It was a few years ago, before COVID-19, that I began to notice that something was fundamentally changing in the mental health of the students who came to my classes at university.
Many more students started showing signs of stress, anxiety, and even depression than I had previously noticed. Initially, I attributed it to the peculiarities of life in Pakistan and poor economic conditions, but it was more than that.
In my 20-odd years of teaching, this was the first time a student told me that my voice was a trigger for her, a trigger so powerful that she sometimes had to leave the class. This was not the only incident of this kind.
Then the new coronavirus hit. During and post-Covid, demand for mental health services has exploded. This doesn’t just apply to the universities I’ve been directly involved with. At the time, I was participating in a global forum of deans of education, and all members shared similar experiences. Something was happening to the young people. They faced far more stress, anxiety, depression, and other issues. This trend has continued even after the coronavirus outbreak.
I recently read a book by Jonathan Haidt. An anxious generation: How a massive rewiring of childhood is driving an epidemic of mental illness. (2024). Jonathan Haidt, a famous social psychologist, wrote a pretty well thought out book heart of justice years ago. anxious generation It explains very well what we are seeing.
Children born into the age of the internet, smartphones, and social media have had very different childhoods than previous generations. These children generally spend significantly less time socializing with real friends and playing with other children outside the home and in their neighborhoods. They interacted less with extended family and neighborhood elders, spent less time alone, spent less time reading physical books, and engaged in less physical activity.
There is much more stress, anxiety, and depression among young people than ever before.
These children spend more time online. Their friends and social circles are also moving more online. Their social interactions also become more active in the virtual world. And social media is their “community” place.
Previous generations were less online and connected to social media. This difference has important consequences. Evidence compiled by Haidt suggests that spending too much time online can not only affect your social life, vision, and concentration, but can actually completely rewire your childhood.
Additionally, 24-hour social media exposure and presence can create high levels of anxiety and stress, which can trigger depression. It can isolate children, increase their distance from “real” people, and damage “real” relationships. Social media can exaggerate peer pressure and make you a very harsh and cruel critic. According to research shared by Hite, the impact of social media on girls is far more significant than it is on boys.
In most countries, the age of 18 is the beginning of adulthood. In many places, young people can obtain driver’s licenses and purchase tobacco and alcohol products. However, even though social media can have a far greater impact in terms of addiction, most countries have little to no control over children’s social media engagement and the amount of time they can spend on social media. Haidt points out that there are no strict laws regarding this.
The United States has an old law that allows children as young as 13 to sign into social media and consent to companies using their data. Companies ask 13-year-old boys if they have parental consent, but do not confirm whether they actually have consent. This means kids can go online on social media at virtually any age. Parents overprotect their children from real-world threats (one explanation for the decline in children’s outdoor activities over the past few decades), but most parents are They may not even be aware of the threat or harm they are exposing themselves to. They spend time on social media.
Australia recently took the drastic step of banning social media for children under 16. If we think of it as the age at which adulthood begins, and we know that social media has a significant negative impact on young people, why not make it 18?Most other countries have not yet started this discussion.
Of course, on the other side of that are the very large social media companies. Like tobacco companies in previous decades, these social media companies have a strong interest in lobbying against bans. They emphasize the positive aspects of social media and suppress information about its negative effects. They are even interested in undertaking and producing research that “shows” causal claims about the harm that social media can cause are false or exaggerated. Or present correlation as causation.
Some literature on Pakistan shows that high levels of anxiety and stress exist among young people. However, there is not much research on the impact of the internet, smartphones, and social media on Pakistani youth. One reason for this may be that, although Internet penetration has increased over time, it is not yet widespread. However, this phenomenon is evident in schools and universities. I only have my own experience and that of my colleagues, but I look forward to more systematic research on this issue. But if we follow the path that other countries have taken, we will face difficult times.
There is much that parents, schools and governments can do. Parents can limit their children’s exposure to social media, and schools can ban phones during school hours. Countries can enact laws regulating children’s exposure. But all this requires problem awareness. We are currently in the first phase of this in Pakistan.
The author is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Alternative Development Economics and an associate professor of economics at Rams University.
Published at Dawn on December 20, 2024
