We are living in the biggest mental health crisis in modern history. People are more anxious and depressed than ever before. Doctors are throwing medication at the issue, with record numbers of people on prescribed medication, many others are self medicating the issue with illicit substances.
We can cure more conditions than ever before, with diseases and illnesses that would’ve been a death sentence in years gone by now trivial. Yet mental health is still murky territory, and the knowledge we have on the subject lags years behind our advancements in physical conditions.
Irrespective of this, it could easily be argued that the mental health of the developed world’s population is worse than ever, particularly in younger generations.
Excessive smartphone and internet use have been cited as causes for a decline in mental health, and I’d argue it’s the main factor.
Smartphones and internet, when used in a positive manner are two of the biggest technological advancements of man kind. We have the entirety of human knowledge and history at our fingertips, accessible to everyone and we can store the whole thing in our pocket. No longer does a question have to go unanswered, and everyone regardless of their education can find guides and a wealth of information on any task they are presented with.
However, something that started with pure intentions of the advancement of humans has quickly been corrupted by greed and as of today there’s very little left of the internet that isn’t trying to make someone richer. At first the internet became littered with adverts, generic at first, then targeted through algorithmic analysis. Then came the influencers; advertisements in the disguise of content. Most recently came “AI”, human content is now at war with computer generated content, and the use of AI doesn’t come cheap for corporations so it’s used to either advertise products, harvest data or sway opinions in the favour of it’s overlord.
People flock to social media as a last huddle to escape computer generated content, but this is not much better. Deep fakes, bots and generated content flood this too, often posing as a human poster.
So what are we left with in 2025? Mass data collection, targeted advertising, political propoganda, AI generated content, fake news, malicious scamming and a mass of bots. Does this sound a healthy place to be? If you described that to me I wouldn’t want to spend one minute there, let alone upwards of 10 hours a day that an alarming number of people do today.
There’s a lot to examine here so I’ll break this down into the different ways that this hurts our mental health:
- Isolation – Human’s are social creatures, and interacting with each other and forming positive relationship improves our mental state. It’s an innate behaviour that we seek out interaction and approval of our peers. Social media preys on that. It exchanges genuine human interaction for cheap, low effort interaction. A like, a comment, an upvote, a retweet, a share all take next to no effort. The sender feels like they’ve got behind the poster, and the recipient feels accepted, like or admired. Both get a quick rush of dopamine, reinforcing the behaviour, encouraging the cycle to repeat. In actuality, these people haven’t interacted at all, but they feel like they have for a brief moment. People are using this as a substitute for staying in contact with their friends, family or acquaintances because it’s low effort. However for something to be genuinely fulfilling it needs to be given effort. Think of it as receiving a thoughtful, relevant gift opposed to a gift card. This whole cycle leaves people feeling more isolated and lonely than ever, which in turn leads them to spend more time on social media trying to fulfil a longing for human contact, obviously this just compounds the issue, but benefits the social media company massively as the user spends more time on their platform, consuming their content, sharing more of their personal information and feeding the advertisers.
- Anxiety – You’ll have most likely heard of the term “clickbait” and maybe even “ragebait” by now. Even so, I’m sure you still fall for it, we all do. It’s a well known fact that negative content gets more engagement than positive. Someone who is outraged, scared or full of dread is much likely to click on an article, share or engage in discussion than something nice. It’s the same concept as you only see bad reviews online, people are generally more likely to go out of their way if they’ve had a negative experience. Marketers and news outlets know this, and as their income comes from your engagement they’ll produce what makes them more of it. For someone who gets the majority of their news from social media or less credible publications it would be very easy for them to form a view that everything in the world is terrible, on the brink of all out war, and that everyone is out to get them. In reality it’s not, but if that’s all you see you’ll start to believe it.
- Too much exposure to news – Previously there were two ways to get your news. Either a newspaper or the televised news, usually once a day. To cram all this into one paper, or a small period of time on a TV channel news was concise and relevant to it’s readers/viewers. Do we really need to know of every conflict or problem occurring in the world? Does knowing about this enable you to do anything about it? Not every problem is ours to bare, and the increased mental stress of knowing all this information can weigh us down. Not too long ago we had town criers, who would deliver local news to the population. Being naturally inquisitive leads us into trying to be up to speed on worldwide events, even when there is really no benefit to us knowing about them.
- Less time spent in the real world – Every minute spent online is a minute that could be spent doing something else. Buying something online substitutes an actual shopping trip, that would generally include some exercise and social interaction. Watching short form videos could substitute someone going for a walk in nature, playing with their children or learning a new hobby. I could go on but I’m sure you get the point. Granted that not every moment spent on the internet or a smartphone is productive time, but generally the time spend online does our mental health more harm than if we just stared at a wall.
- Lack of boredom – This sounds counterintuitive but boredom is actually pretty important. I’m old enough to remember being a child or teenager, bored out of my mind in my bedroom, with only my thoughts. When we have no distractions the voice in our heads wake up, we start to think about and process our experiences, we start to be creative and eventually we seek out something interesting to do. When I hear that people are spending 10 hours a day on their phones it baffles me, what does that really leave any other time free for? Assuming the average person spends 7 hours a day asleep, and 8 hours a day working there literally is not enough hours in the day. Sleep problems are on the rise, and is it any surprise? That voice in our head that gets subdued with mindless content consumption wakes up when we close our eyes to try and sleep, we haven’t given our imagination and subconscious any time to be active.
So what can we do?
The most important thing you can do by far is remove yourself from social media. There is nothing beneficial there anymore, it’s mass data harvesting, propaganda and advertising thrown together in an addictive pot. Consider deleting your accounts, your apps and keep yourself as far away from it as possible. Reddit and Youtube count too, however these can be beneficial sources of information so I would suggest using these without an account and avoid the comments sections. Staying signed out keeps the algorithm from sucking you in. Personally I deleted all of my accounts years ago and the benefits have been huge. The funny thing is I’ve never felt like I was missing out. Nothing on those sites was of any real value.
Secondly, limit your news consumption both in volume and geography. Consider setting aside 10 minutes a day to catch up on the news, and do it conscientiously. Either buy a local newspaper or stick to your towns local news outlet. You don’t need the whole worlds problems bearing down on your shoulders. And if it’s something you really need to know, you’ll find out.
Thirdly, spend more time outside of your bubble. Step out into the world, go for a walk, explore a new place, even just go to the shops in person. Your outlook will begin to brighten quickly when you see life isn’t what the internet portrays it to be.
Finally, embrace boredom! Achieving moments of boredom will look different for everyone. For me that meant keeping my smartphone very minimalist. I don’t have a web browser and I don’t have any apps outside of functional ones. My phone becomes a tool. For times where I need the internet, or apps I have my tablet and a PC. They’re less convenient and generally not on my person, so I can moderate their use more easily. To this day when I’m feeling bored I sometimes instinctively pull out my phone, only to realise there’s nothing to do on there and put it away. I’ll either find something else to do or just allow myself to be bored for a while. Eventually it stops being so uncomfortable and feels peaceful.
The resolution looks slightly different for everyone, because we all have different circumstances and needs. For you, it might be a less extreme solution, even just reducing screen time but the key point is removing yourself from what has become a toxic environment.
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