Now more than ever, life has been made easier through technological innovations such as remote jobs, social media, Instacart, Amazon, online therapy sessions, and so on. Everything is a click away, your friends, your groceries, your education, your bills, but at what cost is this all possible?
Technology is making life easier, but at the same time, it is maximizing profits for capitalists with little to no concern for its adverse effects on consumers.
According to Statistic Canada (2016), there has been an increase in anxiety disorders, depression and other mental illnesses over the last 30 years.
Additionally, people are getting diagnosed with depression as young as 12 years old, despite numerous innovations meant to make life “better.”
Human development is essential to our existence, so why does it appear that people are struggling more despite countless innovations meant to improve our quality of life?
Big Think, a multimedia web portal founded in 2007, released an interview with Ian Bremmer (a political scientist) on the predictions of the 10 biggest world threats of 2023. The 7th ranked threat is “arrested global development.”
Under arrested global development Bremmer says,
“For 50 years the world has seen incredible human improvement in education, in health and lifespan, in economic growth across the world, that wasn’t just a tiny group of rich people that were taking advantage, it was the emergence of a global middle class. We are now seeing that turn around.”
He also says,
“The United Nations has estimated 5 years of human development on the planet has been lost from the 3 years since the pandemic has begun, and in 2023, those losses will only accelerate.”
In short, the incredible technological and economic growth of the last fifty years is now coinciding with a significant social decline, which Bremmer mentions in his interview.
Technological advancements also contribute to increased levels of social anxiety, even in surface-level encounters, as people no longer need to participate in the pre-technological era’s social interactions.
As a result, we can see a decline in many social tendencies such as trust, commitment, socialization and overall unique connections with other individuals.
Technology has made life much easier. Consequently, we have yet to consider its effects on human development and social interactions. This makes it essential to (sometimes) detach ourselves from the virtual world and practice mindfulness.
It is easy to get caught up in this capitalistic society, but for the sake of our well-being and mental health, we must learn to draw the line and identify what is actually improving the quality of human life.