Touchstones: The rise of social anxiety

As we head into the last month of 2025, perhaps it is time to take a long view of what happened this year. Wars, natural disasters and huge social changes shook every part of the world. Above all, Trump happened to the world and no country has been allowed to forget what a single maverick politician can do to bring an era to an end.

Since there is time yet to assess all that and by analysts far more erudite, let me look at an aspect that has worried people like me: the rise of social anxiety and its consequences. Virtually every day, one reads about suicides by young people, families that have stopped being connected with each other, broken relationships — whether marital or social — and the alarming rate at which the young keel over and suddenly die of a stroke or heart attack in the prime of their life. Is there a pattern here that we must now confront and deal with before it’s too late?

The answer I think is a resounding yes. Traditional roles (parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, the rise of social groups hitherto invisible to us, such as women) have radically changed. Perhaps the more correct way of describing all the above is that a rewiring of society has crept upon us while we were sleeping. Homes, schools, social interaction are no longer what they were at the turn of the century and neither are the rising levels of insecurity despite better incomes, poverty alleviation and better healthcare.

Mental health issues, earlier dismissed as imaginary or pooh-poohed as the indulgence of a few, are now considered an even more important disease than cancer. New initiatives and remarkable medical research have now made it possible for certain types of cancer to be completely cured. Sadly, we are still in a state of denial about the pernicious spread of mental health issues across countries and age groups. The time has come to wake up to what this portends for all humanity.

A few months ago, a friend who knows my voracious appetite where books are concerned, sent me Jonathan Haidt’s 2024 bestseller, ‘The Anxious Generation’. The New York Times had called it “endlessly wise and engrossing” and his research and data are truly impressive. What he calls the Great Rewiring of Childhood (its addiction to social media) has resulted in an epidemic of mental illness that has killed so many. This is now accepted by several psychologists as this massive shift in human behaviour is widely held across the world by sociologists, educationists and social scientists of every hue.

All of us have friends who have lost a young one to suicide, committed over an issue that seems so absurd. Others have had friends suddenly keel over and die even as they were at the gym, on a treadmill. Still others have had young friends struck by brain-stroke in the prime of their life. Anxiety, sleeplessness, withdrawal from a social group or family, loneliness, the burden of unsustainable peer pressure, fear of being ignored or ‘missing out’ — all these are reasons offered. Certainly, these are common reasons, commonly accepted by those who are engaged in the study of such issues.

However, the question that then arises is, how can we deal with them and what changes are necessary to set the clock at normal? Naturally, there is no one magic wand that can heal everyone and all of us have to rewire ourselves. Everything, as with most problems, begins at home. From parenting to childcare and schools — the first step is to be there for your children instead of handing them over to a nanny or childcare facilities. It is not easy to do this in current times, given the rising ambitions of young parents and the pressures of a demanding worklife. Bringing up a child is the duty of both parents and if needed, one of the two will have to take a break.

I see a change in some cases: work from home is a growing option. In the children’s park in our colony, I often see a father bringing in a child to play while he sits around responding to the child’s excited chatter. Sadly, there are many more nannies there, one hand holding a mobile phone to catch up with her calls and chats away from the cameras installed by parents to ensure she does not neglect her duties. In schools, recess time is also reduced as many students are given their lunch and just half an hour to run around. Mobile access is allowed by some at that time, so guess where the kids head instead of playing with each other?

Meanwhile, parents at work are grappling with workloads that grow larger each year. Incentives lure them to accept unsustainable targets or face humiliation. Delivery boys are expected to drive in insane traffic to deliver a pizza or a kilo of potatoes in 10 minutes because that is what is expected by the client at the other end. Respect for the worker is rare and swearing at someone who failed a task or an outright firing are now routine. Impatience, the ability to not understand another person’s personal problems, no respect for co-workers and impossible demands will naturally create an eco-system that will kill all of us of anxiety one day.

Slowing down in these super-fast times is not an option, dying early is.

— The writer is a social commentator