Of course, pandemic-related health concerns have been the major focus of health care workers and hospitals, but we also need to address the mental health costs of the pandemic. Scrolling through social media often triggers feel-good dopamine neural circuits, revving up the same neurotransmitters that drive any addictive behavior, whether it involves drugs, gambling, food, or fear of missing out.ĭirecting people with mental health issues toward harmful media exposure has been even more malicious during the Covid-19 pandemic. Social media platforms are ideal for the pursuit of fresh content with their incessant offerings of flashy and exciting imagery and information. As social beings, we crave connections to others, and our brains have evolved to seek novelty. The technology is designed to get us hooked. Of course, it’s natural for adolescents to suffer from self-doubt and peer pressure however, body image messages propelled by Facebook and Instagram have been directly linked to risk for eating disorders. When a teenage girl searches for help online because she feels overweight, she gets bombarded with ads and images that make her feel worse about herself. But it also escalates psychological problems like loneliness, anxiety, and depression, as well as eating disorders, substance abuse, and suicide. The current social media business model that fuels controversy, fear, negativity, divisiveness, and disinformation boosts ad sales and revenues. Our ever-present screens and devices have accelerated the pace at which these events occur. Although social contagion sometimes spreads positive emotions and behaviors, like those at sports events, mass hysteria outcomes are generally negative. Reports of mass hysteria, ranging from nun-biting epidemics to outbreaks of fits and seizures, date back to the Middle Ages. Rates of depression and anxiety climbed across the globe in 2020, analysis finds The psychosomatic symptoms spread rapidly among the children: witnessing their classmates fall ill during a school assembly triggered a spread of symptoms through the 224 students honoring the sixth-graders who were graduating. Nicholi, revealed that this mystery illness was due to mass hysteria, a bodily epidemic with psychological rather than physical causes. The study I conducted with my mentor, Armand M. I saw a news report about 34 children in a school in Norwood, Mass., a Boston suburb, being rushed to the hospital after sudden onset of dizziness, hyperventilation, headache, and nausea. I first studied the health effects of social contagion as a psychiatry resident at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. I instantly feared for my own daughter, as I’m sure many others did too. So I was concerned when whistleblower Francis Haugen exposed Facebook’s awareness of the mental health consequences of its algorithms on users. How are angry mobs storming the Capitol and Facebook driving our daughters to bulimia related? Both were propelled by mass hysteria, a powerful force that drives human behavior.Īs a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, I have studied how social contagion and the use of technology affect humans’ brains and behavior since the late 1970s. Exclusive analysis of biotech, pharma, and the life sciences Learn More
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