#916 - Freya India - Why Modern Women Feel More Lost Than Ever | Modern Wisdom

Why do you think so many girls are drawn to therapy culture?

Oh, I think it's a lot of things.

I do think this is kind of a cliché thing to say now, but I do think therapy culture has replaced religion.

And that's not a new thing to say, people have been saying that for a long time.

So Christopher Lash was writing about that in the 70s, Frank Ferudy writes about it really well now.

But in recent years, since social media I would say therapy culture is just escalated to the point where I think young women don't see it as a worldview.

They just see that as kind of life.

So, they interpret everything through this therapeutic lens.

So, their lives, their relationships, their emotions.

And I think it has elevated to the level of religion.

So, you think of all the kind of characteristics of religion we just mimic them with therapy culture.

So instead of praying, we just repeat our positive affirmations.

Instead of seeking salvation, you'll go on a healing journey.

Instead of resisting temptation from the devil, you'll reframe your intrusive thoughts.

So I think for young women in particular who are becoming less religious, this kind of therapeutic worldview has completely replaced that void.

What does a therapeutic worldview consist of?

What does that mean?

Like seeing problems in your life, kind of pathologizing problems and experiences as something medical rather than, I'm just experiencing this emotion or kind of age -old anxiety now, it's become a medical issue, so things like talking the language of attachment styles and trauma and losing the language of just ordinary hurt and disappointment and things like that.

And for some reason this is giving some kind of solace or comfort, or order being brought out of chaos?

I think it gives the comfort religion gives and the consolation of like, you see young women on TikTok saying things like, they won't pray to God, but they'll give a request to the universe and have faith in that.

And so I think it gives all the comfort of religion, but it takes away the inconvenient parts.

So, any actual demands on you or kind of restrictions on your freedom or anything like that.

Being held to standards of behavior, et cetera?

So it has what women are craving in modern life, I think, which is belonging and security in something and faith in something, but it's, it's a much easier version of religion.

Slippery religion. Yeah.

How many of these girls are in therapy, do you think?

A lot. Um, there was a study recently showing 32 % of all 12 to 17 year olds in America have either had therapy, been on medication, or had some kind of treatment in 2023.

In this, over a single year, one third.

Yeah, which is insane.

And I was talking to someone about that statistic, and they were like, oh, that's great.

That's amazing. And I was thinking, that's a bleak statistic.

So yeah, I think there's, there's the girls that are in therapy, which is a lot, but then there's also the girls who just like living in therapy culture.

So it's just, And they scroll through Instagram and it's all about attachment stars, trauma, they go on Tik TOK and it's like a trauma -informed therapist, telling them like red flags, they should watch out for and stuff.

It's just like, there's the actual therapy, which I'm sure there's useful therapists, but there's also just this culture, which is just the world that they're swimming in.

Yeah. So you're never able to switch it off.

I think Alain Durbotton was sat in that same seat as you.

Big proponent of psychotherapy.

I think trained as a psychotherapist himself too.

onto School of Life, which isn't just a YouTube channel, but a psychotherapy facility here in London.

And even he, like the biggest proponent of it, I think would very much say that there is a time for therapists, and then there is a time to not, in the same way as going to the gym, there is a time to train and then there is a time to recover.

And I wonder whether one of the criticisms that's common that I put to him was lots of people online, more old school people, more typical stiff upper lip type people, would say you're not fixing your past's problems, you're dwelling on them.

And by dwelling on them you are ruminating too much.

There is some evidence.

I mean, Yeah, mate, we don't want to deny that bad things happen and never alchemize them or transcend and include them into our life.

And then on the other side, we don't want to wallow in them.

But I suppose if you have the online environment that you exist within permanently using this language, you're permanently having these structures and these thinking patterns reinforced, and then it's how you begin to talk to yourself about what happens offline.

and then you also have facilitation or medication or conversations with your friends further embracing all of that?

You're just entrenched in this all the time.

Yeah, well I used to think and I think a lot of people think therapy culture is particularly bad for men because it kind of has a female approach to problems and it's about you know ruminating and often it's like if you don't have a female response there's something wrong with you it's kind of a a red flag if you don't go to therapy.

But, I actually change my mind on that, and I actually think, therapy culture is worse for women.

Because women ruminate more.

They co -riminate It's playing into the weakness that they already have, or the disposition.

Yeah, if you think of an anxious young 14 year old girl, the worst thing you can tell her is to go further into her own head to get relief, and to think more about her problems, and to kind of search her life for symptoms.

You know, if you told me that a 14 is the think maybe some men do need to do that a little bit more but the average young girl needs to kind of cut out.

I wonder whether therapy language and therapy culture for girls is what gym language, gym culture, Sam's testosterone steroids at 17 are for guys.

Yeah, I think it's a form of control so it's like it's our version of control.

You know if we feel uncomfortable or feel an uneasy emotion, we're just like, I'm going to categorize that and diagnose it, that's my attachment disorder, or that's my depression.

And I think men do that, they have their own kind of self -optimization trends and the gym stuff where that can become like a form of control to deal with kind of uneasy emotions.

And I think, yeah, this is the woman's version of that.

It's like we can't sit with it, or just accept a painful situation.

So I often think about...

So, if you look at these kind of attachment style forums or girls talking about their attachment styles, very often they'll describe just a bad relationship, and then they'll say, oh, it's my attachment disorder.

So they'll be like, he cheated on me, and I can't get over it because of my anxious attachment.

And it's so sad, because actually losing the language to talk about the actual problem that they're facing, because they're trying to get control, because it's a lot easier to be like, oh, you know, I'm anxious or he's a voidant, then we have a terrible relationship, and I've just wasted four years with someone.

You get the control through the therapy culture.

So that's where I see it becoming a danger to girls and young women.

What's that stat that you mentioned there about girls from religious families seeming to do differently well and now 18 to 25 year old girls are religious at different levels and stuff.

Yeah. So I think for the first time in history, young women are less religious than young men.

Typically, women would have been more.

But among Gen Z, it's men that are going to church way more than women now.

And Jonathan Haidt did some research on this showing that he looked at a survey of statements.

And they was things like, I have no hope in myself, like really self disparaging statements.

And he found that teenagers without religion agreed with them way stronger than teenagers who were religious and especially who were conservative.

And I think there's a couple of reasons for that.

I think one is kind of that external locus of control.

So conservatives tend to have more of an internal locus of control.

So they feel more control over things happening in their lives.

Also, if you're a conservative teenager, you're more likely to be living with both parents, which I think protects your mental health.

And also your parents are more likely to have clearer boundaries with you, which I think is actually very useful for anxiety and depression.

So there's different explanations for it, but yeah, it's a worry because young women are becoming less religious and their mental health is also tanking.

So there has to be some link there.

And maybe therapy culture, therapy language is stepping into the void, and also stopping them from perhaps going back to finding religion.

I'm hesitant to say that therapy culture is getting in the way of religion.

isn't like religion is necessarily the answer to this.

But that whatever better alternatives could be, including religion, are being precluded by this much sexier, newer, more comforting answer to everything that makes no demands on you as a person that doesn't require you to follow any edicts or refrain from any types of behaviours.

Well therapy culture, I think it probably is getting in the way in a sense because it's kind of the opposite of religion.

So, if you think of Christianity, it's about dying to yourself, like giving up some of yourself to be part of something bigger.

Therapy culture is all about going more and more into yourself, discovering yourself, and like finding your authentic self.

It's the complete opposite.

So, something like Christianity I think most young women just view is really restrictive and limiting.

And something like therapy culture, or just liberal culture in general, tells them that any limit or constraint is a problem.

What like? Well, just this sense in culture now that any obligation is like an obstacle to your life or your mental health.

I think that's just endemic from everywhere we look.

And And it's, yeah, very much the opposite of what religion tells us, which is that through sacrifice, you find kind of actual fulfilment and you kind of break free from yourself.

Now we're kind of told, whether it's through feminism or therapy culture or whatever girls are scrolling through on TikTok, Instagram, it's like you know, think of therapy culture on TikTok.

It will say something like, don't be a people pleaser, don't be needy.

But these things are kind of the opposite of what Christianity is telling you, which is like you should be someone who puts your needs second.

It's good to be someone who gives for other people, who depends on people, and they depend on you.

That's not the message girls are growing up with.

Is therapy culture less prosocial?

Yes, I think so. Well, again, you're just going inwards.

and I often think of, again, it's a similarity between therapy culture for women and kind of self -optimization stuff for men, because for men, if you go too far that way, other people become obstacles to your ambition and your self -development.

So people become distractions and annoyances.

It's the same with therapy culture because then for a young woman who's really into therapy culture.

A man is just like an obstacle to her healing and her mental health.

So I think if you go too far in it, you can just interpret anyone or anything is a threat to your peace.

Yes. Yeah, that's very interesting.

Which is, you know, the best kind of relationships are the ones that make both people in them better.

Yeah. That they enter the relationship and stay in the relationship, hopefully, or if they leave, they leave in an improved situation, individually?

Yes, but I don't think that's really getting across to young women.

I think, yeah, I think what the problem is is you go on something like TikTok and you have like a trauma -informed therapist who might be interesting and informative, but she's now competing in an attention economy, me, so she has to create a video which is engaging and extreme, so she has to say five red flags you should avoid in men.

And they're things that are just so vague and things like...

well I literally saw one that said gifts and trips.

It's a red flag because it's love bombing.

But other things like they'll say, you know, you're in a bad relationship if he makes you feel insecure for example, by making a comment about your looks.

But it's so vague that it's like well anyone's boyfriend could be included in that somehow.

But if you add them all together, if you're scrolling through this all day every day, which a lot of girls are, the message is basically like anyone can be toxic, and anyone can be a red flag.

Unsafe. Yeah. And you're, unfortunately girls do co -ruminate together.

And it's really bad for them into health.

Co -ruminate. Yeah, so dwelling on their problems with friends.

Which if you think of something like a Reddit forum that is just a rumination machine, it's just like, it's there for everybody to analyze together.

TikTok is literally somewhere you can ruminate and then it will start recommending you new disorders and problems.

So it's like, it's kind of like the inner world of these young girls but now getting fed more and more to them.

Other people's inner worlds, which can become a sort of, oh that's a nice thought pattern, maybe I'll try that one on.

Yeah, and the most risk -averse, neurotic, anxious women on there will get the most traction because they'll be saying - Everybody else is following along from them.

Yeah. So if you spend too much time on there, you will think that like a well -adjusted woman doesn't need anyone, doesn't have any distraction in her life, and feels good all the time.

That no one ever threatens her or makes her feel anxious.

And that's just like a lonely life.

And any perturbment from feeling the opposite of that is not because of her.

It's because of some insult that occurred in one form or another from the world or from structures or from a partner or from a friend, or from ...

But the problem with that is you shut down any constructive criticism of you.

Like if your boyfriend has a constructive comment about you, if you are being selfish or something, therapy culture does provide endless excuses to kind of twist that into ...

You don't need to hear this.

Yeah, he's a toxic person.

You're only like that because of your childhood trauma.

He's just like an asshole, but you have like, all of these reasons why you behave that way.

Have you contrasted this?

I don't know whether you've been able to look at it with what young guys see.

Is there an equivalent for young guys?

I think the only equivalent I could think of is the productivity stuff.

So I don't know if you saw that tweet recently of the guy he's like, uh, this morning routine saved me.

And so he does his morning routine, which is like super productive.

It's like everything.

It's the red light therapy and the journaling and everything.

But it's kind of eerie when you watch it because it's like, this is not a lifestyle you could have with anyone else around.

It's so to the absolute minute.

This is a similar thing with therapy culture.

It's like we're trying to have this perfect control over our lives and get perfect control before you commit to anybody.

Then you think of things like young people not wanting to get married and have children." And it's like, well, yeah, because there'll be a huge obstacle.

If we think that we have to have this perfect control over our mental health or our productivity routine.

Anyone else is going to seem like chaos coming into that.

And so I think young men and women can both go to an extreme of those.

But it's kind of the same thing.

It's like an avoidance strategy.

It's like, I have full control in this situation and I'm not vulnerable.

Have you read any Oliver Berkman?

Yes, I love Oliver Berkman.

He's phenomenal. Did you get his new one, Meditations for Mortals?

Okay, it came out a couple of months ago.

One of the best things that I got exposed to this year just talks about a lot of this in a very self -deprecating, very British, some might say.

Yeah. No, I relate to him painfully because...

Yeah, me too. he really sees a particular cohort of human nature, very transparently I think.

Yeah, and I think I have that tendency to see people as distraction, because I'm trying to work, so I'm often like, you know, I need to write in perfect silence, I need to have my perfect routine.

And yeah, I read a quote, I think it was C.

S. Lewis saying something like, eventually you realise that all of these distractions from your life were just your life.

They weren't distractions at all.

And I think it's really sad to kind of teach young people or just like drill into their heads that they should avoid anyone getting in the way of their self -development and their ambition or their healing because that's life getting in the way.

And yeah, it's sad to see people kind of halfheartedly do relationships or kind of put them off in pursuit of that ultimate control.

I think that's a really, that will backfire eventually.

What are the problems of excessive self -focus?

Well, I think that, I think as Jordan Peterson says, there's no difference between self -obsession and mental illness in the sense that it's all focusing too much on yourself.

Not to that it's in your control all the time necessarily, but that is what it is, it's focusing too much on your own problems.

And I think, yeah, as I said, girls are particularly vulnerable to it, and I think what it does is it blocks real self -development because you can't see where you're going wrong because you have these endless excuses for why you're behaving the way you are.

So I think a lot of girls think they're doing self -development and self -reflection, but it's actually accidentally like self -obsession, because they're thinking, oh, you know, I'm analyzing my attachment style, and I'm thinking about my trauma, and I'm, like, doing the work, but there's not much actual self -development going on.

Work being done. Yeah.

And I think it can kind of be a trap where you think, I'm working on myself as a person.

And the same with the self -optimization stuff, I think you can get so obsessed with stuff like maybe the eyes baths and the breath work, that you're not thinking about trying to be a better person.

It just becomes... There's a couple of traps for that.

Alex Hormozi taught me a really, really good lesson as I started to do little bits of investing and stuff like that.

Sometimes a company'll say, Hey, say we're this interesting company in a world that you maybe know or like would you like to put some money in and maybe come on as an advisor or whatever it might be and I was talking to him and he said how many of these calls are you taking?

So I don't know maybe two last week or something he says they're the most dangerous calls that you have because they all feel like work.

They all feel like business and almost none of them result in anything and it's kind of like that upfront it feels like you're doing a thing which is more dangerous than not doing anything at all because it acts as a placeholder, it takes up the parking space of what could be work.

If you're doing nothing, you would have this big vacancy and you go, I really need to step my game up, do whatever.

It's one of the problems I think that people have with scam supplements, with training styles that don't actually do anything that the subjects that they understand is this thing is taking the place of something that would work, and this thing doesn't work, which means that you're getting neither of the benefits.

It's kind of like the highlighter girls who have the perfect highlighters and gel pens for their exam, but they get like a D because they are obsessing over having the perfect set up.

The system, not the outcome.

Yes, that is interesting.

I suppose this self -pity thing gets wrapped up as empowerment in a way, and that causes girls to suffer.

Yeah, and it's funny because there's a lot of emphasis on like women walking away from respect and not tolerating any bad behaviour.

But there's also this self -pitying stuff going on.

So it's like, real empowerment would be very often – I'm not tolerating this, I'm walking away – but you look online now and there's a lot of young women who just ruminate over a problem.

So like I was saying before, they might be in a bad relationship and they'll be analysing both of their attachment styles and thinking about how it's toxic and talking to other girls about it rather than just leaving.

I think sometimes young women, like me as well, get caught up in the analysing and not the actual action.

They think all the mental health stuff is actually empowering them.

But I often see it taking the language away from actual problems, and rather than everybody opening up, it's actually closing down their ability to see what's going on and act upon it.

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Well, all of this stuff is instrumental, and there are things that you do in order to be able to do a thing.

The mode is not the end itself.

And it's the same with the morning routine thing.

I hold my hands up.

I would, I, if not for a slightly different life and a different algorithm, that could have been me, the guy that went, that trended on Twitter.

I've said this a couple of times, but I had an absurdly long, very elaborate routine for about probably four years, three or four years.

And my retrospective justification for it is that I had done so little in the way of self -reflection that I had from 18 to 30 or whatever.

I had over a decade of catching up to do, and I could have spaced it out like a normal saying human and it might've taken some time, or I could have done Navy Seal Hell Week version very intensely and get up on a morning and go for a walk and get back and journal and do breathwork and meditate and do yin yoga and then prep my food and read and then start my day.

And I'm like how fucking opulent and luxurious and ridiculous and inaccessible, all of these things, I understand, But I had a lot of low hanging fruit that I needed to get and then high hanging fruit too.

But one thing that I am happy about is that I never confused the mode of improvement for the reason for the improvement.

And very quickly looked at ways to apply that.

Okay, I seem to be able to deal with emotional perturbments a bit better now after a few thousand sessions of meditation.

Maybe I should use that and start pushing myself into different places emotionally.

Wow, I've learned some stuff about how human nature works or resilience or whatever, let's see if I can find some situations that I can stress test that and see if it actually works for me.

I've got new mobility because I've been doing yin yoga for fucking forever.

Maybe I can start doing CrossFit, which I did, or a different training modality or something else.

Not confusing instrumental goods for the end themselves I think is very important, and it takes the place holder.

The therapy culture takes the placeholder of something that could be functional work, and very viciously encourages you to not actually go out and even try, that there is no such thing as a stress test of this.

Any time it gets, it's unfalsifiable.

Any time it gets stressed, It's a mission the very philosophy itself was correct and that you should have never encountered this thing in the first place.

Well, I think you view it as you've said about like the lonely chapter, you view it as like a set time.

I think so. That has to come to an end.

Yes. Which is what therapy should be as well, is like a set period.

But the problem is now therapy culture stuff is so tied up with identity stuff.

So you get kind of young girls who start reading about social anxiety and they relate to it because they're 14 and shy.

And everybody. Yeah.

And they go on again, these forums and these communities where everyone's saying I have social anxiety disorder and because of that I can't get public transport or because of that I can't do this and then they start thinking well, I feel it, it's really painful for me so why would I put myself in those situations?

I'm just not built for those situations.

So that's the problem with it is there's no end to it because you can just go on there and then it becomes part of who you are.

And again, as you said, the second you go out and you feel intense anxiety, as you do as a 14 year old in like any situation, then you'll think, oh yeah, this is confirmation that I have social anxiety disorder and shouldn't be here.

So yeah, I always just think of these things things.

It's like me at 13, and the worst things you could say to me, and social anxiety disorder is one of them.

It's like, I kind of needed people to kind of laugh it off and just say, well, you have to go anyway.

That's what I needed.

Like, if someone came to me and said, well, some people call it a disorder and they take medication for it and some people need it, I'd be like, well, I need that.

It's kind of like the mental health, psychological health equivalent of the misdiagnosis of gender dysphoria among young kids.

Yeah, yeah, it's it's like seeing the symptoms as, seeing your personality traits as symptoms, which happens with the gender dysphoria stuff as well, which is like now just like quirky, edgy things about people become that personality.

Yeah, that becomes a diagnosis, so, like, before, we'd be like, talk about some guy and be like, he's always late, it's just something about him, you know, it's kind of lovable and annoying, but it's his personality.

And now it's like, oh, because of his ADHD he's always late.

Yeah, that's so funny, that's really interesting to hear the language.

I mean, even we do it, we do it around here.

You know there'll be, for instance, is this can have it on?

Yes, it does. Can you punch in on this dude?

Can you punch in? Alright.

So I'm not sure how tight that lens can get.

If you look very very carefully here, there's a follow us.

For the people listening, I'm pointing to the back of a can of Newtonic.

We've produced maybe a million of these, this particular version of the can in America.

Follow us. There's the three social icons and then there's new tonic .com at the bottom.

If you look really, really carefully, just here, you'll see that the Instagram icon is probably one mil to one and a half mil to the left of the follow us and the left of the new tonic .com thing.

And this little world is maybe two mil in from the us on after the follow.

Uh, I notice that because I noticed things.

I'm sending a photo and immediately, immediately after sending that photo and said that ism strikes again never been diagnosed with autism don't think i've got it hold eye contact with most people perfectly well even within that there's something and it's self -deprecating it's mockery it's whatever but even in that it belies this like somebody made the joke about uh Elon musk's department of governmental efficiency seed was less Avengers Assemble and more Aspergers Assemble.

So, like even on the guy's side of things, you know, OCD.

Oh, I'm obsessive about this sort of stuff.

Uh, it's, it's my, or like, you know, I, I mean, I, I'm writing this book at the moment and one of the chapters is about these kinds of TikToks that girls are looking at about autism.

And I literally went down a rabbit hole, like I'm autistic.

take on ... All of the symptoms, they're all about shy, nerdy girls.

I'm like, okay, this has been me my whole life, just awkward and fit in and reads a lot and everything.

I'm like, oh God, reading this, if you're just slightly different from the mainstream popular extroverted girl you're going to be autistic.

And, and it, but it's such, it's like, it's funny, but it's also like, Oh my God, there's like, I can't say a serious point cause you're laughing.

Why is autism it's like, it's, it just always makes me laugh.

I think it's kind of charming.

It's definitely autism holds like a very unique in the mental pathology library that we can all take.

It's the one that I think is sort of easiest to throw.

I see maybe it's because the autistic people like aren't registering it, but it's the lowest amount of offense seems to be taken by people misdiagnosing that in some way.

And maybe that's because autism in many ways is a disadvantage for people, but also bestows some of what some people would consider as advantages too.

Yeah. I know, I, autistic people I've met do kind of openly joke about it.

I feel. Whereas I feel like OCD is more offensive to say, Oh, that was me being OCD.

I feel like that's become a bit more.

Yeah, it's my suicidal ideation.

Yeah. But, yeah, it's funny, but it's also like you think of a 13 -year -old girl who really convinces herself she has autism and actually she's just quite unique and quirky.

That can be a lifelong sentence of thinking you're different from other people because you're unwell.

A much more pernicious one, maybe, would be something which is less serious of a diagnosis and everybody believes that they have, which would be an attachment style thing.

Because it's such a, It's such a defining characteristic of how you relate to other people, the most important things that you do, and to be able to write off every time that it comes in, it's my avoidant attachment again.

That's triggered. To kind of ignore your gut instinct, like, I feel like you can be in a bad relationship and you have a feeling about someone, and now you interpret that as, that's my anxiety coming up.

That's like my attachment disorder triggering rather than, oh, they've just said something or revealed something about themselves that I should be, I'm actually tuning into.

The worry is like young girls convince themselves they have a disorder and then shut down that instinct.

I suppose also it denies you the opportunity to, it stops you from having the opportunity to deny yourself from being at the mercy of that thing.

That you say, that's a pattern that keeps coming up in me, I don't like it and I want to get rid of it.

Yes. Well, it's a part of me, it is me, it defines me as a person.

Yeah, I hate this phrase, like, I'm anxiously attached rather than like I'm feeling anxiety at the moment.

And also you see on like on the internet, like anxious attachment quizzes and like t -shirts and it's become a thing to identify it.

And it's also a community, like an online community of people who will again, co -roominate over it.

But I think it's actually more dangerous than we think if you take it too far because you again, you just become blind to what's actually happening in your life.

And you're kind of living by a theory.

And also blind to how you can be complicit in causing these things to happen, how you could have self authorship over stopping these things from happening.

Yes. Yeah. Well, if someone's behaving badly, and all you're doing is like repeating your positive affirmations in the mirror.

And it's not going to help you.

Like at some point you need to have the kind of confidence to stand up to people and you're not going to have that if your core belief is that you're an anxious, damaged person.

73 % of boomer males said, no matter what psychological challenges I face, I will not let them define me.

72 % of Gen Z females say mental illness is an important part of my identity.

Yeah. bit of an arc.

I mean, that's just tragic.

But I think, again, I can't really blame young girls for that, I just think it's everywhere now.

And as Konstantin says, if the incentives are there, it's just going to happen, and there are incentives now to do that.

It's almost like now, you know what we were saying before?

Like, if you're English and you talk about something good happening in your life.

People kind of judge you and think you're weird.

It's kind of become...

Like if you go around saying, actually, I have really good mental health and I deal with things really well and I don't get anxious, people look at you like that's kind of a wrong thing to say.

Like I think if you were a girl saying that in school, people would not relate to you as much.

Oh, you're just in denial.

Yeah. Or like... It's kind of a braggy way to be now, to say, oh, I handled it fine.

for you. Good for you yeah.

Yeah those of us that have you know grew up with parents that caused us to have anxious attachment.

Try be autistic or something.

That's actually a solution, I think that more people should be autistic and that would fix a lot of problems that we're facing.

Yeah I'd mentioned to you before Louis Capaldi there's a great documentary on Netflix called How I'm Feeling Now highly recommend you watch it, I think it's super pertinent to what you're doing.

It would be great for the book too.

Yeah. So you have this guy who lots and lots of success, and the success causes him to develop a, he must have had a genetic predisposition for Tourette's.

I don't know what. Tourette's can't catch it, I don't think.

So he must have had this predisposition in the pressure that he puts on himself, and that's coming from outside, too, and the story he tells himself and the rumination causes his mental health to decline to the point where he's got this sort of tick.

And his shoulder's sort of, he's always doing this.

His whole body is contorting.

And I think, maybe it's two years in a row now.

At least one year at Glastonbury, he was stopped singing.

He came out on stage, began singing, and then partway through the song was unable to continue.

Had to get the audience to help.

And that happened at a show at the O2, I think, which is in the documentary.

And then, they tried to bring this documentary into land at the end of 22 or 23 or whatever and it's like and he took six weeks off and started doing yoga and stopped eating McDonalds and look at him now.

It's like and then the updates since then are sad that a guy under an awful lot of pressure with a beautiful voice, with really, really wonderful stories to tell that make people feel things.

feeling so much and being unable to handle it to the point where the very art form that he was built to do he's unable to do on stage very.

So is he backed away from singing as a result?

I haven't checked in but the last that I saw was this summer there was some festival thing I think that he was at that he had some trouble on stage again.

I mean maybe he had a bug or whatever but it seems unlikely it seems like it was probably the same challenge that he's dealing with since the documentary.

Yeah, that kind of got me thinking about the mental health thing affecting everybody all the way up.

You know, there's not really any hiding from it.

And the way that he goes about it, you know, he's very self deprecating.

But he does not, he's relieved when he gets a diagnosis in the documentary.

You know, he finally they say turns out I've got Tourette's, that kind of makes sense.

And that thing I was having where my heart rate went really high and I kept on breathing, it's like that, apparently that's called a panic attack.

It's like, ha, that's a person finding a diagnosis, not identifying with a diagnosis.

Well, that's kind of another problem with the therapy stuff is it's, well one, it's kind of offensive to people like that because I mean, there are literally young women mimicking ticks from Tourette's TikTok.

And whether that's TikTok.

Yeah, I think there is actually a TikTok hashtag.

But yeah, they're picking up Tourette's and whether that's conscious or not, some of them at least are kind of jumping on that identity.

And then you hear someone like Louis Capaldi's story and it's like the pain of that is actually stopping him doing what he loves, that conversation is kind of being swallowed up by the conversation of like young girls identifying with Tourettes.

People are fucking larping with this on the face -to -camera videos.

Yeah, again, it actually takes away the language to talk about people who are actually suffering, because it's just become so big now that everyone's autistic, everyone's got Tourettes.

I cannot laugh at it.

Is there a new story about why people are so addicted to social media?

Is there any more that you've come to think about?

Yeah, well, when I started writing, I was writing about addiction to social media and trends and stuff and kind of wondering why that was happening.

And then I've been trying to kind of trace it back to think, what is the actual need that's not being met here?

So one of them, I was looking at all this attachment style stuff and like the dating gurus, how popular like relationship advice is on TikTok and stuff.

And I was thinking is this because young people don't have adults giving them guidance about relationships.

So now they go and watch an influencer who's an attachment expert, because parents and families aren't getting as involved in giving advice about relationships.

So things like that there's a lot of trends where I think you can trace it back to adults have stepped away from giving some form of guidance.

You see it with relationship stuff on TikTok, and also the desperate search for, obviously, community and belonging to something is coming from a real pain of not having any community in real life.

I had loads of people, when I started writing about social media, loads of people would say to me, oh, but young people need social media because it's like a lifeline.

like they have their online communities and stuff and I'm like that is not a benefit of social media like that's just an absolute indictment of where we are in modern life like why is their community a Reddit forum and so we can talk about social media addiction but I think you have to kind of strip it back to what why young people are so obsessed with it and what is missing in their actual life.

What is everyone searching for or missing?

Yeah because when you meet people who aren't on social media or don't have ridiculously high speed times.

They usually have a lot of their needs met in the real world, which just sounds like an obvious thing to say, but it's true.

And I think the more you find yourself in a fulfilling relationship or you're happy with your job, you don't feel as much of a pull to scroll endlessly through TikTok all day.

So the fact that young people are spending six hours a on their phones is it's not just because social media is addictive, it's because there's nothing more addictive in their life, or like a reason to stop scrolling through it.

And so I think sometimes I can get caught in the trap of like complaining about social media, whereas social media is just filling the gap of whatever was stripped away before.

Yeah, it's not necessarily that there's even nothing more addicting, it's nothing more compelling.

What else is there that's as fun to do?

That offers everybody the same...

yeah, I mean, you know, I left my old life of nightlife three years ago -ish and that kind of felt a little bit like exiting Bitcoin at $100k or something and being like, well that was kind of selling at the top because there's some crazy stat about how by 20, 36, there'll be no nightclubs left in the UK.

Non. Yeah. So, I think it's one a day or one a week or something is closing at the moment.

Wow. Across the UK, just that night clubs are not only competing with brunch and with restaurants and with lane seven and with top flight darts.

Yeah. And with those ball pit fucking places where people get to take selfies, it's not just competing with other in person events and other community -based events or pickleball or whatever.

It's competing with Netflix, Amazon Prime.

Is it because everyone's autistic and no one's going coming?

The answer to every question is either it's only one of two things, too much or too little autism and I vote that it's too little and we need more.

but yes I think um you must have seen this trend the other day this like a like slug life thing where people just want they I'm not going out I don't want to do anything a huge substack article that oh there was one about yeah like rotting in bed yes that was it yeah yeah yeah like I think it was about being a loser and how it's like an English thing again being a loser has become the way that you introduce yourself and talk about yourself - Oh, I don't have a life.

My heart, yeah, I don't go anywhere.

I don't have any interests.

Yeah. No, no, no, I like Netflix.

Yeah. I don't, boyfriend?

No, no, no, no, not for me.

No. Yeah, I want - Would ruin my 7pm bedtime.

I don't know where that's come from, but I think it's probably social anxiety and then people come up with all of these kind of romantic ways to talk about it, so they're like, like, Oh, I'm just an introvert who enjoys my own time.

Or I'm like working on this big thing.

So I can't go out clubbing and stuff.

And they build their identity around something which would justify not going out.

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I guess, even relationships have been infected by social media, the boyfriends of Instagram trend has been around for a while, But it has maybe escalated a little bit.

Well, have you seen like, I've read an article the other day, that made me want to kill myself, it was about like soft launching your boyfriend on Instagram.

Please tell me more.

So it was about telling girls, so this young woman wondering, how should you announce to your followers?

Like not influences, like I'm talking ordinary young women.

How should you announce to your boyfriend?

Should you do a soft launch, where it's just like, his arm?

or should you do like a full reveal?

But it's kind of messed up because it's like, this is like introducing a brand deal or something, like we're literally viewing our partner's like products.

Yeah, how does this play in the optics of public life?

Someone said to me the other day, or they commented on my sub -sec article, like a relationship is now just a brand collaboration, like two personal brands coming together.

Wow that's good. And then posting online.

That's really good.

Yeah. Soft launching, well I've seen people talk about the hard launch which is just a couple photo that happens out of nowhere.

Yeah. Well, so you have all of that you have like, how do you manage the relationship on social media but then you also have how social media affects the relationship so like the boyfriends Instagram thing.

Like it's kind of funny that boyfriends, you know, when you see like a guy literally on the floor trying to get a good angle of the go.

There was a... I went to Gilly Tea in Bali, it's one of these little islands about five years ago.

And there's a famous beach club that's got a swing, sort of out in the water, and it's gorgeous.

The sun sets, because it's so close to the equator, the sun sets in the summer at 6 .30 PM, and in the winter at 6 PM.

It was like 12 hours of daylight and it just wobbles a little bit like that.

And this girl wanted to get a photo of her on the swing, but she wanted to catch the sort of sun bouncing off the top of the water.

I remember thinking, like watching this guy, and she was saying, no, no, no, you need to get lower.

You need to like get sort of lower down, closer to the water, and this dude is sort of chest to shoulder, to neck to fat.

And by this time, it's C, it's a C, so it's being gentle with him so he's like trying to take this photo.

The phone's out of the water.

He's getting splashed.

And I remember thinking like that really better be wifey because that's a big ask.

Yeah. Well also I just always think who is it for?

If your boyfriend is right there?

Like it does get to the point where you're like posing in a bikini and your boyfriend's taking the pictures of you.

It's like is this for Instagram?

Because I don't know it just...it's such a strange thing that's become so normalized.

It's a little bit of an indicate.

I mean, unless this is your new album cover or whatever for your slam poetry or some shit that you do, there is a little bit of like, surely the person that you're trying to impress the most is the one that's taking the photo.

So what does the photo need to be taken for?

Unless it's for his private collection.

It's become so normalized that when I wrote about boyfriends of Instagram, people were replying like oh, but I'm trying to get memories and stuff.

I had a picture - Yeah, there was a picture of like three girls in bikinis and three guys, all on the same beach, all taking pictures of their girlfriend.

And people were defending it like they're allowed to have memories.

Like what a memory of you in a bikini.

But I actually, I don't think they're lying.

I think that's just how normalised it's become.

It's like, well, obviously if you go to the beach, you do a photoshoot.

And I always try and express that to people like you think of an influencer and how her income depends on taking pictures and everywhere she goes, she has to get content.

Ordinary women think like that now.

Most people have it in the back of their mind.

I should be getting a social media picture or this is a good moment or this landscape would get really good clicks.

Like, that's how they think.

And I don't think some older people realize that young girls are behaving and thinking like they're influences, all time.

Is that an aspirational thing?

Is that just that the power uses of Instagram and TikTok behave like that because it's their job, which means that the people who are not, they have none of the same obligations feel like they should behave in the same way.

Or is there something more going on?

Is this aspirational?

Is this that people hope, maybe I get picked up by a modeling agency.

I think a part of it is that, but I think another part is they started doing this when their brains were forming as young girls.

They started capturing their life as they went, and I don't think they can conceive of just living and existing.

I really think it's that ingrained of their entire childhood was having a childhood, but also performing and marketing and managing it all at the same time.

When you try and get out of it, when I deleted Instagram years ago, that lingering was still in my head of like, maybe I should share this online or maybe this could be a good photo opportunity.

And it's really hard to not to kind of unwire that.

And now if I go to an event and I don't take a picture, young women I'm friends with will be kind of confused.

Like I said, I've been on holiday and I have no evidence of it.

It's confusing to them because that's suspicious about whether or you actually went on the holiday.

Yeah. It's kind of weird.

And I think there are genuinely young people who go on holiday to get pictures.

For the photos. Who even get in relationships for the photos and who are quietly living their life for Instagram, in ways that people don't realize has become that intense.

What do you make of the contribution of family breakdown to this?

of that - you mentioned before about that sort of lack of guidance, people looking for a little bit of guidance, maybe filling the void with entertainment that typically would have been taken up by family.

What role does family breakdown have here?

I think it's linked to what I was saying about looking for relationship guidance.

It's like, well, you look at something like mental health tick -tock.

People are sharing like their really deep trauma and turmoil and problems.

And you can't help but look at it and think, are you close to your family?

This is the kind of thing that you talk about with your family.

It's what your family is there for.

And now you're telling strangers on TikTok.

And then you look at the statistics of the amount of Gen Z who aren't living with both their mother and father.

I think in the UK it's over half of children, by 14, don't live with their mum and at.

And so they don't have a feeling of belonging at home.

And then you stretch that out too.

They don't have any sense of community.

Their community is a Reddit forum, or Instagram.

Like, I growing up had no sense of what a local community is, or like neighbors knowing each other.

It's just, it's really foreign to me.

And I think a lot of Gen Z, they don't have a conception of it beyond like an online community or like the LGBT community or something.

That is the limit of community they know.

So, their family falls apart, there's nothing really to catch them, there's no neighbourhood of adults who are there.

Then you add that they're becoming less religious.

They don't feel that they belong to anything bigger than that.

They have no faith in anything bigger.

And so, the feeling of loneliness is just so intense.

And I was writing recently about how I think that actually, one of the biggest drivers of behaviour we see among Gen Z is this abandonment fear and feeling.

Because their families fell apart, because they don't have community, because they don't belong to anything bigger, they feel constantly alone.

And if you look at the kind of symptoms of abandonment, if you look at like attachment theory, like real attachment theory, not the TikToks but the Like Mary Ainsworth studies and everything.

It shows people who are abandoned, they're really hypersensitive to criticism.

They have very low body image and self -esteem.

All of the kind of caricature of Gen Z, all of the traits alike to do with this feeling of not belonging anywhere.

So not to say that it explains everything, but I think families breaking down and not having a sense of belonging really messes people up, and I think a lot lot of Gen Z are carrying that around and then looking for it in places.

So obviously, they're going to spend hours on TikTok where people are talking to them and talking about their problems because they don't have anything resembling that in real life.

Yeah. I think a lot of the things we kind of laugh at young people for as being kind of narcissistic and, I guess selfish and we cringe at them having these crazy screen times.

It's like, what else is there?

Yeah. Is there a lack of moral direction or adult guidance or something?

Yeah. I think in the modern world, like adults, they view everything as like imposing on their children.

So, we kind of became suspicious of anyone who's authoritative, so we think they're being controlling or like old -fashioned, so adults kind of politely stepped back and kind of allow children just to become themselves and act the way they want.

Sounds virtuous. Yeah.

And, you know, there's obviously an element of that that's important in parenting.

But I think what happened is parents stepped back, so they just became like our best friends.

Then religion retreated away from public life.

Then communities broke down.

Neighbors stopped knowing each other.

And then if you're an anxious young person, there's no one there.

And we got rid of anything that was like more substantial guidance.

So I think if you think of therapy culture today, a lot of people think, oh, if you're an anxious young person you have more advice than ever.

You have all this guidance.

But I actually think modern culture has very little to say to anxious young people because we got rid of anything more substantial because we thought it was judgmental so you can't tell someone how to live their life or what to do.

We got rid of anything to do with God or religion because that was superstitious.

We stopped appealing to moral character and telling them they should improve themselves and be better because that's also judgmental and claiming that there's a right and wrong.

And all that we have left is like these endless empty platitudes of, be yourself, you do you, you know best, you know adults telling that to young people who I think are craving some direction like there's no clear milestones to adulthood anymore to follow and so they look to the adults and the adults are saying you know best and of course you feel anxious.

the anxiety gets worse.

That lack of guidance is, I don't know, the equivalent for the guys is pick your favourite podcaster or YouTuber or fitness bodybuilder of choice and looking up to that, okay well it's the missing patriarch that I didn't have, I didn't have a long enough, or didn't understand this world and I'm going to surrogate that to this parasocial online relationship.

But then it becomes someone who doesn't know you.

So let's say you have a relationship problem, like you're a young woman who has met someone and you're not sure about him.

The average young woman will now go on YouTube and turn to the dating experts in the attachment style.

Yeah. and get the guidance from experts because they don't have adults in their lives who know them intimately because people are different, people need different advice in different situations and I think it's a real shame that adults who kind of intimately know girls and young women and can give them advice in like a community setting have stepped back and now of course they're all on Tik Tok asking each other like, oh you know he cheated on me, is this a problem because we weren't exclusive.

Is that a red flag?

And it's like, we need some adults in our lives who clearly say, I think this person's bad for you.

I suppose, yeah, everything, it's great that we have instant frictionless access to all information from experts that may be even more expert than our parents would be ever and trained and all the rest of it, even if they're legitimate and obviously there's a diagnosis and it is still self -treatment from that.

You know if you're learning from TikTok there is no part of hey why don't we sit down why don't we I will give you something as opposed to you will learn from this thing and then go and have to work out what that means and apply it and not be able to ask questions and not be able to regulate with anybody and not have it contextualized even remotely.

Yeah and your mom isn't trying to get views on TikTok.

So she doesn't need to, she doesn't need to exaggerate and keep you looking at her channel.

I think that's the problem, is there are genuine experts who can help, but they are also subject to the pressures of the algorithm a lot of the time.

And so they're dumbing down what they're saying or presenting symptoms of autism as vague as possible to try and show as many girls relate to it as possible.

You had this breakdown.

One of the main causes of unhappiness in the modern world is a culture that presents other people as obstacles.

He'll faster alone, work better alone, find freedom alone.

It's such a lie. Loneliness is not empowerment.

Is loneliness, uh, pedestalized by Gen Z TikTok?

Yeah, I think, again, from all different angles, so it's like the mental health stuff, obviously, you will feel better alone in some ways because you don't have someone challenging you.

If you do actually have problems from your childhood to do with, say, your parents, I don't want to say an attachment problem, but it is an attachment problem, just the wording has been completely ruined.

But if you do have that, you kind of need to be with someone to work on it.

Because if you're single you're gonna feel great because there's no one kind of triggering you and making you feel anxious and abandoned.

So you do need someone in your life in that scenario.

So yeah, loneliness then does seem like it's extremely attractive because you feel better when you're alone.

The same with the productivity stuff.

I think it's just the message that's missing for both young women and young men is, like, it's actually okay to depend on someone and to need other people.

Like, humans have always needed other people and define themselves by their ties and obligations to other people.

And now we're kind of like, no, you can be self -sufficient enough and driven enough and healed enough that you're alone.

And I think that's really quite a strong message for young women here, which is the worst thing you can be is needy.

Like, do not ever need someone.

And the worst situation for you is to end up with a guy that you need.

You need to avoid that at all costs.

And it's a really sad message because it's like, is that not love to need someone?

And they need you. And it's kind of a beautiful thing to rely on someone and have someone who's dependent on you.

And actually, a lot of the actual attachment research shows that, have you heard of the dependency paradox?

Tell me. That couples who are more dependent on each other become more independent in their lives.

So there was studies showing that, I think they got couples to do like games or puzzles, and then they had to fill out a survey of how much do you respond to your partner's needs.

Basically how dependent are you on each other.

And the ones that were more dependent didn't want to hear, I think it was the clues or the answers from their partner.

They wanted to do it independently.

And then they followed up and they found the couples more dependent on each other had met their independent goals six months down the line.

Why do you think that is?

What's the proposed mechanism?

Because it's like the original Mary Ainsworth experiments where the caregiver leaves and they kind of measure how the child responds.

You need like a stable, secure relationship to feel confident to go and explore the world.

You need to have like something to hold on to, to step off.

Chaos in both domains is scary.

Yeah, you need like something to fall back on.

And I think that's a big reason why Gen Z are incredibly risk averse and not resilient is because we don't actually have a foundation to fall back on, so if your parents are divorced and you don't feel that sense of belonging, you're not going to step off into the chaos of the world.

You're going to hold back and you're going to find relationships threatening, you're going to find words traumatic, you're gonna be scared by it because the ground is, like, crumbling beneath you so you can't step off it.

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What have you learned?

It seems like you've done a good bit of work on the attachment stuff, at least in terms of research.

What have you learned about what's real and what's bunk from that?

Well, I think, I think it's real that obviously, your childhood impacts your adult life.

I think that's just plain to see, and I think it's real that you can kind of play that out in relationships however your parents responded to you, you'll then take that into an adult relationship.

That seems very obvious.

But I think where people go wrong now is they forget that – in the original attachment experiments and the book attached – it's quite clear that it's not a bad thing to depend on someone and it's not a bad thing to be attached.

We are wired to be that way.

Whereas I think now where it's going online it's like you have a problem if you're attached.

Like, if you're a young woman who kind of dreams of having a romantic relationship and really wants to depend on someone, now we view you as like, weak.

There's something wrong with you if that's your ultimate goal, because we've had it drilled in so much that dependence is a problem.

And so, you see all these people online saying things like, oh, you know, I'm anxiously attached because when my partner feels sad I also feel sad.

It's like, Isn't that just like loving someone, you know, you are affected by their emotions or they'll say things again like, oh, um, I always put their needs first.

So can you train me out of being like a people pleaser?

And it's like, we used to just call that love and you know, that was a trait that we treasured in people or people who put their partner's needs first and obviously that can go too far.

But I think the problem is now we only pathologize dependence.

and we glamourise independence, and we never say, yeah, that being dependent on someone, having a long -term relationship doesn't mean that you lose yourself, you can actually find yourself through that.

But I think girls in particular, young women in particular, have just been told the worst thing in your life is to need someone.

Did Gen Z have a lot of abandonment issues in that way?

Yeah. I think that's where it comes from, and that's why it's especially tragic because you have a lot of young women, for example, whose families fell apart.

And then they grew up thinking, well, I just want to have that myself.

I want to have a loving relationship and a family.

And then they kind of get told, whether it's through therapy culture or some of the feminist stuff online, you kind of implicitly get told that's a problem.

Like if you, again, if your dream is to depend on someone, you should work on yourself, you need to work on yourself love, you need to believe in yourself more, you need to be healed alone.

You think of a normal thinking feeling young girl.

Of course she wants to be in a romantic relationship and of course she wants to depend on someone in some way.

That's completely natural.

But I think you have young women thinking, oh, I need to get to a position where I'm confident, completely confident alone.

I'm I can allow a partner in.

But I don't see that as the way that people operate.

I think there's a lot of girls now punishing themselves for being emotional and sensitive and wanting a partner and wanting to depend on someone.

Because now, the image of a strong, independent woman is someone who doesn't depend on anyone, and who doesn't get emotional, doesn't get because you have therapy culture saying to girls, open up more and more about your problems, be more emotional, tell everyone how you feel, but then you also have strong, independent women don't care.

They never get emotional and if they do get an emotional, it's trauma or an attachment issue and it's like, that's a really cruel thing to teach emotional young girls and confusing because it's like, of course they feel that way because they're human, but now they're being told that that's a medical issue or something that they should heal.

I saw you tweet, kids as young as 9 are addicted to porn.

Girls as young as 13 are using fake IDs to post explicit content on OnlyFans.

A third of those selling nudes on Twitter are under the age of 18.

Yep. Can you unpack that, please?

Well, I think that's, again, a lack of adults stepping in.

I have this theory I've been thinking about of like, everyone just accepts now that parents are over -protective.

So there's the helicopter parenting and the coddling of gently.

But I think parents are weirdly...

They're not protective enough, but they're also coddling.

So they coddle their children, children, but not put up proper boundaries or guardre… There's like no rules, but they're over involved.

• Over -embrane in all the wrong areas.

And totally absent in all of the wrong ones as well.

• Yeah. So now it's like… The only danger is physical danger.

It's injury. So parents protect from injury, but they don't protect from something like their daughter's being online and posting, trying to get on OnlyFans.

I protective in the real world and under protected online but I think it's slightly more than that because I don't think parents are totally protective in the real world because they again they've also I think kind of internalize this messaging of I shouldn't get involved you know it's not my place you know you think of dads now I think dads are less protective than they've ever been because they they can't care about what their daughter wears or where she goes or who she dates because that would be backward.

It's her right to do that.

But then you look around and you see girls doing that.

You see girls like selling themselves online to strangers and I think what has accidentally happened is feminism pushed this idea of like girls and boys are just as strong as each other and then that led to people thinking Oh, so they don't need, girls don't need extra protection, which killed chivalry, but also killed fathers actually protecting girls.

Um, because the problem is not like women or weak, it's that girls are vulnerable.

But now we think, oh, we should all step back.

Let girls do what they want.

A lot of baby went out with bathwater.

Yeah. And now you see...

A lot of chivalry went out with patriarchy.

Yeah. Well, we, we killed good authority.

We just killed all authority.

And so now you have young women demanding that their universities protect them and demanding that the government step in and staring at someone becomes harassment on the tube because they don't have - We degraded the authority of men they trust.

Good men, and hopefully their fathers and brothers.

We just said all kind of protection is patronising and we don't need it.

But then you leave girls completely vulnerable and looking coddled and loved but actually completely unprotected.

There's a great tweet I saw about telling all men to stop being so pushy doesn't work because the men who don't need to hear it will take it to heart and the ones who do need to hear it aren't going to listen.

Yeah, I mean, I can't remember where it was, but there was this like scheme some young women ran on a train where they had these cards.

I don't know if you saw it where it said like, it said like, I'm being harassed right now.

But you hand it to someone.

And so you could go into I think it was like the Tube station, you could go in and ask for the cards.

And yeah, it's like someone is harassing me.

Yeah, there was all different ones, I can't remember where they were.

But it's like in that situation what is that going to do?

And that is actually the patronising thing and to expect that to protect girls but we find it offensive if a man steps forward and tries to help a girl out.

I think we've just thrown it all out forgotten.

Part of the feminist message is right that girls are vulnerable, but unfortunately it has led to a situation where we're like, vulnerability means weakness, so they don't need protecting.

Why are girls as young as 13 using fake IDs?

Do people want money?

Is there a status thing associated with this?

Yeah, I think it's a status thing.

I think girls are now growing up with influences being their aspirational figures, as we said.

I think it's something like 70 % of Gen Z girls aspire to be influences or just Gen Z in general.

That you're going to say, only fans.

No. But if you look at influences over the years, they've evolved dramatically.

So like Like when I was 13, I would be watching Zoella or someone who's really wholesome and didn't really have the same incentives of the algorithms back in the day.

Didn't really have the same competition.

Certainly didn't have monetization of her content.

And so she wasn't kind of exposing herself or talking about these weird therapy trends or anything like that.

But you can just gradually see over the years how it's escalated.

Who are some of the more extreme Zoella equivalents now, or if you don't want to throw names out you can come up with… I can throw a name.

Yeah, throw them out.

The woman Tana Mongeau.

Tana Mongeau. Yeah, so she's a really popular influencer who talks about only fans like it's… There's nothing dangerous about it for young girls, or nothing to be worried about, and she has an audience of very young teens, probably pre -teens, and she'll just post with all the things she's earned from Onlyfans, so all of like the designer bags and stuff, and on her podcast she'll talk about being on Onlyfans, and I think talking about commodifying yourself like it's completely normal, that is what girls are growing up with, so they're seeing influences commodify themselves in general, then commodifying

their body, and also having the nerve to call that empowering.

You don't think it's empowering?

No. Well, how can it be empowering to, even on Instagram, offer your body for judgement and then put your self -worth into the ranks and reviews that strangers give you?

You're turning yourself into a product effectively.

so this talk of objectifying young women, you know – that is turning yourself into an object on display.

Which I think is quite clear to anyone who's not grown up with it, but I don't judge the ordinary young woman for thinking that's attractive because that has been her role models throughout growing up, and it's escalated slowly.

So it went from Zoella to now Onlyfans.

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Modern wisdom. Why is it that pretty much all of the examples of toxic masculinity from the past, a promiscuity, sexual entitlement, hyper independence, all traits that are now regarded as boss, girl, feminist power?

I don't know. I think it might be like a revenge thing.

Um, like I think, I think young women react to the very worst traits of some men by thinking I'll just do it back and that will give me the power.

So they're like, uh, maybe they've had a string of relationships where the guy has slept with them and then left or something and then they think yeah I'll just do that to the next guy or you know they look at the men doing that and think well they seem very confident and happy so that's that's the way to go I think it's like a defense mechanism of some kind and also I think they're probably also the traits that get you popularity online so if you look at Tana Mongeau or some of these influences, they are promiscuous, they're quite masculine, they're quite aggressive in their speech because people

who talk assertively and in extreme ways will just suit the algorithm.

If you're a reserve to mid -young girl, you're not going to be the top influencer on Instagram.

I think those traits get rewarded and then they're what girls are scrolling through all day every day and they're like, my favorite influencer is really like vulgar and promiscuous and she's super assertive.

That's the path to success.

Yeah. And that's, again, that's the model of like the healed, confident woman who's not held back by negative emotion or worry or jealousy or any of these things.

Mmm. Assertiveness is confused for self -assuredness or wholeness, completeness, fixedness.

Well also promiscuity is like, well I often think now, if you're like a reserved young woman who's modest, you're now shamed.

Maybe not explicitly, but implicitly.

People will think there's something wrong with you because they will be like, oh no, you are beautiful, you shouldn't be so like shy about guys.

You know, you shouldn't worry about sex, you know, it's fine.

People will reassure her now as to look at her as if she has a problem that needs healing rather than she just is modest.

I think that's what tends to happen is you look at promiscuity becomes so popular and normalized, and then we stigmatize the girls that aren't interested in that or aren't that way.

So yeah, I think if you are a young woman now who holds back in that way, it's kind of like if you're introverted and people come up to you and say, what's wrong?

You should speak more.

And it's just like, sometimes it's just who you are.

So I think it's the incentives, again, you're almost punished socially, if you're modest and shy and not super assertive and masculine.

Because people think you've got your like healing work to do.

You need to become more confident and like, sexual and like, get rid of all your reservations and like repression.

People think you're just like a repressed person rather than...

Everybody should be Tana Mongeau, whatever she's told.

Like she's like released herself of all her kind of traumas and burdens.

Everybody is Tanner at zero, and you just need to try and get back there.

Is there a wistfulness for times of the past?

This sort of nostalgia for a better time.

I don't know when it was maybe before you were born, maybe when your parents were around or something?

Yeah. Or I don't know, slightly older generations would have that kind of wistfulness, American dream, etc. Yeah.

What do Gen Z think of the current moment?

Do they think that it's liberating?

Cause it seems like there's two things going on at once that life is horrible and terrible and I have anxious attachment and maybe autism.

And also, I'm fully liberated to be myself.

I can be whatever I want to be.

I can go boss my way through promiscuity and sell my body on Onlyfans and make loads of money and I don't need no man.

So which one is it?

I know there's like crippling anxiety among young women, but also this really loud, I don't care, message.

I think young people in general are very nostalgic for a time they haven't known, which is a time before smartphones and social media.

If you look at Jonathan Hight, again, he did a survey recently and found that a lot of Gen Z wish things like TikTok and Instagram never existed, which is kind of unusual.

You don't really get that with any other inventions.

He was talking about the bike and the hairdryer.

It's really not that level.

I use this all the time and wish that I didn't.

I think there's a lot of that ambient feeling among Gen Z of longing for a time, for example, when love wasn't reacting to someone's Instagram story or swiping on Tinder.

Some young women have never experienced love before it became that.

Like the mystery of having a crush on someone and falling in love.

Like now you just, you can't wonder what they're up to.

You just kind of skip through their Instagram story or look at their Facebook profile and it's all listed out there.

So I think there's a real feeling of disenchantment with the modern world, where it's like everything has become so commodified and cheap and there's like a nostalgia for a time, maybe that didn't exist, but everyone tells me the 90s were way better.

So I'm just going to assume they're telling the truth, but a time before phones and the Internet and the commodification of everything became so extreme because now everything I try and explain to people.

The very concept of things has changed, so friendship for my generation versus friendship for my parent's generation.

Friendship now is like your friends online, you maybe have a snap streak that you keep up, you pose for each other's Instagram, you don't really necessarily hang out as much as you used to.

Again, friends don't give each other guidance or tell each other what to do, because that would be rude and toxic.

So, the definition of friendship has changed in this era, the definition of love has changed, of flirting, everything, which is why you can talk about kids being on screens and it's kind of sad, but the actual truth of what's changed is insane.

And the fact that young people are anxious and can't cope with it is not because they have a disorder.

It's because they're the first to try and feel their way through a completely different world.

Yeah. With no rules or strategies or archetypes, or stories with a generation that can't relate, doesn't relate, you've just taught them how to use the iPad.

What are they going to be able to teach you about how to handle this?

Yeah. And that's kind of why you can't blame them for not giving guidance because the world moves so fast, there's no such, there's no wisdom anymore.

You can't pass anything down.

So now you just have to keep up with the kids.

And it's irrelevant as soon as it leaves your lips.

Yeah. And now you have adults like talking like teenagers and using the same social media platforms, being informed of the new trends, which has always been a thing.

But now it now it feels like adults go to young people to get guidance about the world.

And that makes young people anxious, because they're like, where are the adults?

Telling me what to do.

That's a very good question.

Freya India, ladies and gentlemen, Freya, I love everything that you're writing.

It's really great to see.

You go from strength to strength, I think it's really important stuff.

Where should people go?

They wanna check out everything that you do.

My Substack is just freayindia .co .uk, it's called Girls.

And yeah, that's just where I write about girls and young women, and And hopefully I have a book announcement too.

Exciting. Cool. I look forward to it.

Thank you. Until next time.

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[The Rise of Therapy Culture and Its Impact on Young Women]-[#916 - Freya India - Why Modern Women Feel More Lost Than Ever]

📋 Summary

The Therapeutic Worldview: A New Secular Religion

The Trap of Excessive Self-Focus and Rumination

The Erosion of Resilience and Community

Conclusion: Reclaiming Agency

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript