There’s been a lot of debate around this very subject over the last while. With there being strong evidence suggesting extraordinarily high rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide and fragility among the cohort known as Gen Z as well as the bemoaning of the death of one's private life, restricting social media in the same way we restrict under 18’s from watching certain films is a conversation worth having. On the other hand, is it simply closing the gate after the horses have bolted and will that ban come back to bite us in the arse in some shape or form?
What’s needed is a Gen Z perspective.
Someone who has grown up with the internet as a constant in their life.
Enter Freya India, stage left.
A well-known commentator on the online sphere, it makes sense that she has written this tome. In the introduction, India lays out her case that:
This is not the story of a generation falling apart. This is the story of a generation being remade, from people into products, from girls into GIRLS®. We did fall apart, long ago. We were pulled apart from the pressure. But then we were remade, the fragments of us forged into products on display, objects to be optimized, things without feelings.
Stating that while her own adolescence was filled with deep seated insecurities, this was a very different form of puberty and it was to do with a development that would shape the world forever:
In the early 2010s, when my friends and I were ten or eleven, social media apps arrived, and everything got worse. All the girls I knew joined Instagram, and the face and body I hated suddenly had to be offered up to the market, ranked and reviewed. Now I had all these girls on my phone to compare myself to, not just from my school but from every school, always there to measure myself against. Sleepovers I wasn’t invited to suddenly had to be scrolled through. Boys I liked were now rating me in front of everyone. My worth was made public, measured in likes and followers. I had constant reminders of how lonely and left out I was, but knew that feeling would only get worse if I removed myself from it all. The very thing hurting me became my lifeline.
Coming from a broken family, shunted between both parents, contacting friends via phone and consuming various influencers every night, she began to feel disconnected. When she tried to articulate herself, she was assured that teenage girls always worry about their appearance, about fitting in, about finding their place in the world. Undoubtedly true, but something was different this time. A kind of crippling anxiety which left her so disconnected that she felt she was observing herself from the outside, akin to an inanimate object.
Thus GIRLS®: Gen Z and the Commodification of Everything, which is a sober and, at times, contrite look at the modern landscape that teenage girls and young women must navigate every day. From social media algorithms categorising and dictating tastes through to loneliness becoming a commercial entity with many girls in therapy and on antidepressants due to romantic pursuit reduced to swiping and dick pics, forming parasocial relationships with influencers advertising themselves consistently.
As she puts it: “Our problems were painfully familiar and yet agonizingly different. I realized that the same adults telling me this was nothing new had no advice to give. Our world was moving too fast for them to know where to begin.”
Something that should stick in all of our craws.
📚 📚 📚
With six chapters examining different strands of online life (filtering, mental illness, lack of privacy, pornification and alienation), India mixes personal memories with a variety of stats and detailed examples of online behaviour that fits the chosen area. Running to 255 pages with extensive citations, it overloads and overwhelms the reader: if one doesn’t go in with the correct mindset, the endless amounts of examples can render a reader unsympathetic to her cause
I believe the old-fashioned book is still unable to properly articulate and convey the rapid pace of the online world (especially when the notion of being overwhelmed by content is part of the book’s subtext) so I don’t believe this is India’s fault.
Some critics have had a go at her for having a supposed “conservative” worldview. Of course, in the current climate, such accusations are to be expected (although how exactly advising people to not live their lives online and arguing for the protection of children is conservative is up for debate). Others have noted the little blame she puts on the tech companies (with the exception of issues surrounding child porn) but I would argue that she would be of the opinion for social media should be restricted and so adults should be able to recognise and accept the risks involved with Tik Tok.
A well timed, passionate, if at times heavy on the references, book that is an important entry for this topic of discussion.
Freya India, 2026, GIRLS®: Gen Z and the Commodification of Everything. Swift, ISBN-13: 978-1800754706
⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.
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