insists on mistaking liberation for autonomy while leaving young women more atomized than ever. What distinguishes Freya’s voice is not merely her willingness to question the orthodoxies of contemporary feminism, but her sensitivity to the emotional texture of modern girlhood. There is an unmistakable moral seriousness here, but tempered by an understanding that young women are not simply dupes of a system, nor heroines resisting it, but something more complicated and more interesting.

Freya India writes with a restraint that feels increasingly alien in a media environment driven by outrage and branding, and in doing so, she captures the peculiar flatness of a generation raised online, where identity is both hyper-visible and strangely hollow.

[Kuu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ALC.

This rating is generous. The author is obnoxious as hell and acts like she just invented the wheel when she's just regurgitating other people's findings and then using it to basically shame "the left" and progress by saying it's not actual progress and instead is the reason everyone is miserable. She fails to make any meaningful analysis. The author also very clearly lives in a wholly different reality than I do, because some of the claims she makes are WILD. Absolutely wild. And yet, this is a published book?? Baffling.

One of those wild claims is that there is no stigma against mental health medication, and instead everyone and their mum takes some pill, for issues that don't need to be medicated, because taking pills is cool or something. Like, I don't know your social circles, but if this is your life, that's definitely an issue of your social circles because in MY world people will literally ghost/block you while dating if it turns out you take mental health medication/have a diagnosis/whatever. Wanna switch maybe, Ms India?

Then she also makes some statements, very brief, just thrown in there, that imply things I'm very unhappy with, such as her mention of some psychiatrists questioning if DID even exists, like, at all, as a mental health condition. She doesn't address this further, but clearly has a reason to throw this in, which is to further delegitimise people with DID (whom she claims just have it for TikTok clout, basically).

Then there's the whole anti-liberal thing, where liberal women have higher rates of (diagnosed!!!!!!) mental illness because uhhh eat hot chip, scroll phone and lie or whatever, young girls are trans now because all the young girls on their FYP are trans, divorce now being seen as aspirational and a #girlboss win, being very against cutting off people in your life because obviously you are not doing this because these people genuinely are harmful but because social media tells you to, the weirdly Christian undertones without ever really discussing Christianity (though she does mention how being religious is found to lead to better mental health outcomes - girl these studies are about any spirituality and not just about Christianity but I know you think they are), etc. etc.

There's potential here for real discussion, but Ms India just completely fails to do any of that. She's just very anti-psychiatry but like, in a regressive "mental health is fixed by just focusing less on mental health" way, and obviously sees the whole problem with commodification of everyday life but fails to connect it to capitalism. Like, there was potential!!! We could have had real anti-psychiatry discourse here! We could have discussed how psychiatry is used as a tool against marginalised people and how institutionalisation is weaponised and used as an excuse to strip people of their most basic human rights, but somehow I don't feel like she actually takes issue with psychiatry as long as it's about the forced institutionalisation and medicalisation of those with "scary" disorders. Same with the "cutting off" thing - she COULD discuss the negative consequences of assigning everyone the label of "narcissist" and how this further stigmatises an already vulnerable population but instead she's like "don't cut off your parents, think of what YOU did wrong instead", which is Not It.

This book was a disappointment and now I am angry.

[emma jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5
Super fascinating insights into this generation, and how the technology and culture of our current age partial impacts young women. There’s a little bit of the “no but our generation REALLY has it the worst” that maybe comes from the author being still in her mid twenties. But she made a lot of good points and I think the first steps toward generation-wide change is simply recognizing the deeper issues, and she hit the nail on the head in many ways.

[Amy Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The things that girls (and women) struggle with in today’s society that is covered in patriarchal oppression, consumerism propaganda, and detached from reality as social media consumes our culture. There were lots of points I enjoyed and could connect with in this book. However, there were also a few things that I disagreed a bit with. But overall, I think there are some great insights and outlooks on the things that are most important to us as women.

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Freya India and loved this book. Insightful, truthful and wise beyond her years. Recommend.

[Jorge Lopez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since I’m not very into the topic, I just thought of it as interesting, but it sort of shines light into common sense.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

GIRLS was equal parts eye opening and heartbreaking. As a mother of a young woman who is Gen Z, it gave considerable insight as to how this generation moves through the world. The amount of pressure growing up with social media puts on young girls is horrendous. They are turning inwards as everything private has been made too public and subject to ridicule by strangers. I can't say I liked this book, but it was definitely an interesting and thought provoking read. Thanks to MacMillan Audio and NetGalley for the advanced audiobook.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s an interesting book buried somewhere inside Girls. The premise taps into a very current cultural anxiety surrounding girlhood, social media, and mental health. At first, it feels like it might offer something sharper or more nuanced than the usual discourse, but unfortunately it never quite gets there.

The first few chapters were intriguing, but the book quickly begins circling the same ideas without really deepening them. Entire sections feel repetitive, overloaded with unnecessary detail while never fully interrogating the more interesting questions. For a book that clocks in around 300 pages, the conclusion ultimately lands somewhere fairly obvious.

There’s also a noticeable ideological slant throughout that made the analysis feel somewhat predetermined, and echoes many of the same conclusions as Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation. Later discovering that India is a contributor to Haidt’s publications makes the tone and framing make a lot more sense, but I kept waiting for the book to challenge its own assumptions in a more meaningful way. Instead, much of it reads more like an extended accumulation of observations rather than a fully developed analysis.

That said, I did genuinely enjoy the audiobook experience. I’m usually hesitant when authors narrate their own work, but India has a pleasant voice that suited the material well.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and Henry Holt for the ALC/ARC!