Being Damaged Is Not A Personality Trait - Freya India

Freya India is a writer and journalist focussed on female mental health and modern culture. Are modern women okay? With rising statistics on declining happiness, life satisfaction, and marriage rates, it’s clear that the younger generation is facing serious challenges. What are the biggest issues modern women are dealing with, and how can they start to overcome them? Expect to learn why so many girls are drawn to therapy culture, if girls raised in religious families seem to be doing better than liberal secular girls, why so many people are addicted to social media, how social media is reshaping the fundamental nature of relationships, is Gen Z actually living in an imaginary world, and much more… - 00:00 Why Are So Many Girls Drawn To Therapy Culture? 03:54 Is Therapy Culture Worse For Women? 08:00 Religious Stats On The Younger Generation 11:58 Is Therapy Culture Less Pro Social? 18:53 Problems Of Excessive Self Focus 24:10 Do We Let Our Characteristic Traits Define Us? 36:43 Does Therapy Culture Convince Us We Have A Disorder? 40:27 Why People Are So Addicted To Social Media 46:47 Boyfriends Of Instagram Trend 52:38 Is Social Media Used To Fill A Void? 1:00:51 The Dependency Paradox 1:05:59 The Affect Childhood Has On Our Adult Life 1:10:26 Has Feminism Influenced A Change In Parenting? 1:18:54 Traits That Are Now Regarded As Boss Girl Power 1:22:38 Today's Generational Divide 1:27:16 Where To Find Freya - Get the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get a 20% discount on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

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

• 0:04Freya India?

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

• 0:07Freya India?

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

• 0:15Freya India?

  And that's not a new thing to say, people have been saying that for a long time. So Christopher Lash was writing about that in the seventies. Frank Ferrudi writes about it really well now. But in recent years, since social media, I would say, therapy culture has just escalated to the point where I think young women don't see it as a worldview, they just see that as kind of life. So they interpret everything through this therapeutic lens. So their lives, their relationships, their emotions. And I think it has elevated to the level of religion.

• 0:51Freya India?

  So you think of, you think of all the kind of characteristics of religion, we just mimic them with therapy culture. So instead of praying, we just repeat our like positive affirmations. Instead of like seeking salvation, you'll go on like a healing journey.

• 1:07Freya India?

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

• 1:16Freya India?

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

• 1:24Chris Williamson?

  What does a therapeutic worldview consist of? What, what does that mean?

• 1:29Freya India?

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

• 1:59Chris Williamson?

  And for some reason, this is giving some kind of solace or comfort.

• 2:06Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 2:08Chris Williamson?

  Order being brought out of chaos.

• 2:10Freya India?

  I think it gives the comfort religion gives and the consolation of like, you see young women on TikTok saying things like,

• 2:19Freya India?

  like, they won't pray to God, but they'll give a request to the universe and like have faith in that.

• 2:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 2:24Freya India?

  And so I think it gives all the comfort of religion, but it takes away the inconvenient parts. So the, any actual demands on you or kind of restrictions on your freedom or anything like that.

• 2:36Chris Williamson?

  Being held to standards of behaviour, et cetera.

• 2:38Freya India?

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

• 2:51Chris Williamson?

  Slippery religion.

• 2:52Freya India?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:53Chris Williamson?

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

• 2:56Freya India?

  A lot. There was a study recently showing thirty two percent of all twelve to seventeen year olds in America have either had therapy, been on medication or had some kind of treatment in twenty twenty three.

• 3:10Chris Williamson?

  In over a single year, one third.

• 3:12Freya India?

  Which is insane. And I was talking to someone about that statistic and they were like, oh, that's great. That's amazing. And I was thinking, that's a bleak statistic. So, yeah, I think there's the girls that are in therapy, which is a lot. But then there's also the girls who are just like living in therapy culture. So it's just, they scroll through Instagram and it's all about attachment styles, trauma. They go on TikTok and it's like a trauma-informed therapist telling them like red flags they should watch out for and stuff. It's just like, there's the actual therapy, which I'm sure there is. There's useful therapists, but there's also just this culture, which is just the world that they're swimming in.

• 3:54Chris Williamson?

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

• 3:58Chris Williamson?

  Alain de Botton was sat in that same seat as you. Big proponent of psychotherapy, I think trained as a psychotherapist himself too, owns a school of life, which isn't just a YouTube channel, but a psychotherapy facility here in London.

• 4:10Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 4:11Chris Williamson?

  And even he, like the biggest proponent of it, I think would very much say that there is a time for therapizing.

• 4:20Freya India?

  Yes.

• 4:20Chris Williamson?

  And then there is a time to not, in the same way as going to the gym, there is a time to train and then there is a time to recover. And I wonder whether.

• 4:28Chris Williamson?

  One of the criticisms that's common that I put to him was lots of people online, more old school people, more sort of typical stiff upper lip type people. Would say, you're not fixing your past's problems, you're dwelling on them. And by dwelling on them, you are ruminating too much. There is some evidence, I mean, a good bit of evidence, rumination's not particularly fantastic for you. And finding this line between, yeah, mate, we don't want to deny that bad things happen and never alchemize them or transcend and include them into our life.

• 5:00Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Chris Williamson?

  And then on the other side, we don't want to wallow in them. But I suppose if you have the online environment that you exist within, permanently using this language, you're permanently having these structures and these thinking patterns reinforced. And then it's how you begin to talk to yourself about what happens offline.

• 5:19Freya India?

  Yes.

• 5:19Chris Williamson?

  And then you also have, you know, facilitation or medication or conversations with your friends. Further embracing all of that, it's you're just entrenched in this all the time.

• 5:30Freya India?

  Yeah, well, I used to think, and I think a lot of people think therapy culture is particularly bad for men because it, it kind of has a female approach to problems and it's about, you know, ruminating. And often it's like, if you don't have a female response, there's something wrong with you. It's kind of a red flag if you don't go to therapy. But I actually changed my mind on that and I actually think therapy culture is worse for women because women ruminate more. They co-ruminate more.

• 5:55Chris Williamson?

  Playing into the weakness that they already have or the disposition.

• 5:58Freya India?

  Yeah, if you think of an anxious young fourteen year old girl, the worst thing you can tell her is to go further into her own head to get relief and to think more about her problems and to kind of search her life for symptoms, you know, that. If you told me that at fourteen, it's the worst thing I could have heard. So I actually think maybe some men do need to do that a little bit more, but the average young girl needs to kind of cut out.

• 6:23Chris Williamson?

  I wonder whether. Therapy language and therapy culture for girls is what gym language, gym culture.

• 6:31Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 6:32Chris Williamson?

  Psalms, testosterone, steroids at seventeen is for guys.

• 6:38Freya India?

  Yeah, I think it's a form of control. So it's like, it's our version of control. You know, if we feel uncomfortable or feel an uneasy emotion, we're just like, I'm gonna categorize that and diagnose it. You know, that's my attachment disorder or that's my depression. And I think men do that kind, they have their own kind of self optimization trends and the gym stuff where that can become like a form of control and to deal with kind of uneasy emotions. And I think, yeah, this is the woman's version of that. It's like, we can't sit with it or just accept like a painful situation. So I often think about,

• 7:19Freya India?

  so if you look at these kind of attachment style forums or girls talking about their attachment styles, very often they'll describe just a bad relationship and then they'll say, oh, it's my attachment disorder. So they'll be like, he cheated on me and I can't get over it because of my anxious attachment. And it's like, it's so sad because actually losing the language to talk about the actual problem that they're facing because they're trying to get control. Because it's a lot easier to be like, oh, you know, I'm anxious or he's avoidant. Then we have a terrible relationship and I've just wasted four years with someone. You get the control through the therapy culture. And so that's where I see it becoming a danger to girls and young women.

• 8:01Chris Williamson?

  What's that stat that you mentioned there about girls from religious families seeming to do differently well and now eighteen to twenty five year old girls are religious at different levels and stuff?

• 8:11Freya India?

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

• 8:17Chris Williamson?

  Typically, women would have been more.

• 8:19Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 8:21Freya India?

  But among Gen Z, it's men that are going to church way more than women now. And Jonathan Haidt did some research on this, showing that he like presented, he looked at a survey of statements and they were things like, I have no hope in myself, I don't believe, like really self disparaging statements. And he found that teenagers without religion agreed with them way stronger than teenagers who were religious and especially who were conservative.

• 8:51Freya India?

  And I think there's a couple of reasons for that. I think one is kind of that external locus of control. So conservatives tend to have more of an internal locus of control. So they feel more control over things happening in their lives. Also, if you're a conservative teenager, you're more likely to be living with both parents, which I think protects your mental health. And also, your parents are more likely to have clearer boundaries with you,

• 9:19Freya India?

  which I think is actually very useful for anxiety and depression. So there's different explanations for it. But yeah, it's a worry because young women are becoming less religious and their mental health is also tanking. So there has to be some link there.

• 9:41Chris Williamson?

  And maybe therapy culture, therapy language is stepping into the void.

• 9:45Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 9:45Chris Williamson?

  And also stopping them from perhaps going back to finding religion.

• 9:50Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 9:50Chris Williamson?

  Hesitant to say that therapy culture is getting in the way of religion. Like, religion is necessarily the answer to this, but that it's whatever better alternatives could be, including religion.

• 10:05Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 10:05Chris Williamson?

  Are being precluded by this much sexier, newer, more comforting answer to everything that makes no demands on you.

• 10:14Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 10:14Chris Williamson?

  As a person that doesn't require you to follow any edicts or refrain from any types of behaviours.

• 10:20Freya India?

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

• 10:30Freya India?

  Dying to yourself, like giving up some of yourself um to be part of something bigger. Therapy culture is all about going more and more into yourself, discovering yourself and like finding your authentic self. It's the complete opposite. So something like Christianity, I think most young women just view it as really restrictive and limiting. And something like therapy culture or just liberal culture in general tells them that any limit or constraint is a problem.

• 10:57Chris Williamson?

  What like?

• 10:58Freya India?

  Well, just this sense in culture now that any obligation is like an obstacle to your life or your mental health. I think I think that's just endemic from everywhere we look um and it's yeah, very much the opposite of what religion tells us, which is that through sacrifice, you find kind of actual fulfillment.

• 11:21Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 11:21Freya India?

  And you kind of break free from yourself. Now we're kind of told whether it's through feminism or therapy culture, whatever girls are scrolling through on TikTok or Instagram, it's like, you know, think like you think of therapy culture on TikTok, it will say something like, don't be a people pleaser, don't be needy. Um but these things are kind of the opposite of what Christianity is telling you, which is like you should be someone who puts your needs second. It's good to be someone who gives for other people, who depends on people and they depend on you. Um that's not the message girls are growing up with.

• 11:58Chris Williamson?

  Therapy culture less pro-social?

• 12:01Freya India?

  Yes, I think so. Well, again, you're just going inwards. Um and yeah, also, I often think of, again, it's a similarity between therapy culture for women and kind of self-optimization stuff for men, because it's like for men, if you go too far that way, other people become obstacles to your like ambition and your self-development. Um so people become like distractions and annoyances. It's the same with therapy culture, because then for a young woman who's really into therapy culture, a man is just like an obstacle to her healing and her mental health. Um so I think if you go too far in it, you can just interpret anyone or anything as a threat to your peace.

• 12:44Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 12:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's very interesting, which is, you know, the best kind of relationships are the ones that make both people in them better.

• 12:52Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 12:53Chris Williamson?

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

• 13:03Freya India?

  Yes, but I don't think that's really getting across to young women. I think, yeah, that I think what the problem is, is you go on something like TikTok and you have like a trauma enthroned therapist who might be interesting and informative, but she's now competing in a attention economy. So she has to create a video which is engaging and extreme. So she has to say five red flags you should avoid in men. And they're, they're things that are just so vague and.

• 13:36Chris Williamson?

  What like?

• 13:37Freya India?

  Things like, well, I literally saw one that said gifts and trips is a red flag because it's love bombing.

• 13:44Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 13:45Freya India?

  Um, but other things like they'll say, you know, you're in a bad relationship if he makes you feel insecure, for example, by making a comment about your looks. But it's, it's so vague that it's like, well, anyone's boyfriend could be included in that somehow. Um, but if you add them all together, if you're scrolling through this all day, every day, which a lot of girls are, the message is basically like anyone can be toxic and anyone can be a red flag.

• 14:14Chris Williamson?

  Unsafe.

• 14:15Freya India?

  Yeah. And you're, unfortunately, girls do co-ruminate together and it's really bad for their mental health. So.

• 14:23Chris Williamson?

  Co-ruminate.

• 14:24Freya India?

  Yeah. So dwelling on their problems with friends. Um, which if you think of something like a Reddit forum, that is just a rumination machine. It's just like, it's there for everybody to analyze together.

• 14:38Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 14:38Freya India?

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

• 14:46Freya India?

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

• 14:52Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 14:53Freya India?

  Um.

• 14:53Chris Williamson?

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

• 14:59Freya India?

  Yeah. And the most risk averse, neurotic, anxious women on there will get the most traction because they'll be saying.

• 15:06Chris Williamson?

  And everybody else is following along from them.

• 15:08Freya India?

  Yeah. So. If you spend too much time on there, you will think that like a well adjusted woman doesn't need anyone, doesn't have any distraction in her life and feels good all the time, that no one ever threatens her or makes her feel anxious. And that's just like a lonely life.

• 15:26Chris Williamson?

  And any perturbation from feeling the opposite of that is not because of her. It's because of some insult that's occurred in one form or another from the world or from structures or from a partner or from a friend or from.

• 15:41Freya India?

  But the problem with that is you shut down any constructive criticism of you. Like if your boyfriend has a constructive comment about you, if you are being selfish or something. Therapy culture does provide endless excuses to kind of twist that into.

• 15:57Chris Williamson?

  You don't need to hear this.

• 15:58Freya India?

  Yeah, he's a toxic person. You're only like that because of your childhood trauma. He's just like an asshole, but you have like all of these reasons why you behave that way.

• 16:09Chris Williamson?

  Have you contrasted this? I don't know whether you've been able to look at it with what young guys see. Is there an equivalent for young guys?

• 16:15Freya India?

  I think the only equivalent I could think of is the productivity stuff. So I don't know if you saw that tweet recently of the guy, he's like, uh, this morning routine saved me. And so he does his morning routine, which is like super productive. It's like everything. It's the red light therapy and the journaling and everything. But it's kind of eerie when you watch it because it's like, this is not a lifestyle you could have with anyone else around. It's so to the absolute like minute.

• 16:45Freya India?

  And you think like this is kind of a similar thing with therapy culture. It's like we're trying to have this perfect control over our lives and like get perfect control before you commit to anybody.

• 17:00Freya India?

  And then you think of things like young people not wanting to get married and have children. And it's like, well, yeah, because there'll be a huge obstacle if we think that we have to have this perfect control over our mental health or our productivity routine. Anyone else is going to seem like chaos coming into that. And so I think young men and women can both can both go to an extreme of those.

• 17:22Freya India?

  But it's kind of the same thing. It's like an avoidance strategy. It's like I have full control in this situation and I'm not vulnerable.

• 17:29Chris Williamson?

  Have you read any Oliver Berkman?

• 17:31Freya India?

  Yes, I love Oliver Berkman.

• 17:32Chris Williamson?

  He's phenomenal. Did you get his new one, Meditations for Mortals? Okay, it came out a couple of months ago. One of the best things that I got exposed to this year. Just talks about a lot of this, you know, it's very self-deprecating, very British, some might say.

• 17:45Freya India?

  Yeah, no, I relate to him painfully because.

• 17:51Chris Williamson?

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

• 17:59Freya India?

  Yeah, and I think I have that tendency to see people as distraction because I'm trying to work. So I'm often like, you know, I need to write in perfect silence. I need to have my perfect routine. And, and yeah, I read a quote, I think it was C.S. Lewis saying something like, eventually you realize that all of these distractions from your life were just your life. Like, they weren't distractions at all. And I think it's really sad to kind of teach young people or just like drill into their heads that they should avoid anyone getting in the way of their self-development and their ambition or their healing because that's life getting in the way.

• 18:40Freya India?

  And yeah, it's sad to see people kind of half-heartedly do relationships or kind of

• 18:47Freya India?

  put them off in pursuit of that ultimate control. I think that's a really, that will backfire eventually.

• 18:54Chris Williamson?

  What are the problems of excessive self-focus?

• 18:59Freya India?

  Well, I think that, I think it's Jordan Peterson says, there's no difference between like self-obsession and mental illness in the sense that it's all focusing too much on yourself. Not to say that it's in your control all the time necessarily, but that is what it is. It's focusing too much on your own problems.

• 19:20Freya India?

  And I think, yeah, as I said, girls are particularly vulnerable to it. And I think what it does is it blocks real self-development because you can't see.

• 19:33Freya India?

  Where you're going wrong because you have these endless excuses of for why you're behaving the way you are. Um. So I think a lot of girls think they're doing self-development and self-reflection, but it's actually accidentally like self-obsession because they're they're thinking, oh, you know, I'm analyzing my attachment style and I'm thinking about my trauma and I'm like doing the work. But there's not much actual self-development going on.

• 19:58Chris Williamson?

  Work being done.

• 19:59Freya India?

  Yeah. And I think it it can kind of be a trap where you think I'm working on myself as a person. Um. And the same with the self-optimization stuff. Like, I think you can get so obsessed with stuff like maybe the ice baths and the breath work that you're not thinking about trying to be a better person. Like, it just becomes.

• 20:19Chris Williamson?

  There's a couple of traps uh for that. Alex Homosy taught me a really, really good lesson as I started to do like little bits of investing and stuff like that. So sometimes a company will say, hey, we we're this interesting company in a world that you maybe know or like, would you like to put some money in and maybe come on as an advisor or whatever it might be. And I was talking to him and he said, how many of these calls are you taking? So I don't know, you know, maybe had two last week or something. He says that the most dangerous calls that you have because they all feel like work. They all feel like business and almost none of them result in anything. And it's kind of like that upfront, it feels like you're doing a thing, which is more dangerous than not doing anything at all, because it acts as a placeholder. It takes up the parking space.

• 21:04Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 21:05Chris Williamson?

  Of what could be work.

• 21:08Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 21:08Chris Williamson?

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

• 21:13Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 21:13Chris Williamson?

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

• 21:34Freya India?

  It's kind of like the highlighter girls who.

• 21:37Chris Williamson?

  What's that?

• 21:37Freya India?

  Like girls who have like the perfect highlighters and gel pens for their exam, but they get like a D because they're obsessing over having the perfect setup.

• 21:45Chris Williamson?

  The system, not the outcome.

• 21:46Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 21:46Chris Williamson?

  Yes. Yeah, that is interesting. Um, I suppose.

• 21:53Chris Williamson?

  This self pity thing gets wrapped up as empowerment in a way.

• 21:59Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 22:00Chris Williamson?

  And that causes girls to suffer.

• 22:03Freya India?

  Yeah, and it's funny because there's a lot of emphasis on like, um, like, women walking away from disrespect and not tolerating any bad behaviour. Um, but there's also kind of this self pitying stuff going on. So it's like, real empowerment would be very often, I'm, yeah, I'm not tolerating this, I'm walking away. But you kind of, you look online now and there's a lot of young women who just ruminate over a problem. So like I was saying before, they might be in a bad relationship and they'll be analysing both of their attachment styles and thinking about how it's toxic and talking to other girls about it, rather than just leaving.

• 22:43Freya India?

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

• 22:50Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 22:52Freya India?

  And they think all the mental health stuff is actually empowering them. But I often see it like taking, again, taking the language away from actual problems. And rather than everybody opening up, it's actually like closing down their ability to see what's going on and act upon it.

• 23:09Chris Williamson?

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• 23:50Chris Williamson?

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• 24:14Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 24:15Chris Williamson?

  The, the, the mode is not the end itself.

• 24:17Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 24:18Chris Williamson?

  And it's the same with the morning routine thing. You know, I. Hold my hands up. I would, I, if not for a slightly different life and a different algorithm, that could have been me, the guy that went, that trended on Twitter. I've said this a couple of times, but I had an absurdly long, very elaborate routine for about probably four years, three or four years. And my retrospective justification for it is that I had done so little in the way of self-reflection.

• 24:46Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 24:46Chris Williamson?

  That I had, you know, from eighteen to thirty or whatever, I had over a decade of catching up to do. And it could have, I could have spaced it out like a normal sane human, and it might have taken some time, or I could have done Navy SEAL Hell Week version, uh, very intensely. And, uh, get up on a morning and go for a walk and get back and journal and do breathwork and meditate and do Yin yoga and then prep my food and, and read, and then start my day. And I'm like, how fucking opulent and luxurious and ridiculous and inaccessible, all of these things, I understand. Uh, but I had a lot of low hanging fruit that I needed to get and then

• 25:26Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 25:26Chris Williamson?

  higher hanging fruit too. Uh, but one thing that I am happy about is that I never confused the mode of improvement for the reason for the improvement.

• 25:38Freya India?

  Yes.

• 25:39Chris Williamson?

  And very quickly looked at ways to apply that. All right, okay. I, um, seem to be able to deal with emotional perturbments a bit better now after a few thousand sessions of meditation. Ha, maybe I should use that and start pushing myself into different places emotionally. Uh, wow, I've learned some stuff about how human nature works or resilience or whatever. Let's see if I can find some situations that I can stress test that and see if it actually works for me. Or I've got new mobility because I've been doing Yin yoga for fucking forever. Uh, maybe I can start doing CrossFit, which I did, or a different training modality, something else.

• 26:19Chris Williamson?

  Not confusing instrumental goods for the ends themselves, I think is very important. And it takes the placeholder, the therapy culture takes the placeholder of something that could be functional work and very viciously encourages you to not actually go out and even try that. There is no such thing as a stress test of this. Anytime it gets, it's unfalsifiable. Anytime it gets stressed, it's a, an admission that the very philosophy itself was correct. And that you should have never encountered this thing in the first place.

• 26:51Freya India?

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

• 26:56Chris Williamson?

  I think so.

• 26:57Freya India?

  That has to come to an end.

• 26:58Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 26:58Freya India?

  Which is what therapy should be as well, is like a set period. And but the problem is now, therapy culture stuff is so tied up with identity stuff. So you get kind of young girls who start reading about social anxiety and they relate to it because they're fourteen and shy.

• 27:16Chris Williamson?

  And everybody is, yeah.

• 27:18Freya India?

  And they go on again, these forums and these communities where everyone's saying, um, I have social anxiety disorder. And because of that, I can't get public transport or because of that, I can't do this. And then they start thinking, well, I feel it, it's really painful for me. So why would I put myself in those situations? I'm just not built for those situations. Um, and so that's the problem with it is there's no end to it because you can just go on there and then it becomes part of who you are. And again, as you said, the second you go out and you feel intense anxiety as you do as a fourteen year old in like any situation. Then you'll think, oh yeah, this is confirmation that I have social anxiety disorder and shouldn't be here.

• 27:59Freya India?

  Um, so yeah, I always just think of these things as like me at thirteen and the worst things you could say to me. And social anxiety disorder is one of them. It's like, I kind of needed people to kind of laugh it off and just say, well, you have to go anyway. That, that's what I needed. Like if someone came to me and said, well, some people call it a disorder and they take medication for it. And some people need that, I'd be like, well, I need that.

• 28:24Chris Williamson?

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

• 28:34Freya India?

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

• 28:55Chris Williamson?

  That personality.

• 28:55Freya India?

  Yeah, that becomes a diagnosis. So like before we'd be like, talk about some guy and be like, he's always late. It's just something about him. You know, it's kind of lovable and annoying, but it's his personality. And now it's like, oh, because of his ADHD, he's always late.

• 29:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's so funny. That's really interesting to hear, to hear the language. I mean, even even we do it. We do it around here. You know, there'll be, for instance,

• 29:26Chris Williamson?

  does this can have it on? Yes, it does. Can you punch in on this dude? Can you punch in? All right. So I'm not sure how tight that lens can get. If you look very, very, very carefully here, there's a follow us. This I'm for the people listening, I'm pointing to the back of a can of Neutonic. We've produced maybe a million of these, this particular version of the can in America. Follow us. There's the three social icons and then there's neutonic.com at the bottom. If you look really, really carefully just here, you'll see that the Instagram icon is probably one mil to one and a half mil to the left of the follow us and the left of the neutonic.com thing. And this little world is maybe two mil in from the us on after the

• 30:10Chris Williamson?

  follow. I noticed that because I noticed things. I'm sent a photo and immediately, immediately after sending that photo, I'm said the tism strikes again. Never been diagnosed with autism. Don't think I've got it. Hold eye contact with most people perfectly well. Even within that, there's something and it's.

• 30:30Chris Williamson?

  Self-deprecating, it's mockery, it's whatever. But even in that, it belies this, like, somebody made the joke about Elon Musk's Department of Governmental Efficiency was less Avengers assemble and more Asperges assemble.

• 30:45Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Chris Williamson?

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

• 30:52Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Chris Williamson?

  About this sort of stuff. It's, it's my, like, you know.

• 30:57Freya India?

  I, I mean, I am writing this book at the moment, and one of the chapters is about these kind of TikToks that girls are looking at about autism. And I literally went down a rabbit hole, like, I'm autistic, I'm fully autistic.

• 31:10Freya India?

  Well, like, all of the symptoms, they're all about shy, nerdy girls. And I'm like, oh, okay, this has been me my whole life, just kind of awkward and doesn't fit in and reads a lot and everything. And, and I'm like, oh, God, reading this, if you're just like slightly different from the mainstream, popular, extroverted girl, you're going to be autistic. And, and it, but it's such, it's like, it's funny, but it's also like, oh, my God, there's like, I can't say a serious point because you're laughing.

• 31:41Chris Williamson?

  Why is autism, it's like, it's, it just always makes me laugh. I think it's kind of charming. It's definitely autism holds like a very unique in the mental pathology library that we can all take. It's the one that I think is sort of easiest to throw. I see, maybe it's because the autistic people like aren't registering it, but it's the, the lowest amount of offence seems to be taken by people misdiagnosing that in some way. And maybe that's because autism, in many ways, is a disadvantage for people, but also bestows some of what some people would consider as advantages too.

• 32:16Freya India?

  Yeah, and I, autistic people I've met do kind of openly joke about it, I feel. Whereas I feel like OCD is more offensive to say, oh, that was me being OCD. I feel like that's become a bit more.

• 32:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's my suicidal ideation.

• 32:29Freya India?

  Yeah. Um. But yeah, no, it's funny, but it's also like, you think of like a thirteen year old girl who really convinces herself she has autism. And actually, she's just quite unique and quirky. Um. That can be like a lifelong sentence of thinking you're different from other people because you're unwell. Um.

• 32:50Chris Williamson?

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

• 32:57Freya India?

  Yes.

• 32:58Chris Williamson?

  Because it's such a.

• 33:03Chris Williamson?

  It's such a defining characteristic of how you relate to other people, the most important things that you do.

• 33:08Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 33:08Chris Williamson?

  And to be able to write off every time that it comes in, ah, that's my avoidant attachment again. Ah, that's triggered.

• 33:16Freya India?

  To kind of ignore your gut instinct, like, I feel like you can be in a bad relationship and you have a feeling about someone. Um. And now you interpret that as my anxiety coming up. That's like my attachment disorder triggering. Rather than, oh, they've just said something or revealed something about themselves that I should be, I'm actually tuning into.

• 33:37Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 33:37Freya India?

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

• 33:43Chris Williamson?

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

• 33:57Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 33:57Chris Williamson?

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

• 34:05Freya India?

  Yes.

• 34:06Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's a part of me. It is me.

• 34:08Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 34:08Chris Williamson?

  It defines me as a person.

• 34:10Freya India?

  Yeah, I I hate this phrase, like, I'm anxiously attached, rather than like, I'm feeling anxiety at the moment. Um. And and also you see on like, on the internet, like anxious attachment quizzes and like T shirts and like, it's become a a thing to identify with. Yeah, and it's also a community, like an online community of people who will, again, co-ruminate over it. Um, but I think it's actually more dangerous than we think if you take it too far because you, again, you just become blind to what's actually happening in your life.

• 34:44Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 34:44Freya India?

  And you're kind of living by a theory.

• 34:47Chris Williamson?

  And also blind to how you can be complicit in causing these things to happen.

• 34:53Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 34:53Chris Williamson?

  Uh, how you could have self authorship over stopping these things from happening.

• 34:57Freya India?

  Yes. Yeah. Well, if someone's behaving badly and all you're doing is like repeating your positive affirmations in the mirror. It's not gonna help you. Like, at some point, you need to have the kind of confidence to stand up to people and you're not gonna have that if, if your like core belief is that you're an anxious, damaged person.

• 35:18Chris Williamson?

  Seventy-three percent of boomer males said, no matter what psychological challenges I face, I will not let them define me. Seventy-two percent of Gen Z females say mental illness is an important part of my identity.

• 35:31Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 35:31Chris Williamson?

  Bit of an arc.

• 35:33Freya India?

  I mean, that's just tragic. Um, but I think, again, I can't really blame young girls for that. I just think it's everywhere now and as Konstantin says, like, if the incentives are there, it's just gonna happen. And there are incentives now to do that. Um, it's almost like now, you know, we were saying before, like, if you're English and you talk about something good happening in your life, um, people kind of judge you and think you're weird. It's kind of become, like, if you go around saying, I actually have really good mental health and I deal with things really well and I don't get anxious. People look at you like, um, that's kind of a wrong thing to say. Like, I think if you were a girl saying that in school, people would

• 36:19Freya India?

  not relate to you as much.

• 36:20Chris Williamson?

  So you're just in denial.

• 36:21Freya India?

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

• 36:26Chris Williamson?

  Good for you.

• 36:27Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 36:27Chris Williamson?

  As opposed to, well done. Yeah, yeah. Those of us that have, you know, grew up with parents that caused us to have anxious attachment.

• 36:34Freya India?

  Try be autistic or something.

• 36:37Chris Williamson?

  That's actually a solution. I think that more people should be autistic and that would fix a lot of problems that we're facing. Uh, yeah, I'd, I'd mentioned to you before, Lewis Capaldi.

• 36:45Freya India?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:46Chris Williamson?

  Um, there's a great documentary on Netflix called How I'm Feeling Now.

• 36:49Freya India?

  Hmm.

• 36:49Chris Williamson?

  Highly recommend you watch it. I think it's super pertinent to what you're doing. It'd be great for the book too.

• 36:55Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 36:55Chris Williamson?

  So you have this guy who, lots and lots of success, and the success causes him to. Develop a, he must have had a genetic predisposition for Tourette's. I don't know what, Tourette's can't catch it, I don't think. So he must have had this predisposition in the pressure that he puts on himself and that's coming from outside too. And the story he tells himself and the rumination causes his mental health to decline to the point where he's got this sort of tic.

• 37:20Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 37:21Chris Williamson?

  And his shoulders sort of, he's always doing this. It's like, the whole body is contorting. And I think maybe it's two years in a row now, at least one year at Glastonbury. He was, he stopped singing. He came out on stage, began singing and then partway through the song was unable to continue. Had to get the audience to help. And that happened at a show at the O2, I think.

• 37:44Chris Williamson?

  Which is in the documentary. And then they tried to bring this documentary into land at the end of twenty two or twenty three or whatever. It's like, and he took six weeks off and started doing yoga and stopped eating McDonald's and look at him now. It's like, and then the updates since then are sad that a guy under an awful lot of pressure. The beautiful voice with really, really wonderful stories to tell that make people feel things. Feeling so much and being unable to handle it to the point where the very art form that he was built to do, he's unable to do on stage.

• 38:22Freya India?

  So has he like backed away from singing as a result?

• 38:25Chris Williamson?

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

• 38:36Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Chris Williamson?

  I mean, maybe he had a bug or whatever, but it seems unlikely. It seems like it was probably the same challenge that he's been dealing with since the documentary. And um, yeah, that kind of got me thinking about

• 38:50Chris Williamson?

  the mental health thing affecting everybody all the way up.

• 38:53Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 38:53Chris Williamson?

  You know, there's not really any hiding from it. And the way that he goes about it, you know, he's very self-deprecating. But he does not, he's relieved when he gets a diagnosis in the documentary. You know, he finally, they say, turns out I've got Tourette's.

• 39:09Freya India?

  Uh, yeah.

• 39:09Chris Williamson?

  That kind of makes sense. And that thing I was having, um, where my heart rate went really high and I kept on breathing. It's like that. Apparently that's called a panic attack. It's like, huh, that's a person finding a diagnosis, not identifying with a diagnosis.

• 39:22Freya India?

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

• 39:32Freya India?

  mimicking tics, tics from Tourette's TikTok. And whether that's

• 39:37Chris Williamson?

  Tik, TikTok.

• 39:39Freya India?

  Yeah, I think there is actually a TikTok hashtag. But yeah, they're, they're picking up Tourette's and you know, whether that's conscious or not. Some of them at least are kind of jumping on that identity.

• 39:53Freya India?

  And then you hear someone like Lewis Capaldi's story and it's like, the pain of that is actually stopping him doing what he loves.

• 40:02Freya India?

  But that conversation is kind of being swallowed up by the conversation of like, young girls identifying with Tourette's.

• 40:10Chris Williamson?

  Like, people are fucking larping with this on face to camera videos.

• 40:13Freya India?

  Yeah, again, it actually takes away the language to talk about people who are actually suffering.

• 40:20Freya India?

  Because it's just become so big now that everyone's autistic, everyone's got Tourette's.

• 40:24Chris Williamson?

  I cannot.

• 40:24Freya India?

  Yeah, every time.

• 40:25Chris Williamson?

  I cannot laugh at it. Uh, is there a new story about why people are so addicted to social media? Is there any more that you've come to think about?

• 40:35Freya India?

  Yeah, well, I, when I started writing, I was writing about addiction to social media and trends and stuff and kind of wondering why that was happening. And then I've been trying to kind of trace it back to think. What is the actual need that's not being met here? So one of them, I was looking at all this attachment style stuff and like the dating gurus, how popular like, relationship advice is on TikTok and stuff.

• 41:04Freya India?

  And I was thinking, is this because young people don't have adults giving them guidance about relationships? So now they go and watch an influencer who's an attachment expert. Because parents and families aren't getting as involved in giving advice about relationships.

• 41:22Freya India?

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

• 41:31Freya India?

  So you see it with like, relationship stuff on TikTok and also the desperate search for obviously, community and belonging to something is coming from a real pain of not having any community in real life. Like, I had loads of people, when I started writing about social media, loads of people would say to me, oh, but. You know, young people need social media because it's like a lifeline, like they have their online communities and stuff. And I'm like, that is not a benefit of social media, like that's just an absolute indictment of where we are in modern life. Like, why is there a community, a Reddit forum? And so we can talk about social media addiction, but I think you have to kind of strip it back to what why young people are so obsessed with it and what is missing in their actual life.

• 42:16Chris Williamson?

  What is everyone searching for or missing?

• 42:18Freya India?

  Yeah, because when you meet people who aren't on social media or don't have like ridiculously high screen times, and they usually have a lot of their needs met in the real world, which just sounds like an obvious thing to say, but it's true. And I think the more you find yourself in a fulfilling relationship or you're happy with your job, you don't feel as much as of a pull to scroll endlessly through TikTok all day. And so the fact that young people are spending like six hours a day on their phones is is not just because social media is addictive, it's because there's nothing more addictive in their life or like a reason to stop scrolling through it.

• 42:57Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 42:58Freya India?

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

• 43:10Chris Williamson?

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

• 43:16Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 43:16Chris Williamson?

  The what else, what else is there that's as fun to do?

• 43:21Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 43:21Chris Williamson?

  That's that offers everybody the same. Yeah, I mean, you know, I left my old life of nightlife three years ago ish and um that kind of felt a little bit like exiting Bitcoin a hundred K or something and being like, well, that was kind of selling at the top because there's some crazy stat about how by twenty thirty six, there'll be no nightclubs left in the UK. None. Yeah. So the I think it's one of one a day or one a week or something is closing at the moment.

• 43:56Freya India?

  Wow.

• 43:56Chris Williamson?

  Across the UK, just that.

• 43:59Chris Williamson?

  Nightclubs are not only competing with brunch and with restaurants and with Lane Seven and with Top Flight Darts and with those ball pit fucking places where people get to take selfies. It's not just competing with other in-person events and other community based events, a pickleball or whatever. It's competing with Netflix, Amazon Prime.

• 44:21Freya India?

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

• 44:24Chris Williamson?

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

• 44:36Chris Williamson?

  you must have seen this trend the other day, this like slug life thing where people just want they, I'm not going out, I don't want to do anything. Huge Substack article that.

• 44:48Freya India?

  Oh, there was one about, yeah, like rotting in bed.

• 44:50Chris Williamson?

  Yes, that was it.

• 44:51Freya India?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like I think it was about being a loser and how it's like an English thing. Again, being a loser has become the way that you introduce yourself and talk about yourself.

• 45:04Chris Williamson?

  Oh, I don't have a life.

• 45:05Freya India?

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

• 45:06Chris Williamson?

  I don't have any interests. No, no, no. I like Netflix.

• 45:09Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 45:09Chris Williamson?

  I don't, boyfriend? No, no, no, no, not for me. No.

• 45:13Freya India?

  Yeah, I want, I.

• 45:14Chris Williamson?

  Would ruin my 7pm bedtime.

• 45:16Freya India?

  I don't know where that's come from, but I think, I think it's probably social anxiety and then people come up with all of these kind of romantic ways to talk about it. So they're like, oh, I'm just an introvert who enjoys my own time or I'm like working on this big thing, so I can't go out clubbing and stuff. And they build their identity around something which would justify not going out.

• 45:42Chris Williamson?

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• 46:26Chris Williamson?

  So you can buy it and sleep on it for 29 days. If you don't like it, they'll give you your money back. Plus they ship internationally. Right now you can get $350 off the Pod4Ultra by going to the link in the description below or heading to eightsleep.com/ModernWisdom using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's E I G H T sleep dot com slash Modern Wisdom and Modern Wisdom at checkout. I guess even relationships have been infected by social media. The boyfriends of Instagram trend has been around for a while, but has maybe escalated.

• 46:58Freya India?

  Well, have you seen like, I read an article the other day, maybe you want to kill myself. It was about, it was about like soft launching your boyfriend on Instagram.

• 47:07Chris Williamson?

  Please tell me more.

• 47:08Freya India?

  So it's about telling girls, so this young woman wondering, how should you announce to your followers? Like not influencers, like I'm talking ordinary young women. How should you announce your boyfriend? Should you do a soft launch where it's just like his arm? Or should you do like a full reveal?

• 47:25Freya India?

  But it's kind of messed up because it's like, this is like introducing a brand deal or something.

• 47:34Freya India?

  Like literally viewing our partners like products. Like.

• 47:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. How do we, how does this play in the optics of public life?

• 47:43Freya India?

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

• 47:51Chris Williamson?

  Wow, that's good.

• 47:52Freya India?

  And then posting it online.

• 47:53Chris Williamson?

  That's really good.

• 47:54Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 47:56Chris Williamson?

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

• 48:03Freya India?

  Yeah. Well, so you have all of that. You have like, how do you manage the relationship on social media? But then you also have how social media affects the relationship. So like the boyfriends of Instagram thing. Like it's kind of funny that boyfriends, you know, when you see like a guy literally on the floor, trying to get a good angle of the guy.

• 48:22Chris Williamson?

  There was a, I went to Gili Te in Bali. It's one of these little islands about five years ago.

• 48:32Chris Williamson?

  And there's a famous beach club that's got a swing sort of out in the water and it's gorgeous. The sun sets because it's so close to the equator, the sun sets in the summer at six thirty P M. And in the winter at six P M. It's like twelve hours of daylight and it just shit wobbles a little bit like that. And this, this girl wanted to get a photo of her on the swing. She wanted to catch the sort of sun bouncing off the top of the water.

• 48:56Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 48:56Chris Williamson?

  And I remember thinking, like, watching this guy and she was saying, no, no, no, you need to get lower. You need to like get sort of lower down, closer to the water. And this dude's sort of chest, shoulder to neck to fat. And by this time, it's sea, it's the sea. So it's not being gentle with him. So he's like, trying to take this photo, the phone's out of the water, he's getting splashed. I remember thinking like, that really better be wifey, because that's a big ask.

• 49:21Freya India?

  Well, also, I I just always think, who is it for? If your boyfriend is right there, like it it does get to the point where you're like posing in a bikini and your boyfriend's taking the pictures of you. It's like, is this for Instagram? Because I don't, I don't know, it just, it's, it's such a strange thing that's become so normalized.

• 49:38Chris Williamson?

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

• 49:53Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 49:53Chris Williamson?

  the one that's taking the photo. So what does the photo need to be taken for? Unless it's for his private collection.

• 49:57Freya India?

  But it's, it's become so normalized that like when I wrote about boyfriends of Instagram, people were replying like, oh, but you know, I'm trying to get memories and stuff. Uh, and like, I had a picture.

• 50:07Chris Williamson?

  He's not in it.

• 50:08Freya India?

  Yeah, there was a picture of like three girls in bikinis and three guys all on the same beach, all taking pictures of their girlfriend. And people were defending it like, oh, they're allowed to have memories. Like what a memory of you in a bikini. Like, but I actually, I don't think they're lying. I think that's just how normalized it's become. It's like, well, obviously, if you go to the beach, you do a photo shoot.

• 50:30Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 50:30Freya India?

  Um, and I always try and express that to people like, you think of an influencer and how her income depends on taking pictures. And everywhere she goes, she has to get content. Um, ordinary women think like that now. Most people have it in the back of their mind, I should be getting a social media picture. Or this is a good moment, or this landscape would get really good clicks. Like, that's how they think. And I I don't think some older people realise that young girls are behaving and thinking like their influences.

• 51:01Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 51:01Freya India?

  All the time.

• 51:02Chris Williamson?

  Is that an aspirational thing? Is that just that the power users of Instagram and TikTok behave like that because it's their job? Which means that the people who are not, that they have none of the same obligations, feel like they should behave in the same way? Or is there something more going on? Is this aspirational? Is this that people hope, maybe I get picked up by a modelling agency?

• 51:20Freya India?

  I think a part of it is that, but I think another part is it, they started doing this when their brains were forming as young girls. They started capturing their life as they went and they, I don't think they can conceive of just living and existing. I really think it's that ingrained of like, their entire childhood was having a childhood, childhood, but also performing in marketing and managing it all at the same time. And and then like, when you try and get out of it, like when I deleted Instagram years ago. Uh, that lingering was still in my head of like, maybe I should share this online or maybe this could be a good photo opportunity. And it's, it's really hard to not to kind of unwire that.

• 52:03Freya India?

  And now if I go to an event and I don't take a picture, young women I'm friends with will be kind of confused. Like I said, I've been on holiday and I have no evidence of it. It's confusing to them because that is.

• 52:13Chris Williamson?

  Suspicious about whether or not you actually went on the holiday.

• 52:15Freya India?

  It's kind of weird. Um, and I think there are genuinely young people who go on holiday to get pictures. Who even get in relationships for the photos and who are quietly living their life for Instagram.

• 52:31Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 52:32Freya India?

  In ways that people don't realise has become that intense.

• 52:38Chris Williamson?

  What do you make of the contribution of family breakdown to this? Of that, you mentioned before about that sort of lack of guidance, people looking for a little bit of guidance. Um, maybe filling the void with entertainment that typically would have been taken up by family. What, what role does family breakdown have here?

• 52:56Freya India?

  I think it's linked to what I was saying about, yeah, looking for relationship guidance. It's like, um, well, you look at something like. Mental health TikTok. Um, people are sharing like their really deep trauma and turmoil and problems. Um, and you can't help but look at it and think, are you close to your family? Like, this is the kind of thing that you talk about with your family. It's what your family is there for. And now you're telling strangers on TikTok. Um, and then you look at the statistics of the amount of Gen Z who aren't living with both their mother and father. I think it's, I think in the UK, it's over half of children by fourteen don't live with their mum and dad. Um, and so they don't have a feeling of belonging at home.

• 53:42Freya India?

  And then you stretch that out to they don't have any sense of community. Their community is a Reddit forum or Instagram. Like, I, growing up, had no sense of what a local community is, or like neighbours knowing each other. It's just, it's really foreign to me. I think a lot of Gen Z, they don't have a conception of it beyond like an online community or like the LGBT community or something. That is the limit of community they know. So their family falls apart. There's nothing really to catch them. There's no neighbourhood of adults who are there. Um, then you add that they're becoming less religious. They don't feel that they belong to anything bigger than that. They have no faith in anything bigger.

• 54:24Freya India?

  Um, and so the feeling of loneliness is just so intense. Um, and I was writing recently about how I think that actually one of the biggest drivers of behaviour we see among Gen Z is this abandonment fear and feeling. Um, because their families fell apart, because they don't have community, because they don't belong to anything bigger. Um, they feel constantly alone. And if you look at the kind of symptoms of abandonment, if you look at like attachment theory, like real attachment theory, not the TikToks, but the like Mary Ainsworth studies and everything. Um. It shows like people who are abandoned, they're really hypersensitive to criticism. They have very low body image and self-esteem.

• 55:10Freya India?

  Um, all of the kind of caricature of Gen Z, all of the traits are like to do with this feeling of not belonging anywhere. Um, so not, not to say that it explains everything, but I think families breaking down and not having a sense of belonging really messes people up. And I think a lot of Gen Z are kind of carrying that around and then looking for it in places. So that obviously they're going to spend hours on TikTok where people are talking to them and talking about their problems because they don't have anything resembling that in real life. Um, and so, yeah, I think a lot of the things we kind of laugh at young people for as being kind of narcissistic and

• 55:49Freya India?

  um, I guess selfish and kind of we cringe at them having these crazy screen times. It's like, what else is there?

• 55:58Chris Williamson?

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

• 56:03Freya India?

  Yeah, I think, um, I think in the modern world, like adults, they view everything as like imposing on their children. So we, we kind of became suspicious of anyone who's authoritative. So we think they're being controlling or like old fashioned. So adults kind of politely stepped back and kind of allow children just to become themselves and act the way they want and

• 56:28Chris Williamson?

  Sounds virtuous.

• 56:29Freya India?

  Yeah. And, you know, there's obviously an element of that that's important in parenting. Um, but I think what happened is parents stepped back. So they just became like our best friends. Um, then religion retreated away from public life. Then communities broke down, um, neighbors stopped knowing each other. And then if you're an anxious young person, uh, there's no one there and

• 56:58Freya India?

  We got rid of anything that was like more substantial guidance. So I think if you think of therapy culture today, a lot of people think, oh, if you're an anxious young person, you have more advice than ever. Like you have all this guidance. But I actually think modern culture has very little to say to anxious young people because we got rid of anything more substantial because we thought it was judgmental. So you can't tell someone how to live their life or what to do. Uh, we got rid of anything to do with God or religion because that was superstitious. We stopped appealing to moral character and telling them they should improve themselves and be better because that's also judgmental and, you know, claiming that there's a right and wrong.

• 57:39Freya India?

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

• 58:09Chris Williamson?

  That lack of guidance is, I don't know, I, I, the, the equivalent for the guys is pick your favorite podcaster or YouTuber or fitness bodybuilder of choice. And looking up to that, okay, well, it's the missing patriarch that I

• 58:25Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 58:26Chris Williamson?

  didn't have, I didn't have a long enough or didn't understand this world. And I'm going to surrogate

• 58:33Freya India?

  Yes.

• 58:33Chris Williamson?

  that to this parasocial online relationship.

• 58:37Freya India?

  But then it becomes someone who doesn't know you. So let's say you have a relationship problem, like you're a young woman who has met someone and you're not sure about him. The average young woman will now go on YouTube and turn to the dating experts and the attachment style. Yeah. And get the guidance from experts because they don't have adults in their lives who know them intimately. You know, because people are different, like people need different advice in different situations. And I think it's a real shame that. Adults who kind of intimately know girls and young women and can give them advice in like a community setting have stepped back. And now, of course, they're all on TikTok asking each other, like, oh, you know, he cheated on me.

• 59:21Freya India?

  Is this a problem? Because we weren't exclusive. Is that a red flag? Is it? And it's like, we need some adults in our lives who clearly say, I think this person's bad for you. Um, and and I

• 59:32Chris Williamson?

  I suppose, yeah, you're just everything. It's great that we have instant frictionless access to all information from experts that maybe even more expert than our parents would be ever and trained and all the rest of it, even if they're legitimate. And obviously, there's a lot of room for illegitimate

• 59:48Freya India?

  Yes.

• 59:48Chris Williamson?

  experts to sneak in.

• 59:51Chris Williamson?

  But it is still self diagnosis and it is still self treatment from that. You know, if you're learning from TikTok, there is no part of, hey, why don't we, why don't we sit down? Why don't we?

• 1:00:02Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02Chris Williamson?

  I'll, I will give you something as opposed to you will learn from this thing and then go and have to work out what that means and apply it and not be able to ask questions and not be able to regulate with anybody.

• 1:00:14Chris Williamson?

  And not have it contextualized even remotely.

• 1:00:16Freya India?

  Yeah. And your mum isn't trying to get views on TikTok. So she doesn't need to

• 1:00:20Chris Williamson?

  Speak for your mum.

• 1:00:21Freya India?

  She doesn't need to exaggerate and kind of keep you looking at her channel. Um, you know, I, I think that's the problem is there are genuine experts who can help, but they are also subject to the kind of pressures of the algorithm a lot of the time. And so they're kind of, I guess, dumbing down what they're saying or make or presenting symptoms of autism as as vague as possible to try and so as many girls relate to it as possible.

• 1:00:51Chris Williamson?

  You had this breakdown. Uh, one of the main causes of unhappiness in the modern world is a culture that presents other people as obstacles. Heal faster alone, work better alone, find freedom alone. It's such a lie. Loneliness is not empowerment. Is loneliness uh, pedestalized by Gen Z TikTok?

• 1:01:10Freya India?

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

• 1:01:23Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:01:24Freya India?

  You know, if you do actually have problems from your childhood um to do with, say, your parents. I don't wanna say an attachment problem, but it is an attachment problem, just the wording has been completely ruined. But if you do have that, you kind of need to be with someone to work on it. Because if you're single, you're gonna feel great. Because there's no one kind of triggering you and making you feel anxious and abandoned. Um, so you do need someone in your life in in that scenario. Um, so yeah, loneliness then does seem like is extremely attractive because you feel better when you're alone. The same with the productivity stuff. I think it's just.

• 1:02:03Freya India?

  The message that's missing for both young women and young men is like, it's actually okay to depend on someone. And to need other people, like humans have always needed other people and define themselves by. Their ties and obligations to other people. And now we're kind of like. No, you can you can be self sufficient enough and driven enough and healed enough that you're okay alone. And I think that's really quite a strong message for young the young women here, which is like the worst thing you can be is needy. Like, do not ever need someone. And and the worst situation for you is to end up with a guy that you need. Like, that's just, you need to avoid that at all costs. And it's.

• 1:02:47Freya India?

  It's a really sad message because it's like, is that not love to need someone and they need you? And it's kind of a beautiful thing um to rely on someone and have someone who's dependent on you. And actually, a lot of the actual attachment research shows that. Have you heard of like the dependency paradox?

• 1:03:06Chris Williamson?

  Tell me.

• 1:03:07Freya India?

  Um, that couples who are more dependent on each other become more independent in their lives. So there was like studies showing that um, I think they got couples to do. Like games or puzzles and then they had to fill out a survey of, you know, how much do you respond to your partner's needs? Um, basically, how dependent are you on each other? And the ones that were more dependent. Didn't wanna hear, like, I think it was the clues or the answers from their partner. They wanted to do it independently.

• 1:03:38Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:03:39Freya India?

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

• 1:03:47Chris Williamson?

  Why do you think that is? What's the proposed mechanism?

• 1:03:49Freya India?

  Because it's, it's like the original Mary Ainsworth experiments where the caregiver leaves and they kind of measure how the child responds. You need like a stable, secure relationship to feel confident to go and explore the world. You need to have like something to hold on to, to step off.

• 1:04:08Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:09Freya India?

  And.

• 1:04:09Chris Williamson?

  Chaos in both domains is scary.

• 1:04:12Freya India?

  Yeah, you, you need like something to fall back on. And I think that's a big reason why Gen Z are incredibly, uh, risk averse and not resilient is because we don't actually have a foundation to fall back on. So if your parents are divorced, um, and you don't feel that sense of belonging, you're not going to step off into the chaos of the world. You're going to hold back and you're going to find relationships threatening. You're going to find words traumatic. You're gonna be scared by it because the ground is like crumbling beneath you, so you can't step off it. Um.

• 1:04:47Chris Williamson?

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• 1:05:28Chris Williamson?

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• 1:06:11Freya India?

  Well, I think, I think it's real that obviously your childhood impacts your adult life. I think that's just plain to see. And I think it's real that you can kind of play that out in relationships that aren't to, you know, so you, however your parents responded to you, you'll then take that into an adult relationship. That seems very obvious. But I think where people go wrong now is they forget that, like in the original attachment experiments and the book attached, it's quite clear that it's, it's not a bad thing to depend on someone. And it's, it's not a bad thing to be

• 1:06:50Freya India?

  attached. We are wired to be that way. Whereas I think now where it's going online is like, you have a problem if you're attached. Like if you, if you're a young woman who kind of dreams of having a romantic relationship and really wants to depend on someone, now we view you as like weak, that there's something wrong with you if that's your ultimate goal. Because we've had it drilled in so much that dependence is a problem. And so you see all these people online saying things like, oh, you know, I'm anxiously attached because when my partner feels sad, I also feel sad. It's like, isn't that just like loving someone, you know, you are affected by their emotions. Or

• 1:07:32Freya India?

  they'll say things again, like, oh, I always put their needs first. So can you train me out of being like a people pleaser? And it's like, we used to just call that love. And, you know, that was a trait that we treasured in people, people who put their partner's needs first. And obviously that can go too far. But I think the problem is now we only pathologize dependence and we glamorize independence. And we never say, yeah, that being dependent on someone, having a long term relationship doesn't mean that you lose yourself. You can actually find yourself through that. But I think girls in particular, young women in particular, have just been told, yeah, the worst

• 1:08:17Freya India?

  thing in your life is to need someone.

• 1:08:19Chris Williamson?

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

• 1:08:21Freya India?

  Yeah, I think.

• 1:08:24Freya India?

  I think that's where it comes from. And that's why it's especially tragic, because you have a lot of young women, for example, whose families fell apart. And then they grew up thinking, well, I just want to have that myself. I want to have a loving relationship and a family. And then they kind of get told, whether it's through therapy culture or some of the feminist stuff online, you kind of implicitly get told. Um, that's a problem. Like if you, again, if your dream is to depend on someone, you should work on yourself. You need to work on your self-love. You need to believe in yourself more. You need to be healed alone. And um, you think of like a normal thinking, feeling, young girl, of course she wants to be in a

• 1:09:05Freya India?

  romantic relationship. And of course she wants to depend on someone in some way. It's completely natural. Um, but I think you have young women thinking, oh, I need to get to a position where I'm confident, completely confident alone. I'm healed alone. I don't have any anxiety. Um, then I can allow a partner in. But I don't see that as the way that people operate. Um. And I think there's a lot of girls now punishing themselves for being emotional and sensitive and wanting a partner and wanting to depend on someone. Because now the the image of a strong, independent woman is is someone who doesn't depend on anyone and who doesn't get emotional, doesn't get jealous, doesn't care.

• 1:09:49Freya India?

  And so you you also have two contradictory messages, because you have therapy culture saying to girls, open up more and more about your problems, you know, be more emotional, um, tell everyone how you feel. But then you also have strong, independent women don't care. You know, they never get emotional. And if they do get an emotional, it's trauma or an attachment issue. And it's like, that's a really cruel thing to teach emotional young girls and confusing, because it's like.

• 1:10:17Freya India?

  Of course, they feel that way because they're human. But now they're being told that that's, yeah, a medical issue or something that they should heal.

• 1:10:26Chris Williamson?

  I saw you tweet, kids as young as nine are addicted to porn. Girls as young as thirteen are using fake IDs to post explicit content on OnlyFans. A third of those selling nudes on Twitter are under the age of eighteen.

• 1:10:41Freya India?

  Yep.

• 1:10:41Chris Williamson?

  Can you unpack that, please?

• 1:10:44Freya India?

  Well, I think that's, again, a lack of adults. Um, stepping in. Um, I have this theory I've been thinking about of like, everyone just accepts now that that parents are overprotective. So there's like the helicopter parenting and the coddling of gently.

• 1:11:02Freya India?

  But I think like parents are weirdly, they're not protective enough, but they're also coddling. So they're like, coddle their children, but not put up proper boundaries or guardrails. There's like no rules. Um, but they're overinvolved.

• 1:11:17Chris Williamson?

  Overbearing in all the wrong areas and totally absent in all of the wrong ones as well.

• 1:11:22Freya India?

  So now it's like, the only danger is like physical danger. It's injury. So parents protect from injury, but they don't protect from something like their daughters being online and posting, trying to get on OnlyFans. I mean, Jonathan Haidt talks about it when he says kids are overprotective in the real world and underprotected online. But I think it's slightly more than that because I don't think parents are totally protective in the real world because they, again, they've also, I think, um, kind of internalized this messaging of I shouldn't get involved, you know, it's not my place. You know, you think of dads now, I think dads are less protective than they've ever been because they,

• 1:12:06Freya India?

  they can't care about what their daughter wears or where she goes or who she dates because that would be backward. You know, it's her right to do that.

• 1:12:15Freya India?

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

• 1:12:43Chris Williamson?

  Um.

• 1:12:43Freya India?

  Um, because the problem is not like women are weak, it's that girls are vulnerable. But now we think, oh, we should all step back, let girls do what they want. Um.

• 1:12:54Chris Williamson?

  A lot of baby went out with bathwater.

• 1:12:56Freya India?

  Yeah, and now you see.

• 1:12:57Chris Williamson?

  A lot of chivalry went out with patriarchy.

• 1:12:59Freya India?

  Yeah, well, we we killed good authority. We just killed all authority. And so now you have young women like demanding that their universities protect them and demanding that the government step in and like staring at someone becomes a harassment on the tube. Because they don't have, we degraded the authority of men they trust.

• 1:13:20Chris Williamson?

  Um.

• 1:13:21Freya India?

  Like good men and hopefully like their fathers and brothers. And we just said, oh, all kind of protection is patronizing and we don't need it. But then you leave girls completely vulnerable and looking coddled and loved, but actually completely unprotected.

• 1:13:39Chris Williamson?

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

• 1:13:54Freya India?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I I can't remember where it was, but there was this like scheme um some young women ran on a train where they had these cards. I don't know if you saw it, where it said like, it said like, I'm being harassed right now. Where you hand it to someone. And so you could go into, I think it was like the tube station, you could go in and ask for the cards. And yeah, it's like someone is harassing me. Yeah, there was all different ones. I can't remember what they were. But it's like, in that situation, what is that going to do? And it's, that is actually the patronizing thing. Um, and to expect that to protect girls. But we find it offensive if a man steps forward and tries to help a girl out.

• 1:14:39Freya India?

  I think it's we've, yeah, we've just thrown it all out and forgotten that that that part of the feminist message is right. That girls are vulnerable. Um, but unfortunately it's just led to a situation where we're like, oh, vulnerability means weakness. So they don't need protecting.

• 1:14:56Chris Williamson?

  Why are girls under the as young as thirteen using fake IDs to, are they, do people want money? Is there a status thing associated with this?

• 1:15:07Freya India?

  Yeah, I think it's a status thing. I think girls are now growing up with influencers being their aspirational figures, as we said. Um, I think it's something like seventy percent of Gen Z girls aspire to be influencers or just Gen Z in general.

• 1:15:23Chris Williamson?

  Thought you were going to say OnlyFans.

• 1:15:24Freya India?

  No.

• 1:15:25Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:15:25Freya India?

  Um, but if you look at influencers over the years, they've evolved dramatically. So like when I was thirteen, I would be watching like Zoella or someone who's really wholesome. And didn't really have the same incentives of the algorithms back in the day. Didn't really have the same competition, certainly didn't have like monetization of her content. Um, so she wasn't kind of exposing herself or talking about these weird therapy trends or anything like that. But you can just gradually see over the years how it's escalated.

• 1:15:59Chris Williamson?

  Who are some of the more extreme Zoella equivalents now? Or if you don't want to throw names out, you can come up with.

• 1:16:07Freya India?

  I can throw a name.

• 1:16:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:08Freya India?

  There's the the woman, Tana Monjo.

• 1:16:12Chris Williamson?

  Tana Monjo.

• 1:16:13Freya India?

  Yeah, so she's like a really popular influencer who talks about OnlyFans like it's

• 1:16:22Freya India?

  like, like there's nothing dangerous about it for young girls or nothing to be worried about. And she'll, she has an audience of very young teens, probably preteens. And she'll just post with all the things she's earned from OnlyFans. So all of like the designer bags and stuff. And on her podcast, she'll talk about being on OnlyFans. And, um, I think talking about commodifying yourself like it's completely normal.

• 1:16:52Freya India?

  That is what girls are growing up with. So they're seeing influencers commodify themselves in general, but then commodifying their body. And and also having the nerve to call that empowering.

• 1:17:05Chris Williamson?

  You don't think it's empowering?

• 1:17:06Freya India?

  No. Well, how can it be empowering to even on Instagram, offer your body for judgment? And then put your self-worth into the ranks and reviews that strangers give you. You you're turning yourself into a product effectively. So this talk of objectifying young women, you know, that is turning yourself into an object on display. Um, which I think is quite clear to anyone who's not grown up with it, but I I don't judge the ordinary young woman for thinking that's attractive because that has been her role models throughout growing up and it's escalated slowly. So it went from Zoella to now OnlyFans.

• 1:17:51Chris Williamson?

  Bonnie Blue, Zoella to Bonnie Blue.

• 1:17:53Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:54Chris Williamson?

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• 1:19:12Chris Williamson?

  boss girl feminist power?

• 1:19:15Freya India?

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

• 1:19:22Freya India?

  I think young women react to the very worst traits of some men by thinking, I'll just do it back and that will give me the power. So they're like, uh, maybe they've had a string of relationships where the guy has kind of slept with them and then left or something. And then they think, yeah, I'll just do that to the next guy. Or, um, you know, they look at the men doing that and think, well, they seem very confident and happy. So that's, that's the way to go. Um, I think it's like a defense mechanism of some kind. And also, I think they're probably also the traits that get you popularity online. So if you look at Tana Mongeau or some of these influencers, uh, they are

• 1:20:06Freya India?

  promiscuous, they're quite masculine, they're quite aggressive in their speech, because people who talk assertively and in extreme ways will just suit the algorithm. You know, if you're like a reserved timid young girl, you're not going to be the top influencer on Instagram.

• 1:20:20Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:20:21Freya India?

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

• 1:20:34Chris Williamson?

  That's the path to success.

• 1:20:35Freya India?

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

• 1:20:47Chris Williamson?

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

• 1:20:53Freya India?

  Well, also promiscuity is like, well, I often think now, if you're like a reserved young woman who's modest, you're now shamed. Maybe not explicitly, but implicitly, people will think there's something wrong with you because they'll be like, oh, no, you are beautiful. You shouldn't be so like shy about guys, you know, you shouldn't worry about sex, you know, it's fine. Like, people will reassure her now. As to like, that look at her as if she has a problem that needs healing.

• 1:21:24Chris Williamson?

  Uh.

• 1:21:25Freya India?

  Rather than she just is modest. Um. And I think that's what tends to happen is you look at promiscuity becomes so popular and normalized. And then we stigmatize the girls that aren't interested in that or aren't that way. Um. So, yeah, I think if, I think if you are a young woman now who's, who holds back in that way, it's kind of like if you're introverted and people come up to you and say, what's wrong? You should speak more. And it's just like, sometimes it's just who you are.

• 1:21:56Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:21:57Freya India?

  Um. So I think it's the incentives. Again, you're almost punished socially. If you're modest and shy and, and not super assertive and masculine, because people think you've got your like healing work to do. You need to become more confident and like sexual and like get rid of all your reservations and like repression. People think you're just like a repressed person rather than.

• 1:22:24Chris Williamson?

  Everybody should be Tana Mojo, whatever she's called.

• 1:22:26Freya India?

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

• 1:22:31Chris Williamson?

  Everybody is Tana at zero.

• 1:22:33Freya India?

  Yes.

• 1:22:34Chris Williamson?

  And you just need to try and get back there.

• 1:22:36Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:37Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Is there a wistfulness for times of the past? This sort of nostalgia for a better time. I don't know when it was.

• 1:22:44Freya India?

  Hmm.

• 1:22:44Chris Williamson?

  Maybe before you were born, maybe when your parents were around or something.

• 1:22:49Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:49Chris Williamson?

  Or, I don't know.

• 1:22:52Chris Williamson?

  Slightly older generations would have that kind of wistfulness, American dream, et cetera.

• 1:22:58Freya India?

  Yep.

• 1:22:58Chris Williamson?

  What did Gen Z think of the current moment? Do they think that it's liberating? Cause it seems like there's two things going on at once that.

• 1:23:05Freya India?

  Hmm.

• 1:23:06Chris Williamson?

  Life is horrible and terrible and I have anxious attachment and maybe autism.

• 1:23:10Freya India?

  Yep.

• 1:23:10Chris Williamson?

  And also. I'm fully liberated to be myself. I can be whatever I want to be. I can go boss my way through promiscuity and sell my body on OnlyFans and make loads of money and I don't need no man.

• 1:23:21Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:22Chris Williamson?

  So which one is it?

• 1:23:23Freya India?

  I know there's like crippling anxiety among young women, but also this really loud, I don't care message. Um, I think, I think young people in general are very nostalgic for a time. They they haven't known, which is a time before smartphones and social media. So if you look at like. Jonathan Haidt, again, he did a survey recently and found that a lot of Gen Z wish things like TikTok and Instagram never existed. Which is kind of unusual. You don't really get that with any other inventions. Like he was talking about the bike and like, um, the hairdryer, like. It's really not that level of, I'm, I use this all the time and wish that I didn't.

• 1:24:05Freya India?

  Um, and I think there's a lot of that ambient feeling among Gen Z of like. Longing for a time, for example, when love wasn't like reacting to someone's Instagram story. Or swiping on Tinder. Um, you know, some young women have never experienced. Love before it became that, uh, like the mystery of having a crush on someone and falling in love. Like now you just. You can't wonder what they're up to. You just kind of skip through their Instagram story or look at their Facebook profile and it's all listed out there. So I think there's a real feeling of like disenchantment with the modern world where it's like. Everything has become so commodified.

• 1:24:50Freya India?

  And cheap. And there's like a nostalgia for a time, maybe that didn't exist, but. Everyone tells me the nineties were way better. So I'm just gonna assume they're telling the truth, but. A time before phones and the internet and. The commodification of everything became so extreme. Um, because now everything, I'd I'd try and explain to people like. The very concept of things has changed. So friendship for my generation versus friendship for my parents' generation. Friendship now is like your friends online, you maybe have a snap streak that you keep up, you pose for each other's Instagram, you don't really

• 1:25:33Freya India?

  necessarily hang out as much as you used to. There's not really, again, friends don't give each other guidance or tell each other what to do, because that would be rude and toxic. And so the definition of friendship has changed in this era, the definition of love has changed, of flirting, everything. Which is why, like, you can talk about kids being on screens and it's kind of sad, but like, the actual truth of what's changed is insane. And the fact that young people are anxious and can't cope with it is not because they have a disorder, it's because they're the first to try and feel their way through a completely different world.

• 1:26:16Chris Williamson?

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

• 1:26:25Freya India?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:26Chris Williamson?

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

• 1:26:28Freya India?

  Yeah, and that's kind of why you can't blame them for not giving guidance, because the world moves so fast, there's no such, there's no wisdom anymore. You can't pass anything down. So now you just have to keep up with the kids.

• 1:26:40Chris Williamson?

  Irrelevant as soon as it leaves your lips.

• 1:26:42Freya India?

  Yeah. And so now you have adults, like, talking like teenagers and using the same social media platforms, being informed of the new trends, which has always been a thing. But now, now it feels like adults go to young people to get guidance about the world. And that makes young people anxious, because they're like, where are the adults telling me what to do?

• 1:27:05Chris Williamson?

  That's a very good question. Freya India, ladies and gentlemen. Freya, I love everything that you're writing. It's really great to see you go from strength to strength. I think it's really important stuff. Where should people go? They want to check out everything that you do?

• 1:27:18Freya India?

  My Substack is just freyaindia.co.uk. It's called Girls. And yeah, that's just where I write about girls and young women. And hopefully I'll have a book announcement soon.

• 1:27:28Chris Williamson?

  Exciting, cool. I look forward to it. Thank you. Until next time, bye. Thank you.

• 1:27:33Speaker 02

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• 1:27:42Speaker 03

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• 1:27:49Speaker 04

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• 1:27:54Speaker 03

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• 1:27:57Speaker 04

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• 1:27:58Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.