Growing Disciples: Book by Book - GIRLS®

Freya India diagnoses the commercial ecosystem deforming young women. But the cure she's reaching for points toward something the church already has.

Aug 10, 2026

Growing Disciples: Book by Book is a series of brief, practical reviews of children’s ministry and child‑theology books. Each article gives you a clear summary, theological reflection, and 2–3 ideas to consider in your context. If you have suggestions of what books I could review next, leave a comment at the end of the article. If you find that these reviews contribute to the health of your ministry, please consider contributing to this series by becoming a paid subscriber.

Title: GIRLS®: Gen Z and the Commodification of Everything
Author: Freya India
Published: Swift Press, 2026

It is, by now, generally accepted that there is a crisis amongst our young people. Mental health is tanking while loneliness is an “epidemic”. It is also generally accepted that digital technology bears much of the blame. Jonathon Haidt’s The Anxious Generation has (helpfully in my opinion) dominated much of the discussion and continues to shape, not only the cultural conversation about the influence of a screen-mediated childhood, but also public opinion and, increasingly, governmental action curtailing access to some of the harms of social media and algorithmic content.

Freya India’s debut book, GIRLS®, deepens the investigation into the deforming effects of social media with a focus (quite obviously from the title) on girls and young women. It’s been a couple of years since I first came across India’s GIRLS Substack. As a male of the Xennial micro-generation1, I have greatly appreciated reading her female, Gen Z perspective.

Typically, I wouldn’t spend time reviewing a book that wasn’t explicitly about children’s ministry or faith formation. However, GIRLS® is most definitely book about childhood formation and the more I read, the more I felt the glaring absence of the faith-formative answer to the questions India was raising. For those invested in raising young women—in your family or in your church—we need to wrestle with the online culture which they inhabit. While not written from a Christian perspective2, GIRLS® is a detailed account of this culture and a worthwhile read for young women and the adults who care about them.

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The Big Idea

Here’s one key quote that summarises the heart of the book:

“GIRLS® is not just another book about social media. It is about a vast, interconnected web of industries, each profiting from our experiences and anxieties. It is about how these industries influence everything from how we look to how we feel, from how we love to how we treat other people. It is about an entire commercial ecosystem that uses our emotions as raw material… Our despair and disempowerment are worth billions.” (p.10-11)

Key Arguments

The six main chapters each highlight one aspect of coopted girlhood and how the “commercial ecosystem” of the online world has been weaponised against young women.

‘Filtered’ focuses on the beauty industry and the tension between self-love and insecurity fostered by selfies, face tuning and filters.
‘Diagnosed’ explores therapy culture and how the rise in mental ill-health and ADHD/ASD diagnoses are themselves marketable attributes of one’s authentic self.
‘Documented’ exposes the harms that come from lives that have been lived online, from the earliest photos and experiences of childhood (us millennial parents are not off the hook here), through to relational highs and lows being curated for content.
‘Disconnected’ shines light on the digitisation of friendship and the loneliness that results from simulated community.
‘Detached’ enters the world of mediated romantic and sexual relationships, from online flirting to the destructive impact of porn for shaping the sexual imagination of girls as well as the boys they date.
‘Empowered’ challenges the excesses of third-wave feminism in a world that promotes vocational success in reference to hustle culture, material consumption and the delaying of marriage and family.

Through it all, India weaves autobiography and social research. Her footnotes are extensive and provide a comprehensive documentation of each of the issues she addresses, while her lived experience of growing up as a young woman, immersed in the online world she critiques, humanises what might otherwise be a mere catalogue of the worst of online culture.

GIRLS® is about the female experience, but more than that, it is another solid addition to the growing field of 21st-century techno-criticism. Growing up has always been challenging. But it is the distinctiveness of the screen-based childhood and adolescence that magnifies and distorts the perennial aspects of maturation.

“Today we are not merely sold commodities like previous generations were. We are the commodity. We market and sell ourselves all the time. Girls and young women are packaging up their personal lives for Instagram, advertising themselves like products on dating apps and transforming themselves into professional brands to be monitored and managed. Since the rise of social media, girls have grown up seeing themselves as nothing but objects in a marketplace. Our happiness and self-worth now depend on how sellable we are.” (p.11)

Nit-Picky

India is brilliant at describing the experience of young women growing up online. I found myself, at various times, saddened by the scripts that girls were learning to live by, and angered at those who were perpetuating such destructive myths. The cynicism and hypocrisy in the messaging of mental health influencers in the ‘Diagnosed’ chapter was particularly egregious.

However, throughout the book, I was also sensing in myself a frustration with the account that GIRLS® was presenting. India’s argument is built on a foundation of data and statistics. As I’ve already mentioned, the book is thoroughly researched. Each chapter relies on cumulative documentation to make its case. But it is as if the avalanche of data is itself the argument. What is largely absent is any analysis of said data.

To borrow from a Practical Theology framework3, GIRLS® is exceptional at describing “What” is going on, but left me wanting more analysis on “Why” it is going on, and almost completely absent on “What Ought” to be going on instead. In her concluding chapter, India hints at solutions, but without providing depth to the alternative story that girls ought to be raised in.

“When real connection felt too risky, too inconvenient, too human, we were encouraged to replace it, simulate it. But none of the substitutes my generation was sold could ever satisfy. Facetune is no substitute for confidence. Better Help is no substitute for friendship. Instagram is no substitute for community. Pornhub is no substitute for intimacy. Replika is no substitute for a human. And a life built around hustling, consuming and serving ourselves is nothing compared to a life spent serving those we love, trying to become better people.” (p.234)

I heartily agree!

India’s plea at the end of the book is to “remind our daughters, granddaughters and future generations of girls what real beauty, real friendship, real love, real community, real confidence, real life is, and help them remember what it means to be human.” And yet GIRLS® offers no argument for why incarnate experiences and community are more real or more human, nor where to find and foster such places.

The Better Story

This brings me back to the reason why I would spend time reviewing this book on a blog about Christian faith formation. GIRLS® presents a problem, aching for a solution. And (no surprises here), I believe that the church provides this answer.

Young women in our children’s and youth ministry are living in the world that India describes, the destructive “commercial ecosystem” of social media, being sold the narrative that their self-worth comes, not only from consuming products, but from marketing themselves as products for others’ consumption. What we can do in our ministries and in our families is to communicate the destructiveness of this online narrative in contrast to the better story of the Gospel.

We know by now that social media apps and algorithmic content curation is not a neutral medium. Part of our discipling of young people will be in encouraging the restriction of access to these apps and the encouragement to disengage from the online world. In their place, let’s continue to make our homes and our churches places where real community and IRL friendships can flourish. Establishing our churches as Third Places, where human community can flourish, will help to offset the emotional pull of the online world.

One time, the John the Baptist’s disciples asked Jesus, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus replied, “‘How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them?” (Matt. 9:14-15) The presence of Jesus in their lives freed up the disciples from conforming to the practices of the world. Fasting was good, but they had something better. They didn’t need other religious practices to commune with God; they had God the Son IRL.

Perhaps a sign of spiritual health in our churches will be the questions, “Why don’t your disciples view social media, spend time on TikTok, or have Instagram accounts?” To which the answer may be, “Because the bridegroom is here.” While we await the return of the King, Christians have the indwelling Spirit in their personal lives and in the life of the church. India exhorts women not “to retreat from relationships” but “to take them more seriously” (p.246). I am convinced that incarnate faith communities, centred around the life-giving Christ, encourage the truest form of non-mediated experiences, and therefore are the spaces our girls need where such serious relationships can take place.

Thanks for reading this instalment of Growing Disciples: Book by Book. If you have suggestions for future books worth reviewing, please leave a comment below.

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