I had a thought several months back while on vacation with my family, as my wife had both of our kids elsewhere and I had a few minutes alone which, as any of you who have or have had small children can attest to, is the only time I get to actually think. Throughout the millions of years of human existence and the tens of thousands of years of civilization, our species has communicated via a single medium: face-to-face, with words, gestures, posture, and facial expression. Over the course of the past decade, perhaps a bit more, that has radically changed. Of course, the telephone has been around for over a century, and for the majority of that time has been a mainstay in the American household. Written correspondence has also been a thing for centuries; but the supercomputers in our pockets have represented an evolution in human communication unlike anything before. Now I have a speaking/listening device everywhere I go, rather than on the wall in my parents’ kitchen connected to a coiled wire. Not only can I talk to whomever I want from nearly anywhere, but I can text, email, or access any piece of information my heart desires from the middle of the woods, or on that vacation with my family, if I so choose.
The question is: what does this mean, and how is it truly affecting people, particularly young people, whose brains are still developing and have never lived in an age when there wasn’t more iPhones than there are people?
As recent as the early 2000’s, there were very few other options to engage risky communications than face-to-face. It wasn’t common for people to ask someone on a date via email, or end a relationship, or face any general conflict other than in person or, to a lesser extent, over the phone. Research strongly suggests that the more that people are exposed to anxiety provoking stimuli, the less anxiety they begin to have. In the digital age, we haven’t mitigated the risk of embarrassment caused by rejection, however we have virtually eliminated the need to ante up the guts to make the initial advance. Approaching a relative stranger and asking for a date is terrifying, but asking for what we want is great practice, and people who lack the ability to ask for what they want seldom get it. Further, people who don’t believe they can get what they want often suffer from a common mental disorder: anxiety.
A New York Times Magazine article last year cited a study by the American College Health Association, which asked university undergrads if they had experienced “overwhelming anxiety” during the past year. 62 percent said that they had, up from 50 percent just five years earlier. Now I’m not insinuating that the recent surge in anxiety among young people is exclusively the result of the digital infiltration of every facet of their lives. That would be oversimplifying and it is truly way more complicated than that. However, to what extent is the avoidance of social risk compromising their ability to handle stress and pressure? It’s an interesting question, and unfortunately not one that we can answer right now, though we can offer some potential solutions that may help bolster you or your young person’s ability to handle the stresses associated with social life.
When I work with someone who comes to me and complains of anxiety, I start by asking three questions: What’s your diet like? What’s your sleep schedule? And how often do you exercise? If any one of those three fundamentals are off, the results can be pretty bad, and so if that’s the case, the first thing we do is strategize ways to correct the diet, the sleep habits, or the physical activity (or any combination of those). As it relates to young people, whose brains are still developing and are experiencing a surge of pubescent hormones, the necessity for those three spheres to be in order is even greater. A healthy lifestyle obviously isn’t a cure all, but it’s certainly the most straightforward place to start.
So take care of yourself, put your phone away and make sure you spend at least a half hour each day actually talking to another human being in the flesh. Practice constructive criticism and other forms of risky social engagement with friends. Force yourself and your kids outside of their comfort zone and face what comes with it; the expansion of your comfort zone will make you a little less susceptible to the crippling anxiety that so many of us are dealing with.