Modern Wisdom - #754 - Freya India - Deconstructing The Female Mental Health Crisis

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Freya India is a writer and journalist focussed on female mental health and modern culture. Gen Z girls are not doing ok. No matter how badly you think men have it right now (and they do), girls are doing no better. From therapy culture to advertising your anti-depressant use on Instagram, it's no surprise they're struggling and confused. Expect to learn just how bad the state of teenage girls mental health is right now, how companies are targeting and monetising this crisis, the glamorisation of taking medication, how selfie editing has been seen as a powerful act of self-expression, what Snapchat Dysmorphia is, why girls are so risk-averse in dating and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://www.shopify.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: http://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: http://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: http://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Freya India. She's a writer and journalist focused on female mental health and modern culture. Gen Z girls are not doing okay. No matter how badly you think men have it right now, and they do, girls are doing no better. From therapy culture to advertising your anti-depressant use on Instagram, it's no surprise that they're struggling and confused. Expect to learn just how bad the state of teenage girls mental health is right now, how companies are targeting and monetizing the crisis, the glamourization of taking medication, how self-editing has become a powerful act of self-expression, what Snapchat's dysmorphia is, why girls are so risk averse in dating and much more.

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Is Gen Z in a mental health crisis? Yes, yeah. Basically, since the early 2010s, our mental health has just tanked, especially for girls. So we started to see these spikes in anxiety and depression, things like eating disorders, but also rising self-harm and suicide. So for example, in the US, between 2012 and 2019, the suicide rate for white middle-aged men increased by 3%. But for girls aged between 12 and 14 increased by 138%. And the statistics on cell pharma equally is horrific. So something happened around 2012 that is particularly affecting girls, but as a whole is affecting the entirety of Gen Z.

How much of this is laid at the feet of social media, do you think? Well, I would say a lot, but obviously there's, you know, it's debatable. So some studies show like a negligible impact of social media, others show that it's terrible. But the thing is with those is some of the studies kind of lump in screen time with social media. So they'll say like, you know, screen time is bad for you, but that could be texting friends that could be scrolling through Instagram. So they're kind of unreliable. But I think the most compelling bit of evidence is the timeline. So mental health started to decline in the early 2010s. The iPhone came out in 2007,

Instagram came out in 2010, editing app started to come out around 2013. And also the fact that it's particularly affecting girls. We know that girls spend a lot more time on social media. All the other explanations don't really seem to add up when it comes to why it would be girls. So things like people say the housing ladder or the economy or the climate crisis and none of them quite fit that explanation apart from social media for me anyway. Yeah. Why is it that women would be particularly concerned about the housing crisis or about the future temperature or the amount of carbon in the atmosphere?

What is it that's causing, beyond just the excessive use of social media, what's the type of use of social media that's causing this disparate effect on girls? Yeah, well, I think there's different aspects to it. So there's how girls are using social media. So things like, obviously social comparison, comparing yourself to everybody and comparing your productivity and your looks and your

lifestyle to everyone all the time, which is terrible for mental health. So there's that, but then there's also how social media enables companies to have closer access to girls. So the targeted advertising and the ability to monitor them, to collect data and to sell that data to platforms who then bombard them with advertisements. So I think a big part of this is the industries that are now able to follow girls around and kind of inundate them. It's an onslaught of advertising and it's specific to that young girls insecurities or vulnerabilities. So, if a girl is anxious about how she looks, she'll get bombarded with beauty companies who are trying to sell her fixes to her specific worries. So, it's kind of both at

the same time. It's how they're spending their time on social media, but also how companies are utilizing that to exploit them for profit. Yeah, dig into that. What are the companies that are targeting monetizing mental distress of girls online? How are they doing this? So the way I would phrase it is I would firstly say that to have some adolescent angst and turmoil when you're young is normal, especially for like adolescent girls. So we know that adolescent girls are more anxious, more risk averse, more prone to perfectionism than boys

of the same age. So I think all of that's pretty normal. And I think every woman would say she's been through, you know, body image issues or whatever. But I think what's happening now is companies are able to exploit those vulnerabilities and target them. So for example, I would say it's completely normal for a girl to worry about how she looks, you know, everyone will experience that. But it's not normal to have to deal with that in a world of Instagram influences and TikTok filters and editing apps. At the same time, it's probably normal to worry about your feelings, to feel a bit anxious, but now girls are having to contend with that in a world of therapy culture and ads for ADHD medication and quizzes saying like you might be autistic. And other things as well like, you know, insecurities and relationships, jealousy, paranoia, I think

that's all normal when you're young. But dealing with that in a world of dating apps and hookup culture and online porn, it becomes unmanageable. So I think what's happening is all kinds of industries, so the beauty industry, what I would call the therapy industry, the pharmaceutical industry, social media companies are all going after these age-old feelings and kind of ramping them up to a degree. I think the average girl can't cope with. Yeah, it's very interesting. You know, online therapy companies in some ways and I'm a huge proponent of therapy. I'm using it myself in Austin in person talk therapy. using it myself in Austin, in person talk therapy.

And I never thought about the dangers of having immediate 24 seven access over the internet to somebody that. What is the problem with that? Shouldn't people be able to talk about their feelings with someone who's a qualified professional at all times? Why is there a danger behind that? Yeah, well, so that's the thing now. It's called unlimited messaging therapy. So it's what most of these platforms are like, BetterHelp Talkspace. That's what they're advertising. And the way they phrase it, so for example, Talkspace will say, talking to a therapist is like texting with a trusted friend or something. Better help will say, you know, pay an influencer to say, oh, you know, it's like talking to a bestie. And the problem with, there's a couple of problems with that. The first is that, you know, being able to message a therapist 24 seven from your room means that you're not developing resilience to deal with things. So if you're socially anxious, you're still in your room, you're still on your phone. And, you know, if you're struggling with something,

if you feel an uncomfortable emotion, you're able to just get that instant gratification and be soothed, which is the worst thing for anxiety. So that's bad. But then it's also, I feel like these companies push this kind of therapy culture. Which is this this kind of idea that you can have perfect mental health so you can any negative emotion you feel is diagnosable and solvable through their service. I think that puts pressure on Gen Z. I think you know there's pressure from social media companies to have this perfect life, there's pressure from beauty companies to have a perfect face. Then you have pressure from therapy companies to have this perfect soul that never experiences negative emotions.

If you look at the advertising, the advertising is like, if you ever feel worried, if you ever have anxiety, you know, connect with a therapist now, which, you know, it's so bad for resilience, but it's also so obvious why they're doing that because if you can convince a generation that, you know, if they pay enough, they can remove those negative emotions, then there's nothing more profitable than that. Yeah, you've said it's the marketization and medicalization of normal distress. A cultural emphasis on treating every emotion we feel as diagnosable and solvable with consumption is doing so much psychological damage. Yeah, so I think two things can be true. There can be a mental health crisis where there's girls that are severely mentally ill,

but there can also be this growing population of girls who are just anxious and stressed, and they're being convinced to see their behavior in ways that suit these therapy companies and these drug companies. And I think very often, ironically, it makes them feel mentally ill. What are hot girl pills? So hot girl pills are SSRIs or antidepressants. It's a way that Gen Z girls seem to describe their antidepressants on TikTok. There's also silly girl pills. There's also all kinds of like mental health merchandise with pills on them. There's Prozac pillows. There's antidepressant phone cases. There's a common phrase now like

hot girls take Lexa Pro. Sexy girls take Sir Trillene all kinds of stuff like that. So not only is that kind of the normalization of these mental health diagnosis, but the absolute glamorization of them now. How much of this is talked about in person? Do you think because obviously on the internet, you select for a very particular type of communication, a very particular type of person, some insane percentage of people on Twitter,

just luck and never tweet or essentially never tweet. You know, 90% of the content is created by 3% of the users, something like those lines. I wonder what the in-person discussions have online discussions about SSRIs and mental health and hot girls have IBS or whatever the new trend is. Is that showing up IRL as well? Well, the thing is, so sometimes I get criticism where people will say, oh, you know, this is, you're taking TikToks or you're talking about what's on Twitter. But it's like

Gen Z in the UK is spending 10.6 hours a day on screens. I think that is the average. Girls, so there was a new study recently saying Gen Z is spending two hours a day on TikTok alone. spending two hours a day on TikTok alone. Girls are making up the majority of that. So 57% of TikTok users are female. I think a third are under 14. And so when people say, oh, you know, this is just a social media thing. I don't see this in real life.

It's like this is real life for a lot of young people. This is the majority of their day. This is what's forming their assumptions about themselves and the world. That distinction has gone. And so I think I don't hear it as much in real life, but I do think if you took a 12 year old's day and you took the time she's spending talking in real life to friends and then the amount of time she's passively scrolling through Instagram and TikTok, I think those trends really matter and shape our worldview. We were in Dubai for three years ago and escaping lockdown. And we were in Mr. Miyagi's, just a famous popular bar on the marina. And George, who's been on the show was talking to a

22 year old 23 year old girl that lives in Dubai and didn't have much to do and I can't I can't remember what her job was. Maybe she was in school or something and he said, can I just have a look at your screen time? So went in and she didn't even know I don't think she was aware of that there was something tracking and that day she'd spent eight hours on TikTok that one day She's on Tiktok on Tiktok eight hours in a single day on Tiktok Yeah, so that's real life then But that yeah, it's it's a full-time job. It's probably more than the amount of sleep that she'd gotten Which is wild and I think that you're right. You know, if during a period of your life that's so

super formative, so much of the things that you're exposed to are through the internet, talking about that's just what you see online is a presumption from people who assume that there is a life outside of being online. Like it's a misunderstanding of how the day is portioned presumption from people who assume that there is a life outside of being online. It's a misunderstanding of how the day is portioned out between keyboard and non-keyboard. I think that about a lot of things. I could think it about, say, like beauty trends. Some people will be like, oh, I don't understand why girls are having this plastic surgery, women are having this plastic surgery, and they look so weird in

real life. And it's like they don't, they're not doing it for real life, they're doing it for social media very often and for how they look on camera. And so I think there's a lot of trends that people find confusing about Gen Z. Whereas if you start to think actually there's no distinction between social media and the real world anymore, they start to make a bit more sense. Yes, if it's an online first existence, everything kind of opens up from there. There is no distinction between what you're seeing on the internet,

or maybe even the internet is more true than the real world. That this is where, no, I don't need to listen to mom and dad, no, I don't need to listen to what's happening on the news, no, I don't need to listen to mom and dad. No, I don't need to listen to what's happening on the news. No, I don't need to listen to the whatever. This is my source. This is my oracle and my source of insight about how I should behave, about how other people behave.

I had this idea a while ago. I've not, I've never talked about this before actually, because I just thought it would get me in too much shit, but I will at some point. Recursive red pill learning. So one of the problems with some areas of the manosphere is that a lot of the guys go to this type of content as a safe haven from having to interact with things in the real world. safe haven from having to interact with things in the real world. And Monk Mode, I've had super amounts of success with Monk Mode in my own life. I'm big into that.

But done to the extreme, it can end up, if all of your information comes from other people within your echo chamber, it skews your opinion of what's happening in the real world. And this recursive red pill learning thing was, the most egregious stories on the internet are the ones that get the most exposure because they're the most outlandish and crazy. Then that crazy, misrepresentative, unrepresentative story gets used as a signal of what actually happens in the real world by everybody else. Then that forms the base of their beliefs. And then

that gets re-spun up into the sort of things that they're looking for. And you get this recursive sort of self-learning AI fucking chat GPT from hell that is always looking for the most caricatured, most outlandish stories. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's a similar thing that I've written about. So I called it like the algorithmic conveyor belt that children are on, which is basically to say that every child is on their own conveyor belt on social media, depending on whatever, say, interest or insecurity or vulnerability they have. And whatever it is, they will get pushed to the extreme endpoint of that.

So, for example, if you're worried about your looks, you'll start with makeup tutorials, which will then gradually become cosmetic surgeries, which will then become Botox near you on TikTok ads. Same with things like gender identity. you might start questioning that and then you see videos saying, well, you know, being tired is a symptom of gender dysphoria or something. And then you see, which is a real TikTok, obviously. And then you see one which is like glamourizing the surgery when another child might be worrying about their mental health and then they go on the conveyor belt and end up taking medication for, you know for something that they don't actually have a diagnosis for. And the theory of it is, you know, like, so many things in Gen Z feel really extreme, like the way we talk about mental

health, the way we talk about sexuality, the way we talk about politics, everything feels very extreme. And I think that's because each child is getting pushed to the extreme of whatever they're interested in. And that explains you know some parents say oh you know my child's fine they're not looking at. You know gender identity stuff they'd never get into this mental health space and it's like no they're on their own path. Whatever it is the algorithm will learn more about them and the content will get more extreme to boost engagement. It's this balance between normalizing and glamorizing mental health issues I think you know because how old are you 24. Okay so. You must be the top end you must be the older end of Gen Z, right? The bridge, straddling

that and millennial. There was a period, I think probably about five years ago or so, was it, it's okay to talk? That was the mental health campaign in the UK, do you remember? I always had a problem with that mental health, something I'm so, I'm super passionate about because it was always a difficulty for me in my 20s. And I hated that it's okay to talk thing because I understood what it was trying to do was say, we must literally normalize the topic of mental health as something which is discussed by typical people from friends to friends. But I was like, it's not just like, and what? Like, and what after that? What else needs to be done?

I think we have moved way beyond normalizing the conversation about mental health. Now, there's certain subgroups. My dad, my dad, for instance, I imagine that him and his friends, you know, in the 60s, probably could do with a little bit more of a push and a poke to do that. I had the Men's Sheds Initiative in Australia, which was very good at this, men talking shoulder to shoulder, whereas women are talking face to face. But it's almost like the... It's like a badge of honour or a right of passage for certain subgroups, especially in Gen Z, to talk... Hot hot girls have IBS. Like your gut problems are something that you should be wearing front and centre, you know, like IBS hotty or whatever on TikTok probably exists.

You know, and this links in, I suppose, to something else that you've spoken about. And I had a huge conversation with Mary Harrington about, which is the danger of showing the entirety of your life on the internet. What's your perspective on that? Yeah. Well, I feel that especially with mental health issues, like the amount of, like you said, the amount of campaigns saying, we need to open up, we need to talk, need to share your problems, share them on social media media so there's influences who start hashtags like

There's this guy dr. Alex draw he was on love island and I remember dr. Alex. Yeah, so he started a campaign called Postal pill which is to encourage young fans to post their mental health medication and talk about it and He's kind of urging them, you know, please join in because you need to fight the stigma, you need to join part of the conversation. And firstly, I don't think we should be telling young people that it's their duty or it's kind of, you know, they should be part of fighting the stigma. That's noble for you to post about your pharmaceutical intervention that may have predatory been pushed on you by an

Instagram ad and a TikTok algorithm that showed that you didn't actually need the thing that you thought you needed. What a fucking idiot. God damn it. I mean, this is just chalk another one up for the retards of social media and Love Island in particular. Yeah. Well, I'm thinking surely, I don't know if he must have good intent. He must think that this... Wasn't he... He's the government's... What was he? What is he?

He's the like a mental health advisor or something. He's a fucking tit. That's what he is. Well, this campaign is just, to me, I find it so irresponsible because, you know, his fans are like probably pre-teens and teens. And if you go on the hashtag, they're all kind of listing out their mental health problems, sharing their pills. And I'm thinking also at that age, you just you don't know where you're going to be in say five, 10 years time, you might not want that out there. You

know, once you post something, especially on TikTok, it can stay there. I think there's a lot of young people now who think it's noble and it's brave to post them and to health problems. But what if you get over your social anxiety and in five years you want people to see you as confident but you made it your whole brand and you posted it all over TikTok? people to see you as confident, but you made it your whole brand and you posted it all over TikTok. Now, I just think that a lot of people will grow up and realize that maybe this is not the place to be sharing it and that these influencers were very irresponsible to be pushing this on young people and to be framing it as activism, like it's their duty. This desire of everybody on the internet to have a cause to fight for, to be some white knight, flaming sword, performative empathy, toxic compassion person is so perverse because

it's causing people to find issues where there are none so that they can be the paragon that's fighting the power, you know, that's speaking truth forward. I am here for you. People who don't feel like their SSRI medication is sufficiently public. Who's got that problem? Who's got that? I'm looking at like anti-depressant prescriptions. Like for example, I think it's one in three teenagers in the UK have been prescribed anti-depressants. And I'm pretty sure between something like between 2015 and 2021, the number of anti-depressant prescriptions for children aged four to 12 has increased by over 40%. So these are high. I bet it's more in the US as well. Yeah, yeah, way more. And so, and you've got like kids putting their mental health medication

and diagnosis in their Twitter bios. Young people putting them on their Tinder profiles, you can't say it's stigma anymore. That's the wrong context, especially for things like anxiety and depression, autism, ADHD. I'm sure there's areas a bit that are stigmatized, but the way they talk about it, the way these campaigns talk about it, it's as if it's 10 years ago. The context is completely different now Yeah, it's such a it's such an easy narrative It's very simple to understand right we need to normalize the conversation around this, you know, it's it's the same as If if somebody has one answer to every Question that's because the demand for answers outstrips their ability to supply them. So they just retrofit the one answer they have to everything.

All right. What about, what are the other things, what this trend of people documenting their lives on the internet, what other ridiculous things have people been documenting? Well, the most ridiculous. So I wrote recently like like ranted about this, but the thing that's really getting to me recently is like the intimate personal moments. So meaningful things that happen in your life, like once or twice, never again, people are spending that time filming them and recording them for social media. Like ordinary people, I'm not just talking about influences, I'm not just talking about influencers, I'm talking about this pressure to capture everything and share it. So I did like a

sub-stack post where I was like looking through some of these TikToks. Influences are the worst examples, so theirs are the most crazy, but there's like one where this woman has just given birth and her family come in to view the baby, all holding their phones, filming as they come in the door and then looking at the child through the screen, rather than at the actual child. And that's not the most dystopian thing. The most dystopian thing with the normal young people like quote tweeting this really dystopian video saying like there's nothing wrong with it. You know, they're just trying to remember the moment. And if you take yourself out and look at it, it's so dystopian. And it's just so weird that we come up with

justifications for something really surreal like that. And there's that, but did you see the video of Paris on New Year's Eve? Yes you see the video of Paris on music? Yes, where the biggest light show were people phone screens on the everyone, but people justifying that saying, you know, they want to remember the fireworks. And I just like memories don't exist without you've traveled all the way to Paris, you're about to see the countdown. I understand it's strange because things that are really impressive are the things you want to take Photos of because they're impressive but because they're impressive they're going to stick in your memory more So you don't actually need to take the photos. It's different if you're taking a selfie like that's hot that you don't see yourself

Yeah, you know, there's something special about that. I Don't know I that I really struggle with this. I had a, I encountered an issue that I realized about two years ago. I dissociated any sort of posting, any sort of photo taking as super cringe, because I thought classic influencer, Dick Head, here he is, you know, can't even go out for dinner without taking a photo of the food. But I realized that almost all of the photos I was taking weren't getting posted on social media.

They were for me. They were for me. I was sending them to my mum, or I was sending them to friends, or a zoom, whatever. I just wanted that. And it wasn't big shit. It was usually small things on the way the taxi the $30 10-minute taxi ride I got in Honduras

Back here. I took photo of the guys the driver's seat because he had this crazy. He fixed this seat obviously a little bit of a Developing country in some ways and I was like that's fucking cool I just wanted to remember, oh, God, you remember when you were in Honduras and that guy's seat was fixed with a tennis racket? Like, that's cool. But yeah, I, and especially if there's news cameras there, there's so much footage of the things that many people take photos of like that Paris thing. If you want to remember it, there's someone with an 8K telescopic zoom that you could probably use. Yeah, that's why that one makes no sense because there's millions of people all filming the same thing and like you said, there's professional people there. But I think

there's nothing wrong with documenting things and keeping them for you. It's the pressure to make a moment marketable for other people while you're in the moment. Like I was saying, really meaningful moments like say, pregnancy, finding out you're pregnant and telling your partner and filming it. I think there's something about getting the camera out or knowing the camera is there that cheapens that moment and takes your mind away from the moment because instead you're thinking how's this coming across, how am I looking on camera, how are people going to respond to this while you're in the moment. So it's more those things that I think are extremely dystopian because they're like people have the urge to do it when a moment is meaningful but that's when it's the most kind of

corrupt because you only get those meaningful moments a few times in your life and you're cheapening it. Well, we don't need the Apple Vision Pro for people to live their life via a screen if that's what they're already doing. It's just a shittier six inch version of it. But they're already coming in doing this was something else that I learned that she's so funny. You know how if you were to suggest to one of the waiters while you were on holiday, hi, would you mind taking a photo of us, please? Like that's the universal that universal take a photo of us, please. Yes. Yes. I only found that out recently that it's not it's like, would you take a photo of us, please. Especially. Yes, yes. I only found that out recently that it's not,

it's like, would you take a photo of us, please? Like this, pressing on the middle of your palm as opposed to the top of the finger. Dude, so crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, but it's so weird because like that, that woman who's given birth and the family looking at it through the screen,

it's like she could have just FaceTimed you and you'd had the same experience. There is a woman who's literally looking at the baby smiling, not looking up or not looking. I think there's something to be said for, like you said, remembering things through memories. I think there's something nostalgic about only having a memory of something. I think if you've just got tens of thousands of Instagram reels and Snapchat stories and whatever of moments, you're not first of all not going to have the time to look back at them all and feel that nostalgia and i think the things that will actually stand out are the things that you forgot to film because you were so in the moment, you weren't even thinking about the threshold for that is now being changed. The threshold for things that

are pulling you into the moment so much that you forget to film them is basically zero. Yeah. And people say, Oh, you know, the amount of kind of tweets and stuff you see people saying, Oh, I went to this and I forgot to film or I forgot to take a pic and they're the regret. And it's like, no, that's a good thing because you were living your life. And for a moment you forgot. The big difference I think is, are you doing it as a memory for you? Or are you doing it so that you can then post it on social media? Because even if it's your job, there are certain things that I think it's a good idea to keep off social media. And especially if it isn't your job, who's this for if you're posting it online?

What you're trying to do is get some fucking titrated dose of whatever Kim Kardashian did. Which one of the Kardashians was it that used the surrogate? And then the baby was born and immediately like handed it over to the... It's Khloe. I don't really know. I don't know them. I try hard not to know. You also said, I've seen a quote from you that says, what's totally absent from modern

mental health advice is trying to be a better person. What's that mean? Yeah, I've got some backlash for that. Well, what I was trying to say by that is, I think, you know, Gen Z especially, if bombarded with mental health advice that is always by a product or have this service or, you know, take a pill for whatever's wrong with you. And I'm not talking about, you know, severely mentally ill people, but for most of Gen Z who are anxious, stressed, having these normal adolescent feelings that are being ramped up by modern life,

you know, you don't necessarily need therapy, you don't necessarily need to take a pill. What you very often need is to look at your life and think about it, you know, the first thing to think about is whether you have real human connection in your life, whether you have a solid community. Then if you're eating right, if you're exercising right, then things like how you're treating people, how you're maintaining your relationships. But it's so absent from mental health advice because people are absolutely terrified now of telling young people, maybe this is not a mental health diagnosis, maybe this is something you have agency over. You just would never hear it. You would never hear it from a mental health

campaign, you'd never hear it from an influencer. They'd never say, take a look at your own life, have you done everything you can to feel good? And are you trying your best to be a good person? Yet there's no way they would get away with saying it. It's very strange, you know, coming from this Joe Rogan, David Goggins, Jocker Willink, Alex Hormoseosa universe of everyone saying, no one cares, just work harder, like stop complaining, just improve. Like that whole sort of worldview almost feels trite and obvious and kind of in some ways like old.

Oh, well, that's, there's nothing novel to be said with that. But I guess you're forgetting about the cohort of people for whom that is a radical assumption. Well, I think girls and young women don't hear that. I think there's a lot of, obviously, talk about young men not having role models. But I think in recent years, that has changed. There's Jordan Peterson, there's you, there's all kinds of podcasters who try to fill that gap and speak to young men and tell them, you know, to think about discipline and think about how they're treating people and, you know, if they're the best version of themselves.

But I think there is a massive gap for young women because people are absolutely terrified to say, you know, are you being a good person, especially to women, because they think it's, you know, regressing back to telling women what to do. But I think, you know, young women are craving that because deep down, because all we're hearing is everything you do is great, everything you do is empowering, everything, you know, if, if, if you like it, then it's good for your mental health, then go for it. You know, we're hearing that from mainstream feminism, we're hearing it from therapy culture. And we're hearing it from all of these kind of influences and celebrities who

are our role models, like Kim Kardashian or whoever it is. You know, where is the female Jordan Peterson saying, no, this behavior is not good. This is the kind of behavior that is going to be bad for your well-being and the people around you. We're just going to hear that. Who are the heroes, heroines? Who are the heroines of Gen Z? Like what are the girls? You know if you were talking about, I'm aware that you say there isn't an equivalent of the Jordan Peterson or the Andrew Tate or the Rogan or whatever. But who is the, who are the girls looking up to? Kardashians? What else?

Yeah, I think pop culture figures. So I think it would, if you were to ask them, it would be like singers and celebrity, it would be like Taylor Swift, it would be like actresses they see on TV. Zendaya Ariana Grande. Yeah. Yeah. So, people who aren't going to push a strong moral value system on young women, they're going to be very vague about everything for fear of offending and for fear of lecturing. And I think everyone talks about coddling Gen Z, but I think this is a big part of it, is that we're absolutely terrified to tell girls and young women what to do. But you have to tell

young people what to do, what to aim for, so that they can, you know, they're growing up now with absolutely no milestones for coming of age, no kind of guidance of where to go in the direction of their life. And I think it does a great, you know, disservice to young women to just pretend everything they do is fine. And I think, yeah, we are actually craving some of that discipline that men are craving as well. Yeah, I have a theory that over the next 10 years, the female mental health crisis will be the main story and the male body image crisis. I think that we're going to switch from crisis of femininity, crisis of masculinity to crisis of femininity and crisis of female body image to crisis of male body image. Now, girls are also maybe going to hold on to both of those titles, I'm not sure. But male body dysmorphia is on track to overtake female

body dysmorphia within about two decades. Really? But is that caused by, is that fitness? Kind of. A good chunk of it. So the male, the ideal male body has changed an awful lot. You know, perfect examples of this. If you look at action figures, if you look at Luke Skywalker from the 70s as a, you know, a kid's action figure, he's just normal dude. of PEDs. And yeah, like all of the representations physically of men are unbelievably jacked. That's not to say, I mean, look at what's happened with Barbie, like how many look at the waist to hip ratio of Barbie. If Barbie was in the real world, she'd basically have no internal organs, etc. etc. There's been a reckoning around that for women and there hasn't been for men. So it's always this flip-flop of, well, men have got, you

know, this thing is something that we need to be concerned about with them and that gets forgotten for the girls. And then the same thing happens for girls with what gets forgotten for men. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I think the, I think a lot of the mental health advice now is geared toward women. So it's like, you know, talk more about your problems, you know, view it in a very kind of female way. But I actually think that's gone so far that it's now harming women as well. You know, constantly saying to men, you should be opening up more about your problems. Would never ever dare to say to women, maybe you're opening up too much. That would be unacceptable.

There was this interesting quote that I found from Steve Stewart Williams, the guy that wrote The Apo understood the universe, one of my favorite books. And he said, the APU understood the universe, one of my favorite books. And he said, consider the claim that society encourages males to be aggressive. This is probably true in some ways. We do sometimes give boys the message that they ought to be tough and not cry.

Overall though, we spend a lot more time discouraging male aggression than female. Why? Because males are more aggressive. Or consider the claim that we tell girls to be quiet and passive. Again, we probably do this sometimes. More often though, we tell girls to be quiet and passive. Again, we probably do this sometimes more often though we tell boys to be quiet and passive. Why? For the same reason boys are louder and more disruptive. Yeah, that's true. Very interesting. I think it's

yeah but I think what's happening now is we try to, the more you try to do something that's going to help young women, like, I think everyone's trying to be very careful with their language and careful with how they approach these issues because they know that women don't really like that direct discipline, the same amount that boys and men do, they don't we don't respond to it quite the same. I think that is true. But now We don't respond to it quite the same. I think that is true, but now we've taken it to such an extreme

where we're terrified to tell women anything. You know, it's all about what makes us happy, what our desires are. So it's based on some truth, but it's just swung way too far. It's like this is coddling culture, basically. Yeah. Is it making girls more depressed or more bitchy, do you think?

Both at the same time. No, I think most of the narrative now is social media and therapy culture and all of these things are making girls anxious and making them depressed. But I think a lot of things in modern life are also making girls behave worse as well. So social media, for example, we know that girls in securities are a lucrative market that companies go after. But I also think companies know how to draw out female vices as well. So if you look at social media platforms, they're like perfectly set up for girls to be mean to each other, to engage in this kind of indirect

forms of aggression like reputation destruction, passive aggression, gossip. It's like perfect on social media. So if you want to socially exclude someone, you've got like the Snapchat snap map where you can have your live location and all with the friends are together and you can see that you're not with them. You know, you can create group chats where you cut people out. You can, if you wanna be passive aggressive,

you can like tweet about someone but not mention their name. So you're just like subtly digging them. And, you know, companies play on this, like Instagram lets you have a set of close friends where you can exclude other people. There's apps like NGL, which is like an anonymous messaging app. NGL. Not gonna lie. So it's like, you say something like, not going to lie. She's really ugly.

There was something called yak yak yak. Oh yeah. Is that a similar thing? Yeah. That was basically the same. So it was geo located anonymous posting. And this was for a couple of years in club promo, this was fucking fire because it meant that we could all talk shit about every other promoter from town and know that everyone in town that was using Yak Yak or whatever would see it, but that no one could say who it came from because by design it was anonymous. It was so funny.

Did you have some Ask FM? Was that when you... No, what was Ask FM? Oh, so that was like brutal. That was again, it's like anonymous messaging app where you can just... Like people would just use it to rate other people. So you'd be like, can you give this girl a rating on like looks personality? It was absolutely brutal. But yeah, companies are doing that because they know. Adolescence teenagers especially girls can be absolutely brutal to each other in that way. So they're playing on that as well. So I think it's not only how social media is making us feel,

but it's like who it's encouraging us to become as well. Do you think selfie editing is a powerful act of self-expression? Um, no. Yeah, so that was Facetune, wasn't it? So it's so weird how that has changed. I mean, I remember when I was younger, people used to kind of disguise the fact they were editing their photos. It was like a shameful thing. And now it's kind of spun to something to be proud of. It's like self-expression. It's just like putting on makeup. And the companies, I don't know what came first, but now the companies are jumping on that saying, you know, selfie editing is empowering and it's about self-love.

It's like about being proud of who you are and enhancing that. Like they use all kinds of language to spin it. I think it was Khloe Kardashian said like, face tune is life-changing. She also face tuned her newborn baby as well. She face tuned her newborn baby. Yeah, there's a picture of her holding her baby and the baby is like ridiculously airbrushed. Did someone pull her up on this? Yeah, I think people did say, you know, this is a step too far. But saying that it's a powerful female self expression and it's true self love to

that it's a powerful female self-expression and it's true self-love to... Yeah. What's happened? Talk me through what's happening with self-image, body image, girls' sort of perspectives and perceptions of how they should look physically, facially, all the rest of it. Well, it's interesting because we seem to be the generation that's been inundated with this kind of message of self-love and body positivity. It's everywhere. But we're the generation who seem to be struggling with it the most. So we've got record rates of cosmetic surgeries among Gen Z. So things

like lip fillers, liposuction, boob jobs, all going up for Gen Z. And the clients getting younger and younger. So you're getting teenagers who are, so Botox is banned in England. Teenagers are traveling to Wales to get Botox to prevent aging. So you've got these record rates of cosmetic surgery, record rates of body dysmorphia, eating disorders, facial dysmorphia, so things like young women going to plastic surgeons asking to look like the Snapchat filter version of themselves. Whereas before they'd come in with like a picture of a celebrity, now it's them with a filter. So despite being so loud about, you know, self-love and self-acceptance and having that kind of shove down our throats, the opposite seems to be happening. That's so interesting.

Yeah. And I mean, I would put that down to social media because, you know, I don't think older generations quite realise how often Gen Z, especially Gen Z women, are looking at their faces because of their phone and because of TikTok and Instagram. Oh, it's like having a mirror with you everywhere that you go. Yeah. And it's also, you're seeing a distorted version of yourself through filters and through your camera. So when you're looking in the mirror or someone takes a photo of you, it's very different to that camera image that you're so accustomed to. With the right angle that you know, with the right lighting that you know, with the filter that you like. So it's dysmorphia.

It's like, I don't know. But it's selfie dysmorphia. Yeah. It's not, it's, it's, so there's, there's a couple of things here. First off being other people on the internet portray themselves and make photos and videos of themselves in a way which is misrepresentative of the way that they actually look in the real world. And again, this recursive convey about thing that we both separately came up with causes you to spend to see people as their online version, not their real life version.

Then this is a very unique version of it, which is how you see yourself on the phone is actually different to how you are in the real world. So I imagine, I mean, there must be something like mirror dysmorphia or like phone dysmorphia, which is, wow, my phone, I look so great, but in the mirror, I don't like myself. Well, because you're making all of these edits. And it's, I mean, have you seen the TikTok filters now, like the beauty filters? No. They are so, so like when I was younger,

we would have like Snapchat filters, but they would kind of like lag. So they had like, there was one that was like puppy ears, but it kind of smoothed your skin and like chiseled your cheeks. So like all the 13 year old girls were using it. But if you moved, it would like lag. So it was obviously wearing a filter. But now like there's what the puppy ears weren't enough of a giveaway. Okay, well, well, what people would do is not the puppy ear one, but there'll be other ones like it'll be makeup or you have like butterflies or something and girls would try and crop out the filter bit. Right. I see. So then companies tried to introduce seamless ones. But now there's like young women trying on

these filters that give them like a perfect kind of avatar face, but it's very realistic. And if they go like this, nothing changes. So when I was younger, like the fake eyelashes would be like on your hand or something. Whereas now you can do that, you can move, you can, you know, speak normally. You can edit your body on Facetune so you can make your waist microscopic. You can change your, like, bum size, whatever. And this works for videos as well as photos, right? And then you can film yourself walking around with a different body and the background doesn't move or wobble or anything. And so not only are girls staring at their faces for hours a day, but they're staring

at a often distorted version of that. Then going to the mirror, then thinking they have a mental illness of body dysmorphia or whatever. And it's like anyone would have dysmorphia because you're not supposed to be staring at your face for this long, especially in a modified version. Have you been watching this season of Love Island that's happening right now? I have not. Right. What a shame for you. What a shame. So this is Love Island All Stars, which is bringing back there's at least two or three people from my season. Yeah.

And that's been interesting to observe. Remembering my season was eight years ago, eight or nine years ago now. You don't want to go back for the all stars? I mean, look, I mean, they were in a very big mood with me after I revealed all of the inner workings. The first podcast that went super viral, which people probably won't know, was maybe episode 15, I think. And I revealed all of the inner secrets of how the show's made and how the sort of, yeah, they were unhappy with me about that.

I've made up with a bunch of the producers, but yeah, no, I think I'm very much on it. And yeah, what a shame. But Hannah, who was this, a scouse girl, she purposefully went to get Bratz doll surgery. Right. Have you heard of this? No, but I can guess is it Bratz, Bratz face or Bratz body proportion?

Face, but also body to, uh, degree. There's a video, Josh, one of the kids, actually, another kid that was on my season. Wow, they really took a lot from season one. Maybe I was left out. I don't know. But she was walking away from him. They were just catching up or whatever, his friends. And she was walking away from him.

And he said, fucking hell, if you're a draston as well. And she went, yeah, I have. So there's very few bits. I mean, she was pretty enhanced the first time, but this broke the internet when, when the thing first came out, someone sent it to me. And I mean, Hannah was a Playboy girl, Scouse Playboy girl for the Americans listening. Scouse is kind of like New Jersey a little bit, I guess it's like sort of Jordy Shaw, Jersey Shaw type sort of fake tan and fake lashes and stuff. And she really took it to the extreme about this.

And yeah, the internet was lit up. So is that a BBL that she's had? She's had a BBL. Yeah. And I mean, she had a boob job fucking eight years ago when we were on the show. She had a pretty big set of scud missiles on her and now they're like nuclear warheads. It's I think when you get this, you just more fit well, when you start to get these procedures, it's almost like you get blind to how far you're taking it. how far you're taking it until she might look in the mirror and not see it as extreme. Almost certainly does.

Yeah, because it's been gradual process first. She's upgraded each feature one by one. Whereas you meet her in real life and it's like jarring. Well, that was the thing that people were comparing the photo from eight years ago to the photo now. But it's the question, when did you get old? Or when did get fat or when did you get whatever? Well, one day at a time. One procedure at a time, one lip filler appointment at a time. Yeah, it's true. And then social media, I think is a big part of that again, because it's the algorithm one step at a time. So firstly, you get an ad for lip fillers. And then it's like, oh, well, if you've had lip fillers, you might want to even out with a nose job.

And then if you get a nose job, you probably want to get, you know, and it just goes on and on until, you know, there's a lot of influencers now who are coming out and dissolving fillers or reversing surgery. And they all say the same thing, which is I just woke up and didn't recognise myself. And Molly May did a, look at this, like Love Island podcast. Molly May did a big thing with that, didn't she? She sort of debutifcated herself. Yeah, she looks way better. She looks way younger. But she said the same thing. She just said,

I have no idea who that person was. Like, she's like, I look at that filler version, and I don't recognize her. Because it happened gradually. What do you think about this trend of fitness chicks, or just Instagram goals, uploading? See, I've got roles and stretch marks too. What do you make of that? and stretch marks too. What do you make of that? Yeah. Um, well, I've seen a couple of those and they're always like unflattering, but flattering. So it was like the most flattering version of an unflattering photo you could get, which I think is kind of worse than just posting a load of flattering stuff because

it's like, Oh, here's my vulnerabilities, but I'm also still using good lighting and it's, it's not that like repulsive. It's the bodily humble brag. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, I don't know, I still see that as kind of inauthentic sometimes and actually worse in a way because you're pretending it's your ultimate. The goal is laudable, right? Which is, look, I am not perfect all the time. This is a photo of me posing and this is a photo of me not posing. James Smith, my business partner on Newtonic and Darren Cartel made a very big mess of Instagram for like, they were like mercenary assassins going around and finding these girls that were doing it and then doing a parody of it themselves with them in like a girl's crop top sort of posing going, crying on the fact that they've got, they've got roles and stuff. But then on the other side, how are you supposed to fight back against insane body standard imagery? If you don't do that, if you don't try and do that, well, this is me in real life. This is what happens if I've had too much gluten, or this is me around that time of the month,

or this is me when I'm not posing and I'm not lit and I don't have makeup on. Well, I think it's like the mental health thing. So I think a lot of people share their mental health problems online because they think, oh, you know, social media is a highlight reel and everyone's pretending to be perfect. So I'm going to show my vulnerability. A lot of influencers do that. They'll be like, oh, here's a selfie of me crying, you know, I'm normal, don't worry. But it's like, I don't think the answer to the endless posting of perfection is then to start revealing your most vulnerable personal moment, especially if you're a normal young girl. I think the answer is to post less

in general and to consume less of this stuff. Because I think a lot of young people now are kind of being convinced that they need to share their vulnerability so that their whole self is on social media and it's kind of balanced. But I don't think that you know if you're a preteen or a teenager I just would not be putting my deepest vulnerabilities online. Now you know when you don't know yourself you don't know how you're gonna feel in the future and it's a similar thing. What do Gen Z girls think about guys? Well, there's a big gap between Gen Z girls and Gen Z guys. I don't know, did you see that financial times? Yeah, so the Gen Z girls and Gen Z guys, world view and values definitely seem to be diverging.

Of course. What do you lay that at the feet of? A couple of things. So most of the divide in most of the countries is girls and young women shifting to the left. So guys seem to be either staying the same or becoming slightly more conservative on things like gender roles or I think race and immigration as well. But it's young women who are like, blurting rapidly, to becoming more progressive. And so I think to explain that, to explain like the rise

of liberal women, I think a big part of it is education. So universities leaning left, but young women way more likely to go to university than men. This is an age group that's for a lot of them below the age of going to university. Right. True. So, well, yeah, I think this most such surveys are looking at Gen Z men and women. I think if you were to include Gen Z girls and boys, it would also be things like social media. So for example, if you're looking at progressive, something progressive on social media, some social justice post or something,

again, the algorithm will serve you the more extreme version of that. And you can end up going from kind of like a normal liberal position to the extreme left very quickly. And obviously, the same is true of right wing content. But it's liberal teen girls who are spending five or more hours a day on social media. So it seems to be, what I think is happening is girls are kind of naturally drawn to something like the social justice movement because it's very much about compassion, it's very much about lived experiences and I think young women are higher in empathy, more conformist. So we're drawn to that and then those natural tendencies are then picked up by the algorithm. And then you're spending hours a day on social media, getting that confirmed and getting it more extreme. And guys are getting a different experience. And then as they grow older, going

to university, getting a different experience, guys are more likely to study STEM subjects rather than humanities, which are much less left leaning. So it just seems to be that we're having such different experiences and it's getting to the point where our world views are completely different. And we're not even like inhabiting the same reality anymore. Yeah I've got Daniel Cox who was the dude that did the research. I've got him coming on he's was a bit of a digital ghost. I had to go through a bunch of people to get in touch with him. But I can't wait for that episode. I think that's gonna be so good.

So that's exciting. Gonna bring him on, have a conversation, really dig into the mechanisms of it. I'd be interested to try and find somebody else that can dig into the mechanisms more. Cause obviously he knows the demographics and he's made some inferences and that's articles. Fantastic. But yeah, there's a bit more. I want to understand why is this happening more than just what's happening. Okay, so Gen Z girls about guys,

what do they think about relationships and dating and the importance of that? relationships and dating and the importance of that. Well, I think a big thing now that I've noticed is being, is Gen Z women being risk averse around guys and around dating. So for example, if you go on like TikTok dating advice, it's very kind of cynical, it's very negative, it's like, you know, if a guy approaches you, he's a predator. Or if he kind of compliments you a lot and gives you loads of gifts, he's love bombing you, he's an abuser. The words like narcissism and red flags getting thrown around. And it's honestly everywhere. Like I saw a tweet recently that went viral that was like, oh, if you meet someone and you have intense chemistry, that's a major red flag. Like you should leave because it's like a trauma signal that reminds you of your caregiver who mistreated you or whatever. And

it's got like thousands of likes. And it's that kind of language is so common among young women talking about dating, which like I get, I think there are legitimate reasons to be risk averse. So I think, you know, obviously, it's much harder to date now with in after the sexual revolution with less kind of guardrails of custom and chivalry. And I do think there's reasons women are risk averse to being kind of disposed of and not having a meaningful relationship follow from meeting someone. Also think we've got very high rates of divorced parents which plays into that risk aversion. Also, I think

social media teaches you to be risk averse and avoid discomfort. But what is the reason for the risk aversion? Is it just not wanting to ever get hurt? How much of this is just an avoidance of any discomfort? Yeah. So basically, all of these things are creating this absolute terror of getting hurt. So I think a lot of the therapy speak and the kind of feminist language is cloaking this deep fear of vulnerability. I think Genzi grew up with this kind of message that anything with risk is a threat to be avoided, whether that's through social media, whether that's family structure, whether it was the childhoods we had. Our childhoods were very much like

avoid risk, prioritise health and safety and regulations, simulating it all online rather than actually engaging in risk-taking behaviour. I think that plays out all the time in Gen Z's life, but a big, you know, part of that is relationships because they come with a high level of risk. And I don't think some Gen Z people can kind of, it's almost like we've been convinced that's not a part of life, that you can actually get away with a life that avoids risk and uncomfortable emotions. But you can't. And so it's actually really tragic because it puts us on a path to miss out on really meaningful things. So I think a lot of the kind of child-free TikTok stuff that everyone makes fun of and the, you know, less desire among Gen Z to have children can be explained by this fear of discomfort and risk aversion. You know, there's like a deep terror of things going wrong, which, you know, you go on like child free TikTok as well. It's all about discomfort and it's all about-

What is that for the people that don't know? So people who've made the decision not to have children will post on like a dink, which is like double income, no kids. So they'll post like their luxury lifestyles that they can afford. And then they'll post their kind of child-free days and what they get up to and everything. But there's also among that, there's a lot of young women, especially talking about kind of the risks

and discomfort that comes with having children and trying to warn other young women and girls not to have children. So for example, there's a girl who does a free birth control series on TikTok where she basically lists like every possible risk that could go wrong with pregnancy or children. Was that the girl with the list? That's another one. What's this one? So this is just a girl, she does like a helpful birth control series to remind you why you shouldn't have children. And she would just put clips of like children screaming and throwing up and destroying stuff.

And this is like a cultural intervention type. A lifestyle warning. Yeah. But I think she doesn't have kids. So she's right. Yeah. And then I think the first person to do that was this woman who created the list, which is like a crowdsource list of reasons not to have children. I think there's 350 reasons

Not to have not to have kids and there was a page and a half But she printed them out so it's you know like nine pages ten pages or something every reason's not to and I think that the reasons to amounted to a page of a for. But the reasons not to have kids was can't wear cute heels anymore. Will miss brunch with the girls, literal parasite living inside of your body. Yeah. Plus every kind of risk or health scare that could possibly go wrong is listed on it. So everything from starting with losing sleep and having a stomach ache or a headache to the absolute worst case scenario risk that could happen. And you kind of read it and you're like, God, this is like the most meaningful thing a human can do. It's

the fundamental human instinct, not to say that everyone should have children, but when you see, you know, so many young people convinced that life should be fun and easy all the time, and that anything that comes with this level of risk is not worth it, I think that's a symptom of like something extremely sinister, which is, which is, you know, Genzia suffering from because they're on a path to miss out on the most meaningful things because of it out of fear. What's the prioritization of immediate emotional comfort over long-term flourishing? It's the avoidance of risk, but also change because change is associated with risk. Yeah.

There is a kind of individualized solipsism about, I think, the most popular reasons for why people aren't in relationships or why they're not dating, it's working on myself right now, just don't feel ready, don't have enough time, having too much fun on my own. The same thing for why people don't want to have kids. It's this sort of imposition on their life. That's what they're primarily concerned about, because if I do this thing, things are going to change, and if the things change, where was it here? This was interesting. Where was it here? This was interesting. When asked what it takes to lead a fulfilling life, the public prioritizes job satisfaction

and friendship over marriage and parenthood. 71% of all adults say having a job or career they enjoy is extremely or very important for people to live a fulfilling life. And 61% say having close friends is equally important. Only about one in four adults say having children or 23 or 23% being married, is extremely or very important in order to live a fulfilling life. A third, say each of these is somewhat important, and 42% and 44% say having children or being married

is not to or not at all important. Having a lot of money is viewed as extremely or very important for a fulfilling life. Women place a little more importance on job, career, enjoyment than men do. 74% versus 69%. The same time men place somewhat more importance on marriage and having children. 28% of men compared with 18% of women say being married is extremely or very important for a fulfilling life. Similarly, 29% of men versus 22% of women say the same about having children.

And that was pure research that literally came out three months ago. Interesting take online was having a great job is zero sum. Only one person can be the best salesperson. But hypothetically, everyone can have a happy marriage and family. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think again, that's the... I would put that down to the lack of, you know, role models again for young women who are, who are showing that different lifestyle of, you know, family and children. You know, if you look at the top kind of pop culture stars that Gen Z women are looking up to and loving, they're all living a similar lifestyle because they're in that world where their ultimate goal is money and fame and all of these values that are incompatible

with children, they make children get in the way of that. They're not seeing role models whose ultimate values are family or legacy or anything like that. So it is just not being translated to them. I wonder what will happen if Taylor Swift gets pregnant. Like I fucking hesitate to use Taylor Swift as the linchpin for female culture. But she has captured culture in a way that I don't think really anybody else has. And something tells me that Travis Kelsey, he's a bearded beer drink. I mean, he's also sponsored by Pfizer and maybe paid for by George Soros. But he is a pretty like old school, sweary guy.

Him and his brother behave in that kind of a manner. Something tells me that he probably intends on having a family at some point. And if you've got the greatest or one of the greatest NFL players ever, their genes, plus perhaps one of the greatest female pop stars, it's like, make some kids. Come on. But if that, if that happens, do you remember when Adele lost weight and all of the body positivity people were like, you betrayed us and blah, blah, blah. I wonder how many people will say, you betrayed us and blah, blah, blah. I wonder how many people will say, you know, they're all happy for the fact that Taylor Swift's in a relationship. But she is still able to do the dink role model thing.

But if she decides to start having a family, I wonder how much of that would change. And then look at it the other way. I mean, Alex Cooper should have been called to account so fucking hard. She should have got dragged so fucking hard on the internet for extolling the virtues of casual sex and no-friars attached and sleep with them and don't catch feels. And here's how to the glug glug 4000 or whatever this

like good blowjob episode that was episode number three of a podcast or something else, like extolling the virtues of casual sex. And then for the final three years of the podcast, secretly having a relationship with a guy that she was totally besotted and in love with. And then to kind of like, like Bruce Wayne saying that he's Batman go, Wayne saying that he's Batman. Go, I'm engaged and the engagement was so cute. And there was a rose garden and he got down on one knee and he'd asked my dad and he'd done all this other stuff. And it goes, yo, how big is the wake of broken girls that allowed themselves to be used by guys

Yeah, over the last half decade, because of you as the the second biggest, whatever, one of the biggest female podcasts on the planet. How many girls did you basically sell a lie to about the lifestyle that you thought was good when what you were doing was the opposite? And then you knew it, you knew that this was the case. Yeah, I think again it's that fear, you know, the fear of telling girls what to do but also the fear of promoting a traditional lifestyle in any way, you know, that I think there's like a terror of thinking that you're regressive if you start saying, oh, you know, actually enjoy my marriage. I'm actually glad I got married young or, you know, I'm going to give up some of this, you know, I'm going gonna put fame to the side to have children or things like that. I think a lot of probably older women feel that but don't translate it to younger women because they don't want to lecture them.

You know, whereas, you know, we need some people in culture who are, who are pointing, you know, not saying all young women need to have children or get married, but saying, you know, actually the most fulfilling things are things that you don't buy and you don't, you know, need to have sold to you. They're things like a meaningful relationship and children which are separate from the market and they provide this kind of sustainable meaning. You know, no one's saying that because it's not sexy and it's not like attention grabbing. Well, how many women as well that would be the role models for this talking point just don't exist in the same communication ecosystem as the audience that would benefit from it most? as the audience that would benefit from it most. Yeah, and also the people with the platform are usually influencers who are,

whose ultimate values are the fame, money, and possessions. You've selected for a very particular type of person that was chasing the fame, and the fame is what got them the platform on which they can talk about the virtues of chasing fame. Yeah, so probably the best role models for women are not on social media and are not famous.

They're having a quiet coffee with their friends on a Tuesday afternoon. Yeah. Yeah. And then you get this like, like, Tradwife movement or whatever, where you get the, the other extreme end, but it's still, it's still a performance. They're still like filming it for TikTok. So it's like either way, we're still getting like a shallow version. Do you know who Sam Sulek is? No, who's that? It's like, so unsurprising that you,

a girl on the internet doesn't, when every guy on the internet pretty much does. He is a 22 year old, 23 year old bodybuilder, I guess. 22 year old, 23 year old bodybuilder, I guess. And his whole thing is completely raw authenticity. His entire YouTube channel, there's no crafting of thumbnails, there's no crafting of titles. And all he does is film his training sessions and he gets in a car and he's just the least polished person that you're going to meet.

He's a little bit socially awkward. He's jacked out of his mind. So he's huge. So there's a lot of aspiration in his normality. But there's a trend at the moment, at least on the guy's side, I think, of moving away from the hyperpolished, very edited, very curated messaging. I think people are falling in love with people that, yeah, I get that.

Like I understand, I drive a Toyota fucking Aventus. I, you know, sometimes getting uncomfortable when people come up to me in the gym, those sorts of things. And he's just showing what's going on. And I wonder when there will be a female equivalent, because he's had phenomenal success that seems to be, I mean, he's playing five-dimensional chess, if that's actually a role,

and he's conned everybody. But yeah, I think there could be gap in the market for an influential female to come in and do something similar. Yeah, I think the problem is with that is I think some people try, they try to be very authentic online and then like I said, they end up performing but in a different way. So they end up performing like, you know, like you see videos on TikTok like influencers saying, oh, you know, this is me kind of crying on my bedroom floor because everything's going wrong and it's like. Yeah and it's also you've set up the camera in order to cry in order to capture this. Like influencers saying oh you know i caught my panic attack on camera and you watch it like yeah this is.

Performance again so i think there's a very narrow line to actually be authentic. And again, we just seem to be swinging right past it. Just still be performing all the time. How is, or why is it the case that sex and dating and down if hookup culture is so prominent? Yeah, this is interesting. I think it seems to be that when people are having sex, it's more often casual sex. But in general, Gen Z are having less sex compared to previous generations at the same age. But if you talk to young people about their sexual experiences, they'll usually typically be like a hookup or something like that. But I think a lot of what Gen Z are in now is like situationships. So they're

in like this gray area where they seem to be hooking up and there's no commitment, there's no relationship out of it. So the people who are having sex don't seem to be in committed relationships like previous generations were. They're in this weird stage where you're not exclusive but you're having sex. I think that is a big cause of anxiety and relationship problems. There doesn't seem to be boundaries anymore with that. Why is that the case? What is the underlying driver that's encouraging both sex positivity and risk aversion at the same time? I don't understand what the current is.

Well it seems to be this paradox in so many areas of young women's life so like you said this. The risk of version of sex positivity then there's also the you know self love body positivity and body dysmorphia and eating disorders and there's also like you know i'm a feminist. the eating disorders. And there's also like, you know, I'm a feminist, empowered women who doesn't care, but also I have crippling anxiety and depression. And there seems to be so many like paradoxes going on. And I think it's because a lot of the narratives are like a front for how we're actually feeling like a defense mechanism. So there's a lot of people talking about sex positivity and how casual sex is empowering. But there's also a lot of people talking about sex positivity and how casual sex is empowering. But there's also a lot of people saying they're stuck in situations, they can't get a guide to commit. They don't want to commit. They're having all kinds of doubts and thinking of

all kinds of red flags of reasons not to commit. So I think the louder we get about sex positivity, the louder we get about anything really in modern life, it seems to be that deep down, the opposite is true. There's real pain, there's real confusion. But yeah, it seems to be a way of dealing with it. There's definitely, the paradoxes I think exist because people are performing this performative empathy, toxic compassion thing, causes where you want to thread the needle to intersect two Venn diagrams sometimes, right? Like, I don't want to kink shame and women can have sex the same as men do. And also, like, I, you should be afraid of all of the things that exist on the internet and all of the things that can happen in real life

And here's red flags because he's come up to you in the gym Like that sometimes that that needle gets threaded between the two because people aren't actually doing the sense-making for themselves They're outsourcing it to people on the internet and this person over here the guy shouldn't approach girls in the gym person Also that there's one cohort. okay, I believe that thing. Even if I don't believe that thing, I think that thing or I've seen that thing. And then you've got the other side, which is the don't kink shame me. You can sleep with them and not catch feels. I listen to Alex Cooper and, you know, those things come together.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's true. And I think it's one of those things where people, it's like they've not thought through the consequences of it. So that there'll be, for example, there's like, a lot of feminists who push kind of commodifying yourself and selling yourself online as fun and like risk-free and empowering. But then if they saw like a 13 year old copying that behavior, they would be absolutely horrified. So they know

that when they're saying it's fun and risk-free and there's nothing wrong with it. They know that there is something about it that you shouldn't be sharing with young girls without warnings of the risks and the dangers, but they continue to do it and sell it that way. So I think a lot of the time what people are pushing and celebrating, they know there's dark sides to it or they know there's dangers, but they keep pushing and celebrating it to kind of justify that and it's like a defence mechanism. Talk to me about the glamourising of divorce. Yeah, so I first started writing about that when I saw, so Adele got divorced and it was like a big... Oh, did she? In my world, she don't you just got married?

No, she got, she was married very young, she got divorced. And she made it kind of like her personal brand. So like, I'm pretty sure she was selling like divorced merchandise at her concerts. What does that consist of? She had pretty sure she was selling like divorce to merchandise at her concerts. What does that consist of? I think it was necklaces saying divorced. I'm pretty sure. And her catchphrase was like divorce babe or something.

And to be fair to her, like a lot of fans were pushing it as well. Like it was her divorce album. So they were like loving it. And I'd noticed as well, mainstream magazines and publications also glamourizing divorce. So the New York Times called it a radical act of self-love. And Vogue was saying this Valentine's Day, let's celebrate divorce. And yeah, the Guardian was talking about the joy of divorce parties. They spoke about it recently as well. Joy of divorce parties.

Yeah, so to celebrate your divorce with your loved ones. So I'd seen all of this stuff in culture that was not just kind of saying, you know, don't shame people for getting divorced. It was saying like, that celebrated. And I think it's the same thing again, it's like a defence mechanism because we all know intuitively and through the data that divorce is devastating for children and families by almost every metric. And yet, to kind of deal with that, again, we're getting louder and louder about the joys of divorce and how it's self-love and it's empowering. And I think the only way to explain that is it's like a topic that's so close to home, that's so difficult to confront, that the only way to handle it

is to wrap it up in this language and pretend that we're all celebrating it. But I've seen that so much. And it's also interesting that it's never mentioned as like a factor in Gen Z's mental health. Family breakdown is just, if you look at the academic essays, if you look at mainstream media commentators trying to figure it out, it's never divorce. It's never, you know, maybe this, there could be a part to play that, you know, one in three Gen Z see their parents split by the time they're 16 in the UK. That's never mentioned. It's always, again, the climate crisis or the housing ladder or whatever it is. How much of a big role do you think or how instrumental are broken families and single parent households? How much of Gen Z's problems are downstream from that?

Well, I would say a lot of Gen Z struggle because of that, because we know from research that having divorced parents means that you're more likely to suffer from anxiety, from depression, from eating disorders, self-harm. Girls especially seem to have these internalising behaviours when they go through trauma, like family breakdown. So they'll very often get very anxious and withdraw inwards and punish themselves through things like eating disorders or self-harm, which we're seeing like on mass now. So it's not to say that I think like family breakdown causes all of Gen Z's mental health problems, but I think everything Gen Z is struggling with is made worse by family breakdown. So for example, if you're like, I think social media is terrible for young girls, but I would say it's probably worse if you don't have a family to ground

you and you're putting more of your self-worth into these platforms and you're depending on strangers online for that emotional validation that you're not getting from both parents. Same with things like, I'm sure there are some Gen Z who are terrified of climate change, but I'm pretty sure if you don't have a stable family around you and like, you know, a place to develop that resilience and those healthier coping strategies, then you're going to be even more afraid of climate change. So the way I see it is just that family breakdown will be exacerbating all of these problems and not giving girls and boys that kind of grounding to be more resilient to these things. Do you think that progressives make worse parents?

I think that the parenting style is popular among progressives, so this new like gentle parenting style, which is very much listening to your child, like validating their emotions and their explanations for things instead of punishment. So having the compassion and the love that parenting need but without the kind of strictness. I think that is worse for parenting. And I think there's a lot of research showing that conservatives are actually much better at disciplining children and actually have better relationships with their children as a result. It's that thing again of like girls and young women and men, but girls and young women as well need this discipline with the compassion, but society as a whole and some families seem to be just prioritizing the compassion and the instant gratification,

you know, what looks most loving in the moment, but is not long term. There was a really interesting book, Life of Dad by Anna Machin, and she came out of Robin Dunbar's lab in Oxford, evolutionary anthropologist, and like ardently pro women. But when she had her first kid, her husband really suffered, his mental health suffered. It was a difficult pregnancy, a difficult birth, difficult pregnancy. And his wife and newborn child got wheeled out of the room with ventilators and things attached and all the rest of it. And he was just left there. And she started researching the challenges that fathers face, the fact that all of the attention is on mum, but that dads don't even get prepared with this cascade of hormones that they still have.

And obviously, the woman's body is the one that goes through it, and the hormones, and the stress, and the health, and all the rest of it, the morning signal, yeah, obviously. But it's this inability of the modern world to hold two slightly nuanced thoughts in your mind. They're not contradictory. They don't conflict with each other. It's inability of the modern world to hold two slightly nuanced thoughts in your mind. They're not contradictory. They don't conflict with each other. It's like, hey, having a child can be stressful on both participants, even the one that doesn't have the child inside of their body. That's the level of nuance that we need to get to.

But it's such a zero sum mentality. And again, this hyper individualism, this focus on the discomfort of the person means that it's very hard to be able to get someone to see that and she was great the episode it was super interesting and. Yeah, I wonder there was some really cool stuff about how. There was some really cool stuff about how we often hear about the negative outcomes for males when they grow up in a fatherless household, because the kind of externalizing behavior that men do when they grow up is, you know, they burn down car, they burn to set cars on fire and do antisocial behavior or getting involved in gang culture or find surrogate fathers that aren't good for them or whatever. But it's not good for girls either. It's very, very important.

There's some really worrying socio-sexual adjustments that girls who grow up without a father have that they seem to chase male validation in a different kind of way. It's particularly formative during their teenagers to have a father around. I can't remember why that was, but just so many things. And again, the main reason is, well, if you say this, you are implicitly derogating the hardworking single mothers that are trying to build a family on their own. And we need to be inclusive,

especially to the people who are the ones that are suffering the most in life, which means that this conversation and the insights of it are publicly less in vogue? Yeah, I think it's this concept of stigma, which obviously comes from somewhere, that like there's truth in it, that there are issues that have stigma attached, but I think there's a fixation with stigma, particularly on the progressive left

that seems to just stop us from being able to have honest conversations about things. So family breakdown is a good example of it. Like it's all about the stigma against single mothers so you can't talk about fathers leaving or it's the stigma of divorced parents. So you can't talk about all the data showing that that's not good for children. And I feel like, again, with the mental health staff especially, this word stigma seems to just block off honest discussions about these issues. And it seems to be a way to shut people down and stop them from going any further, where it's like sometimes, you know, this conversation is more important than this idea of societal stigma. You know, it's very important that we talk about the effects of divorce on children. And I think, yeah, constantly bringing that up stops that and makes

people afraid to talk about it. There was this idea I learned that I think explains this, it's called a semantic stop sign. One way that people end discussions is by disguising descriptions as explanations. For instance, the word evil is used to explain behavior, but really only describes it. It resolves the question, not by creating understanding, but by killing curiosity. Yeah. A semantic stop sign. I think that stigma- Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It stops.

It's a semantic stop sign. It stops any kind of further analysis. You know, like, okay, we can't go any further because it's now stigmatizing. Which I think, you know, for so many issues, this idea of stigma stops us from actually getting to the root of the mental health crisis. What's the role of mainstream feminism here then? Like, how does that fold into, like, what's happening? What are they supposed to be? What are they spending their time doing? I feel like the feminism I grew up seeing, and I've not read all the feminist literature,

but I can just go off of what I have grown up with and what I associate it with. What I associate mainstream feminism with is very much selling me things. It's almost like a marketing strategy because it feels like whenever I hear about feminism or empowerment, it's like some kind of product or service or procedure that's being sold to me or it's a lifestyle that's very much materialistic and consumerist in some way. So that's like my interpretation of feminism now because that's what I'm seeing. So I feel like it's been co-opted by corporations. And this version that Gen Z are growing up with, the thing that feminism kind of tells you to value, again, is money, is working for a corporation. It's kind of all of these values that are very, very convenient for companies and industries. That's definitely what I associate it with, unfortunately. Well, that's how powerful the patriarchy is. We've convinced women that not only do they need

to be the homemaker, but also that they can go to work and be the breadwinner while we get to stay at home and play Xbox? Yes, it's worked out well for you. It's worked out incredibly well. What are you working on next? What's coming up? Well, I've just written an article actually about what we were talking about about stopping opening up about mental health online. So that's yeah, kind of saying, you know, we need to stop swinging too far to the extreme. We need to stop, you know, telling young people it's their duty to open up and trying to backtrack on some

of this. So I think my focus at the moment is mental health culture and the industry that's developing around it because I think, like I said, I think there's a genuine mental health crisis, but I think a lot of it is the way young people are being taught to think about their mental health and to talk about it has just gone way too far in the wrong direction. Do you follow C-Root Chavla on Instagram? She's fucking fantastic. She was on the show. She'd had three hours sleep because she'd gone down some Netflix rabbit hole the night before but she's so she's so great and she's very sort of unapologetic. She's a tough love. She's a good female role model. That's what we need. She's a tough love kind. She's like the psychotherapist, female psychotherapist, David Goggins.

Very anti-coddle culture, very anti-victim hood. Yeah, that's cool. Look, Freya, I'm really, really impressed with you. I think that your work's fantastic. I think that the next few years has got huge things in store. You're part of the based British women squad with Louise Per... It's me that came up with it. But then Mary is in it, Louise is in it. I think kind of Helen Lewis is in it a little bit, Nina Powers in it. The problem that we found was that based British women shortens as an acronym to BBW, which is a type of porn.

So we need to come up with a new name. I thought like IDW, based British women, based British women's cool, but BBW is maybe a little, we might be fighting up, fighting uphill with that. Where should people go? They want to keep, keep up to date with all of this stuff? So mostly my sub-stack. So that's freyaindia.co.uk. It's called Girls. So I'm publishing most of my articles on there. And also Twitter is Freyaindia A, but I have no other social media because it's terrible. Well played Freya. I really appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you.