Is addiction caused and fueled by social media the new “drug”? How has the digital world changed our social and mental lives? James Davis, a professor of medical anthropology and psychology at the University of Roehampton, is seeking answers to these questions. In his recent work, Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis, he attempts to explain why, while progress in all areas of health care is impressive, mental health has stalled, if not worse than before age 40. Mr. Davis spoke to “K”.

“In fact, I came to this conclusion by trying to solve a dilemma, which was this: when we look at medicine, we see that results have improved over the past four decades in all areas except one, mental health. When we look at this sector, the results not only have not changed over this period of time, but have worsened in some indicators. For example, the effectiveness of psychiatric drugs has not improved since the 1980s, despite billions spent on research, marketing, and promotion. At the same time, rates of mental health disability have almost tripled in recent decades, and the prevalence of mental health problems has risen significantly, even though overall well-being in society has not necessarily worsened. There are several mechanisms that allowed this to happen. One mechanism that has allowed this failed system to continue to thrive is what I call the “depoliticization” of pain. In other words, this mechanism conceptualizes pain in a way that shields the current economy from criticism by reframing pain as rooted in individual rather than social causes, and it prioritizes individual rather than social and economic reforms. Our system is very good at privatizing pain. In other words, it has redefined individual mental health in line with the goals of the economy. Thus, health is defined as including those feelings, values, and behaviors that serve economic growth, productivity, and cultural fit, whether or not they are actually beneficial to the individual and society.

“If I wake up and find that my tweet has gone viral, the dopamine release will happen immediately.”

“We have all heard about the emotional damage caused by cyberbullying and harassment. We also know that nearly 60% of teens report some form of online harassment or bullying. We also heard about excessive screen usage. Half of teens report constant internet use, which is linked to worsening mental health. Constantly and mindlessly scrolling through the screen significantly reduces our ability to have any kind of focused attention, that is, the kind of attention that is absolutely necessary for, say, our academic performance. This phenomenon can now be seen as a social problem. We’ve also heard about the devastating emotional consequences of the “comparison culture” on social media, where we’re doomed to constantly compare ourselves in a bad light to the so-called “beautiful” lives that everyone else posts. Social media is teaching an entire generation, and I would call it the Insta generation, that one of the most important jobs in life is to create an attractive and enticing online image of ourselves. Thus, the acute danger for the Instagram generation is that the cultivation of image is now confused with the cultivation of character. Instead of working on developing useful and commendable personal qualities, we spend a lot of energy improving our online portrait.

“If I wake up and find that my tweet has gone viral, that I have thousands of likes, thousands of retweets (share), the dopamine release is immediate. I feel confident, I feel popular, I’m important right now, and I’m high. So the next day I come back and tweet again, but now I get no reaction from people, no likes, my psyche starts to drop, I feel depressed. What is the solution? Chasing the next big online hit by posting something that will put me back in the spotlight. Likes are a kind of new virtual drug, a cheap and legal psychoactive euphoria, to which we are increasingly striving to increase our self-esteem. Likes use our innate need for social recognition and approval in our social status reward system. But the big problem is the addictive nature of such a culture, which makes the easy pleasures and satisfactions that come from our social interactions in the real world seem less satisfying. Consequently, we replace the hard work required to create intimacy in the real world with the lure of instant gratification through virtual euphoria. Hence, it affects our ability to build relationships in the real world.