Girls®: Gen 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

GIRLS: 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 modern life is amplifying and exploiting age-old anxieties of girlhood like never before. While previous generations of women were relentlessly sold products and procedures, Gen Z girls and women have become the product. They display their lives on Instagram, advertise themselves on dating apps, and package themselves into personal brands, making anxiety feel overwhelming and unmanageable. They 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 their looks, to their reputation and social status, to their friendships and romantic relationships. Along the way, India traces how rapidly culture and technology have evolved over the past decade.

For Gen Z women, GIRLS 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 Gen Z 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Audiobook, Feminism, Cultural, Politics, Parenting, Social Issues

Audible Audio

Published February 26, 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.

[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

[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.

[Reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

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

[Meg · Rating 0.25 out of 5]

modified rating on 10/6/26 to reflect the update in rating scale

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.

[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/frey...

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

[Aberdeen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I’ve followed Freya India’s writing on substack for a while and always find her insights into the particular experience of girls my age (in their 20s & 30s) to be fascinating and incisive. While I was raised in a bubble resistant to many of the trends she explores here—a conservative Christian bubble where religious faith was central, families were valued, and technology was suspect—I’ve stepped outside that bubble enough and been immersed in social media enough to resonate with her description of the world most women my age find ourselves in. It makes me grateful that I grew up shielded from some of these trends, even as the sheltered nature of my upbringing carries its own downsides. And of course, a more extreme fundamentalism, one I’m just as grateful I was spared, is destructive in other directions.

But while there’s been much dissection of the dangers and evils of religious fundamentalism, which are valid and ought to be brought to the light, I appreciate this exploration of what can happen in a different kind of fundamentalism, where there are no limits on technology, where divorce is more default than 50-year-anniversaries, and where therapy-speak is our primary language of meaning. India grew up in this world, and she doesn’t think it has helped her or her peers.

She breaks down the situation through six “age-old anxiet[ies]” that the modern world preys upon: “Filtered” (body image), “Diagnosed” (emotions), “Documented” (social status), “Disconnected” (friends and families), “Detached” (romance), and “Empowered” (sense of purpose and fulfillment). Her thesis is this:

We are easy to package and easy to sell to. We were told we could be whoever we wanted, but the choice became so overwhelming we defaulted to being datasets, raw material for the market. And girls with more freedom than ever before ended up lost and confused. Girls who were told to be strong and independent ended up childlike and helpless. We are the generation given permission to focus endlessly on ourselves—our dreams, our desires, our identities, our feelings, our freedom—and we are the most miserable on record.

The culprit, for India, is commodification: how historically normal young girl experiences—body image insecurities, social awkwardness, fears about growing up, desires to belong and do something meaningful—have become problems that can only be solved by buying things, whether that’s health products, therapy sessions, or streak freezes on Snapchat. The modern world, she argues, is set up to exploit these hard but normal experiences, to exacerbate them and take advantage of them. And not only are we being constantly sold to, we ourselves are “products on display, things to be sold.” We are taught to sell ourselves through creating personal brands from ridiculously young ages, equating social media posting with activism, and inviting strangers (and advertisers!) into our every private moment. And it’s un-human.

I think she’s right. I think there are also many more factors at play, but the commodification of young girls’ anxieties and insecurities is absolutely a real problem, and I am grateful for India’s prophetic voice in exposing it.

That said, this book is very much a survey of the landscape. It is not a rigorous academic study or philosophical examination of the ideologies behind these trends. And while I’m trying to rate it according to its self-expressed aims (and therefore not hold it to an academic-book standard), it is limited in the power of its argument because of lack of nuance and research.

The great value of India’s writing is her rapid-fire series of examples from social media and earnest descriptions of her own lived experience, both of which hopefully increase understanding and empathy from other generations who grew up in a very different world. The downside is that I can’t fully recommend it to anyone who is looking for more than that because she can veer into over-generalizations about complex issues that don’t contribute to constructive discussions about where to go from here, particularly in the areas of mental health and transgenderism.

For books that offer a more thoughtful, research-based discussion around related issues, see:

Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians by Tara Isabella Burton
The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto by Leah Libresco Sargeant
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt
iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us by Jean M. Twenge
Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up and Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier

Lastly, as a theologian, I was fascinated by the solutions India offers in her conclusion: notice when you are being treated like a product (or when you treat yourself as one); take back your privacy; seek in-person experiences and friendships beyond social media; put others first. All good things. And she ends with these: find values and live according to them, and find faith—“not necessarily religious faith but faith in something more, a conviction that more than this life is possible, something beyond hedonism and consumption and competition.” Amen! To go into more details would exceed the scope of her book.

But of course it raises the questions, what is a legitimate thing to put your faith in? What holds up philosophically, logically? What can handle the weight of a life’s purpose, of a human soul banking their life on it? What can truly empower us to resist the hedonism and consumption and competition that we’re so prone to, despite our best intentions? Why should we resist those things, actually? Why are these things so anti-human, so corrosive to us? And if her argument is that we need to become more human, well, what defines being a human? What gives one worth? Why do we hurt ourselves and others? Why are we capable of such love and resilience and such exploitation and fragility? Is there anything that can save us from ourselves? And that’s why theology is just about the most practical thing to study. ;)

Of course we don't want children; many of us still feel like children ourselves. But we are also confused. While young women like me are often infantilized, we were also pressured to grow too fast, and this is only worsened for girls today. The beauty industry makes girls worry about wrinkles before they have hit puberty. The mental health industry pathologizes normal adolescent feelings, framing exams stress and heartbreak as symptoms of serious disorders. Girls are exposed to hardcore porn, and pressured to objectify themselves, years before their first date. They're expected to have fully formed political opinions, and present them publicly, before they have even left the home. Adults are sold children's toys; children's shows are sexual. Helicopter parenting delays independence; extended adolescence encourages us to be young and free, to make clumsy mistakes; social media never forgets them. Girls today face the pressures of adult life earlier than ever before, but without the maturity, resilience, or life experience previous generations had to handle them.

[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 T.]

Non-fiction November TBR

Women's History Month TBR

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt and Co.

[Cecilia Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty depressing presentation of the reality of the culture today, specifically for girls. She does a good reporting stats before weaving things together to make her point. Though not a religious book by any means, it deepened my zeal for souls to think about the college students I serve and the culture they’re immersed in. I feel pretty convicted that most people would be happier if they didn’t have social media. Would recommend.

[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.”

[Leah Finn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Girls® is a sobering read. It put words to many of the cultural influences I've felt and experienced myself, as well as others I've noticed shaping the lives of young women around me. Compared with The Anxious Generation, however, I found it offered fewer practical solutions. Freya's writing is excellent for exposing the challenges young women face. But I would like more ideas for what we as a society, family, friends or church can do to help girls and young adult women face those challenges.

[Kuu [semi-ia for china reasons] · 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.

[Sophia Bird · Rating 1 out of 5]

As someone roughly the same age as the author, and who teaches adolescent girls in school, I was looking forward to reading this book and hoping to glean insight into how being a girl and young woman in the past decades has shifted so dramatically. Unfortunately any potentially valuable insight is wildly overshadowed by India’s bigotry and deliberate use of incorrect statistics that have largely been disproven to misrepresent the topics at hand. What stood out as most egregious to me were twofold. Firstly, her beliefs that the internet is the reason teens identify as trans, citing debunked “social contagion” theory as her proof. Teens feeling safe and recognized by their peers is a good thing, and most people who are not trans don’t transition. And no, it’s not common for 12 year olds to get top surgery. Secondly, she seems to believe that no fault divorce laws are the reason for family breakdown. As a child of parents who divorced when I was 16, I can say that while it was a difficult experience, why family on the whole is much more functional and happy than it would have been had my parents stayed together.

India advocates for a return to religion and women having more babies as a way to ease the anxieties and sufferings of girls in this new world and clearly thinks feminiusm is the root of all evil. Part of me wants to know if she thinks women were better off before being given the right to vote. I think the answer here is clear.

[Isaac · Rating 1 out of 5]

freya india is more concerned with not-so-subtly pushing right-wing conservative ideals than in trying to shed meaningful insights to real problems she brings up through the book. it's all the more upsetting considering a lot of the horrible problems that Gen Z go through (not just exclusive to girls) are quite thoroughly laid out here. the issue is freya india's solutions and "insights".

the statistics and anecdotes in this book are either ignorantly or sinisterly used to promote transphobic beliefs and stigmatise mental health disorders. there's no attempt in exploring intersectionality or asking "why" the problems she outlines in the book occur. "social media corporations" and its "influencers" are painted as the be-all and end-all culprits. not a single paragraph or even sentence on the role patriarchy or late-stage capitalism may play, or how class and wealth inequalities exacerbate these problems either.

it's abundantly clear by the end of the book as to why none of that is mentioned. freya india uses the problems of commodification and sexism to urge girls and women to return to a (white, christian) conservative past. gender dysphoria is made up and we talk about mental health too much!

[Brittany · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has come very close to convincing me to delete all my social media accounts. If you have a teenage daughter or work with teenage girls, you need to read this book. Difficult, but necessary. The conclusion is excellent and hopeful.

[Sarah Christie]

Dnf at 77% bc life is too short. Strange strange politics going on

[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.

[Lindsey Memory · Rating 4 out of 5]

For Gen-Z, youth and adolescence is no longer rated the happiest period of life. In GIRLS®, a debut book that is part memoir, part social science, and part philosophical meditation, author Freya India (a favorite Substacker of mine, working for Jonathan Haidt) argues passionately that young girls have lost three specific things:

1. A sense of belonging to something bigger than ourselves. (Families, religion, tradition, shared understanding)
2. Moral guidance. There are too many identities to take on, the anxiety to choose is overwhelming. Girls are told to develop self respect, but not shown how.
3. An understanding of what will make ourselves happy.

This book was a great read. It put into words a lot of things I have sensed but could not always appreciate,or even articulate about the changes that social media has made to our social fabric and our psyches. It made me softer on Gen-Z, who has known nothing else.

My favorite (and most heart-breaking) quote: "Millennials are the last generation of girls to stay up all night chatting on the phone. Now, young girls feels anxiety when they hear a ringtone. Girls whose lives once revolved around seeing each other now celebrate self-care, the joy of missing out. Girls whose lives were once highlighted by the possibility of the pursuit of romance are now terrified of ending up like their [divorced] parents."

A published book review about GIRLS® said, “The book makes no policy recommendations and few prescriptions of any kind. Instead, it walks through six chapters on different areas of life where girls are struggling:

Filtered (appearance)
Diagnosed (mental health)
Documented (posting their lives)
Disconnected (friendship)
Detached (relationships)
Empowered (career).

She gives her thesis right up front: ‘Modern digital technology amplifies the age-old anxieties that adolescent girls have always felt. Only now are we [Gen-Z] beginning to realize how painful this was, how permanent.’ She has a knack for naming the strangeness of life online. [She also has] the empathy to explain how Gen Z ended up so materially comfortable yet psychologically maladjusted."

Girls' natural instincts are to explore, to connect, and to take risks. This has been completely numbed by technology (esp. social media companies). "We have gained freedom, but lost guidance. We tie ourselves to identities and meaning that are so unstable: jobs, new notions of what’s right, acquisitions. Consumer culture ensures that new stuff never fulfills. We are perfect products and perfect consumers. Before we can fix the problem, we have to name the problem."

One thing I liked about it was that there is something for everyone to hate. She pulls no punches across the political divide. You'll have to read it to find the thing with you disagree with her about ;)

One of MY biggest takeaways from this book (besides heightened appreciation for what Gen-Z and younger girls face) came during a part when she pointed out that many influencers and corporations will use the justification of "ending stigma" as they talk about/sell the Current Thing. As if stigma is the primary problem with any number of issues, like mental health. They’re hiding behind do-gooders' generic urge to "reduce the stigma" but actually using it as a way to keep garnering clicks, to keep the attention. In doing so, they actually foster rumination, overdiagnosis, and codependence among girls who unsuspectingly take up the banners of their campaigns, hashtags, and beliefs. Now, young girls don’t know how to talk about human experience without labels and diagnoses.

Social media companies and the influencers trailing in their wake have, ironically, stigmatized normal interactions and conflict. I can totally see that. Now I am MUCH more suspect of anyone's use of the justification to "end stimga" for any cause.

Honestly, what follows isn't so much my review of the book as it is my book notes. There was SO much to think about in this book.

- The most pressing problem is no longer fear of missing out, which is what millennials experienced with social media. Now it is fear of taking part. The risk, the energy required to participate in real life is higher than participating in “Community" online.

- In 2010, teenagers reported spending about six hours a week with friends. This has dropped. Teenagers nowadays attend 17 fewer parties per year than they did in the 1980s. 17! They SAY they feel connected, but they went from play dates and phone dates to actually seeing each other much less (lindsey's note: this has happened to EVERYONE, I think. I've noticed i'm less social than I used to be).

- Anything that the social media companies do to make you feel connected can ALSO make you feel disconnected (as you realize your friends are all at a location you are not. As you realize your friends have ranked each other higher. As you realize you're not on the group text thread. As you see your good friend actully has long snap streaks with 3 other people).

- Family breakdown (which is not particularly connected to social media, but definitely connected to the concurrent movement for self actualization) has been a disaster for young girls. India followed comments on the hashtag #divorce and saw so many girls expressing anguish about never having seen a successful relationship. 9% of kids born in the 1950s experience household destruction, versus 43% of kids born in 2010. Therapeutic-individualism people are getting married less, and children from unmarried couples experience household disintegration 60% of the time.

- Young women aren’t making an empowered choice to watch porn, they often can’t escape it. "Porn didn’t just desensitize women, it normalized our own commodification, and as we grew up, the pressure only got worse." 98% of all deep fakes are of women and girls, and 99% are pornographic. Pornhub had to remove 60% of its videos (10 mil) in 2020 when a NYT story reported that that many videos uploaded by unverified users probably contained underage or rape scenarios. Leaked emails showed the company had known about this problem and done nothing.

- With all this confusion about how to date and have relationships, did girls go to adults for advice? Nope, they went online, and a rush of dating coaches and therapeutic influencers peddling "red flags" and naming everything "manipulative" and "narcissistic" did nothing to help.

- “We saw intimacy not as something to be clumsily stumbled through (as it was for previous generations), but a performance to be delivered; content to be copied. And for every flicker of fear and doubt, there were algorithms, influencers and apps lined up to amplify it.” (among the MANY heartbreaking lines of this book, I felt this one the most acutely)

- Both sides (manosphere, femisphere) promote emotional detachment as empowerment. “Be a girlboss, you don’t need men." "Be an alpha male, these modern women are insane.” Imagine how these can inflame teenage girls’ worst fears.

- They are turning inward for empowerment: “Contemporary culture is no longer religious, but therapeutic. With an emphasis no longer on personal salvation, but emotional security, the deity is **us**. Omnipotent, omnibenevolent to ourselves: 'Is this serving me?'”

- People watch 1 billion hours on YouTube every day. (!)

- The "documented" chapter talks about how there is pressure to share private details. Social media became less about capturing and more about manufacturing moments. Going to sleepovers to get selfies. “Drama influencers” stopped posting perfect pics and started posting drama (breakups, fights, breakdowns) to the point that this was its own subculture, its own sport in high schools and colleges. Reputation destruction, exclusion, passive aggression, and bullying have become rampant as young people have intuited that they MUST post private things online.

- "Morality became measurable when we began to have to signal political beliefs online" (think black square posts)

Her final advice to girls is: if you feel alone when going through friends’ stories... If you feel anxious after posting a vulnerable moment... if you feel ashamed after watching porn... Notice. Notice when you are treating yourself like a product, judging your worth with likes, conforming your appearance, or punishing yourself for feeling. Pay attention to the feelings that come from various actions you do with your phone. Delete any app that degrades you and makes you feel this way. Do not offer up your feelings to the market, to experts. If you wouldn’t want it for a little girl, don’t accept it for you.

The best love, the best confidence, the best life-- is quiet. It’s sacred to Herself.