Rusty Shackleford

If smartphone use is global, why is the strongest evidence of surging teen anxiety mostly in English-speaking countries and not in their less-English-speaking neighbors?

My answer is that although mental illness is global, the experience of mental illness cannot be separated from culture. If there is a surge of Anglospheric gloom among teenagers, we have to study the culture that young people are consuming with their technology. In the past generation, the English-speaking world, led by the U.S., has experimented with a novel approach to mental health that has expanded the ranks of the “worried well,” while social media has surrounded young people with reminders to obsess over their anxieties and traumas, just as U.S. news media have inundated audiences with negativity to capture their fleeting attention.

As an American citizen living in Europe since July of 2022 and maintaining dual residency, I posit that “quiet desperation is the English way”, but we Americans do it “loud and proud”.