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The next epidemic is here
This time around, the disease isn’t a pathogen
If you’ve been following recent trends lately, there’s a chance you may have heard about a startling one called hikikomori. This new idea, which initially started in Japan, has spread like wildfire. The notion behind it lies in the rejection of societal pressures through not working, training, or engaging with the outside world. Since its conception, the idea behind the hikikomori movement has tremendously exploded in popularity; it rapidly spread to China in the infamous lie flat movement and even to the United States in the form of no education, employment, or training movement— NEET.
This startling trend did not emerge overnight. In fact, about a decade ago, something began to unsettle psychologists and psychiatrists…
Rates of diagnosis with anxiety and depression began skyrocketing among teens to levels never previously recorded in human history — and continued to do so since the discovery of such an association in 2012. Horrified by these startling trends, psychologists and psychiatrists arrived to the conclusion that the degree of psychological languish being experienced is sufficient to constitute a “public health crisis.” Over time, psychologists felt that the newfound trends in the rise of depression, anxiety, and loneliness became endemic to the degree that they “should be considered a disease of modernity.” While life as a teenager is undoubtedly difficult, the rapid rise of the diagnoses of psychiatric conditions among teens implies that something has fundamentally changed in our society starting since 2012. Since then, self-reported feelings of loneliness have risen in tandem with these ballooning rates of mental health afflictions. Coincidentally, 2012, which was also the year of publication for the paper mentioned above, marked the same time social media became mainstream. However, what change can account for the incredible doubling in the rates of diagnosis with depression and anxiety, alongside the intense self-reported feelings of loneliness soaring?
The current epidemic we are experiencing has relatively recent beginnings. It started with the internet but really began to spread in 2007. Then, Steve Jobs announced the advent of technology capable of connecting people to one another in a way never seen before…
