GIRLS®

How girls got to be this way.

Although adolescence is famously not an easy time, modern adolescence, specifically girlhood, is fraught with increased, unique peril. India, who was born in 1999 and writes the Substack newsletter GIRLS, recalls that when she and her friends “were ten or eleven, social media apps arrived, and everything got worse.” The typical anxieties of growing up were now magnified through new technologies demanding ever more of girls’ time and energy: editing selfies to perfection on Facetune to then post on Instagram, sending Snapchats to keep “Streaks” intact, and swiping through parades of profiles on dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble. The explosion of TikTok in 2020, coinciding with the Covid-19 pandemic, had a particularly profound impact, especially as creators churn out ample content contributing to “the marketization and medicalization of normal negative emotions.” Rather than seek advice from relatives or community leaders, young girls turn to influencers’ vlogs and, increasingly, AI chatbots for companionship; across platforms, they are relentlessly targeted by advertising. In the wake of all of these advancements, girls’ mental health and overall life satisfaction has been impaired: “We have better technologies, but we have nowhere to belong.” India emphasizes real community and connection as well as “faith in something more” as antidotes to the challenges plaguing girls today. In a conversational writing style and with a focus on the U.K. and U.S., India raises some valid concerns but paints too often in broad strokes. She writes about rising divorce rates, the risks of gender-affirming care, and the downsides of women’s “empowerment” while providing strangely little context about the political, economic, and historical context surrounding these complex matters. This book may be a starting place for young women seeking guidance and their concerned adults, yet its slanted analysis should be met with a dose of healthy skepticism and would do well to be supplemented with broader context.

An exploration of the ills of modern girlhood that will likely appeal to more conservative readers.