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Anxiety and the modern world. In the age of information, we live in a realm of ever-increasing change and intelligence about the world. We know far more about each other, the history, culture and rights that intertwine and make us strive for a better world. But not all changes and information make us better. A generation now sits absorbing headlines trying to keep up with myriad demands and pressures, all without a second thought. Many studies point towards rising anxiety and depression as features of the modern world- a ‘silent epidemic’ where expectations and social pressures rapidly change over a compressed time. This blog post takes some time to reflect on today’s age of information. The struggle to find an identity appears submerged in information excess. More people feel lost, empty and lonely. There is so much to know, so many opinions and seemingly infinite doubts about where we belong. In a fast-flowing world, finding a spiritual ground and disconnection appears vital to managing today’s information storm.

1) The modern information age :

From thoughts to single moments, anxiety depends on how we interpret events around us. The way we perceive the world has radically changed compared to generations before. No longer do we have to pick up a newspaper or flick on the TV. Information and communication lay at our fingertips and reaches beyond. The entire world’s news, in videos, photos and messages is available to us through our many screens. From every journalist to the layman. As citizens of the modern world, we hold little choice but to immerse ourselves into the plethora of comments, opinions, and world views delivered to us every hour; tossing and turning our minds on a daily. If advanced medicine, supercomputers and robotics were not enough for the modern being, some now shoot off into space in hopes of becoming a space-faring civilisation. The modern being with all its questions and answers leaves little untouched. Perhaps this is a reflection of humanity’s greatness? An extraordinary feat where human curiosity has driven technology and the thirst for information into every area of existence. As Ray Kurzweil sees it, extraordinary curiosity is what makes us human, we are compelled to reach beyond limits in the drive to continuously learn and build. Time has compressed and the modern being at the eclipse of more than 200 years of modern development find themselves with more information and communication than ever before.

2) What information overload has done to us:

a. Knowing more and knowing less

The unbridled hunger to know more, however, takes us deeper into the territory of ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown-unknowns’. This is not to reject humanity’s search for understanding or innovation, merely a reflection on today’s accelerated flux. The world sees dissolving boundaries, an age of information where connection and development transcend simple sketched lines. Amongst the vast web, the modern person can no longer stand still, to ‘live’ is to now stay in the constant information. Theories and opinions interspersing this planet. With all this global knowledge, connection and entertainment, have we come to take responsibility for new, complex levels of uncertainty?

The first source of uncertainty and anxiety for the modern person appears in the passive form, through mainstream and social media. Social media channels have transformed modern society, taking many of our interactions with each other online and giving us a means to not just follow our country’s affairs but also the entire world. Yet, the ground for open communication does not come clean and has developed with much bitterness. The outlet for all has dragged into an outlet for some to seize the space for vulgarity, hatred and misinformation. Invertedly, users quickly find themselves deep in an echo chamber, murmuring the same thoughts and feelings without critical thinking. Here, we find an immersion into endless pointless debates and disputes.

Today’s close and personal connection to new information bring further uncertainty when the inevitable social comparison occurs. Humans have been comparing with each other since existence, a natural act from our ultimate self-consciousness in which we seek to reaffirm our position amongst the social groups we belong to. Comparison takes a different fold today, browsing the internet and social media quickly brings people to the grand stage of consumerism and status. The information found and consumed reflects more shopping, the means to fill our lives with many things we do not need and instead to simply glamourise. There is nothing wrong with feeling better and beautiful but toxic when this information remains tangled in the vast online social sphere.

Many people spend their time binging on the life of others. They may not notice it, the endless scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, Tik-Tok or even LinkedIn brings them to see a stream of pictures and videos into the greatest snapshots of other people’s lives. Life here seems perfect, blissful for many and awful for the user. Some choose to not react; we get told enough times how everything is curated on social media. Others still find it impossible to halt the human compulsion to compare- such information is unavoidable and strangely addicting, being fed to the masses every few hours and every single day. In 2019, The Prince’s Trust found more than half of the 16–25-year-olds they surveyed reported feeling more anxious about their future when using social media sites/apps. The pressures felt through the vast and fast-moving online space leaves a whole growing generation, at a time of already great physical and mental change, suspended in a tussle for an identity/status. Gradually, the moments’ people choose to modify themselves or consume things out of enjoyment no longer concerns themselves but far beyond the verdict of others.

Behind social media, there is the concurrence of world news. The vast expansion of the media with today’s technology has shaped a current time that is always connected, recorded and reported to the global audience. In many ways, the immediate ability to release and read new information has given the masses a greater tool to scrutinise the work of political leaders and celebrity figures. Events, including many injustices, previously never had a channel to warrant the world’s attention, now an incident can be made public, going viral in minutes. Consuming enough news, however, makes dwell on a world forever corrupted by evil. A glance at the news makes you see headlines mulling over corrupt leaders, inequality, war, terror and rampant violence.

It remains obvious to say mainstream news outlets pander to our brain’s negative bias, drawing us deeper into our endless, sometimes irrational thoughts. As psychologist Logan Jones stresses “consuming too of this kind of information, whether actively or passively, can be very toxic, and what you hear has an impact on your mood.” Here we see many psychologists agree the constant exposure to negative information has physical effects on our body, triggering the amygdala and heightening our survival senses; one may conflate a minor setback event with a tragedy in the news to proclaim, in Hobbes’s state of nature, life being ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. The continuous images and videos across the largely negative news cycle can make us forget the strength of hope in humanity. Against the onslaught of humanity’s endless problems, it is the consciousness, feeling and desire to improve ourselves and help others that help humanity move forward, regardless, with meaning and purpose. Today’s unprecedented challenges equally mean a generation change, children and people taking a new stride towards tackling climate change, social/economic inequality and more. Hence, Prabhu and Nayak (2021)’s description of the media in health matters appears fitting- a ‘double-edged sword’ leaving people lost and swayed by misinformation, or possibly more aware.

b. The age of science and spiritual rejection:

With an abundance of information and a growing reality beyond our control, deeper uncertainty is found in the struggle with today’s postmodernist paradigm. Many of us are familiar with this history, an enlightenment period that saw scientists and thinkers finally escape the restraints of tradition. Out came the movement in the West to end all superstition and finally explain the world according to empirical and logical reason. Leap forward and we see liberalism as the status quo- a collection of ideas promulgated by weighty western thinkers and writers; concepts such as limited government, liberty, equality, individual freedom, tolerance, internationalism and free-market capitalism. Yet, with the context of history, the modern person is left asking: where were these enshrined values when the West led a colonial project across the world? The military interventions across Latin America and the Middle East? The poststructuralist paradigm arose with the power of history, striving to interrogate every power structure burdening the modern soul. This critical perspective has been a necessary step in the thinking journey. Finally, we see a new light on the many neglected voices and choices tucked under oppression and defeat. But a moment in the infinite push for deconstruction has arrived. The pit we continue to excavate, with more information and identities to grapple with, has been left empty. Reason has suddenly fueled a perverse urge to negate modern society of all meaning and purpose. Today’s parsed liberal society now belongs to an existence drowned in scepticism.

c. The Graveyard of Scepticism

Individual consciousness appears to now belong to a state of flux. The breaking of old-age false truths (i.e., around race and gender) sees with it a trail of social warriors. They are looking for more than justice, an avenue to dismiss and destroy all but their opinion. Their battle for knowledge and status even crosses faculty lines. Contextual knowledge and reasoning get batted away for a quick Google search. The modern search engine feeds this vocal minority with enough to pursue their biases. With opinions wielded as facts, a larger scepticism grows. The ordinary soul-searching individual is left lonely and afraid, witnessing every information they critically learn and accept as conflicted by an obsessive, opinionated online world. As Jeroen Kraaijenbrink (2020) reflects, the world feels hollow and anxious because scepticism has denied us of everything in the postmodern world:

“All of that, many of us—at least in Western society—have abandoned today. We don’t accept any know-it-all leaders, we don’t believe in an omnipresent god, we are suspicious of anything that is non-scientific and, with the many cases of fraud we are confronted with, we don’t even trust science any longer either. Our postmodern thinking has flushed all these certainties down the toilet.” Kraaijenbrink (2020)

The contentious clinical psychologist Dr Jordon Peterson and Dr Normain Doidge (2019: xviii-xxi) highlight this problem in their analysis of the Western modern world. Today reflects a postmodern ‘vacuum’- a space where many individuals sit alone without structure and meaning. Not just because of scientism but also the drive to reject absolute good and evil. Our efforts to appear ‘open’ and ‘tolerant’ has invited an opposing extreme, staunch ideologies battling themselves to be heard and exercised. Resultantly, the individual across the spectrum is left unfulfilled and unsatisfied. The freedom to follow one’s desires ironically sends us back yearning for structure, discipline and identity.

3) Where do the lost and overwhelmed go next?

In a world filled with so much circulating information, the idea of solutions may feel all the more overwhelming. Taking practical steps, however, is still an absolute necessity. A postmodern world where arguments, debates, news flashes and social media streams tug us into a perpetual storm of not knowing where we belong. A strong suggestion would be to embrace digital minimalism as a rule of personal discipline. This is not said as just another hipster fad calling for you to throw away your possessions but rather a decision to outline what you value beyond all tech and make those into fine actions. Take a simple pen and notepad- remind yourself of your good qualities, who you love or appreciate, and begin noting just a few tasks down you could do away from your phone or computer- i.e., DIY, cleaning, random chores. Through this simple exercise, done weekly or daily should quickly remind us how little the outside digital world matters to how we define ourselves now and into the future. As human beings, we survive beyond the information flow, as a physical body with a soul that nourishes food, friendship, nature and contentment; the vast number of events happening across the world and internet beyond your single scope of control. It should be possible to see we all have the ability and need to slow down in the hyper-active world- I still hold authority over how I spend my time locally such as resting, being productive and feeding my moral conscience. Hence, those lost in the vast digital space need to look more closely at their surroundings, finding patience and value in their local human experiences.

Doing the simple things in life is often enough to disconnect from the seemingly mad world. It is easy to submerge yourself in videos, tv-shows and games but taken too far, these serve to distract than engage with your pondering self. To practice a deeper disconnection is to move away from the vastness of the digital world and traverse through raw practices of your immediate senses- to read, listen, write, sight-see monuments and treasures, exercise your body, excite new taste-buds by cooking. Even an act like cleaning becomes a means to engage with our surroundings, helping us find sole focus and fulfilment in a result that belongs to our immediate actions.  These are only some examples but do enough to emphasise how life in a fast-moving, sometimes the chaotic world can be slowed down by connecting to actions that are closer to us. Importantly, this means not striving for the internet’s snapshots of success, simply just yourself working to your pace and expectations. There is no demand to do the extraordinary, only a space to cherish learning, developing, growing and completing. Thus, the focus turns to the present, doing what is within our capacity and what is right, not getting caught amongst the shards of a splintering world.