IT was a couple of years before Covid-19 that I started realising that something was changing quite fundamentally on the mental health front for students who were coming to my classes at our university.

A lot more students started showing signs of stress, anxiety, and even depression than what I had noticed earlier. Initially I attributed it to the peculiarities of living in Pakistan and how poorly the economy was doing, but it was much more than that.

After 20-odd years of teaching, it was a first for me to have a student tell me that my voice was a ‘trigger’ for her and it was a strong enough trigger that she had to leave the class sometimes. This was not the only incident of the kind.

Then Covid struck. During and post Covid, the demand for mental health services exploded. This was not only the case in universities I was directly involved with. I was, then, a part of a global forum of Deans of Schools of Education, and all members shared similar experiences. Something was happening to the young. There was far more stress, anxiety, depression, and other issues that they faced. The trend has been continuing beyond Covid.

Recently, I read Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024). Jonathan Haidt, a well-known social psychologist, wrote a fairly well-considered book The Righteous Mind a few years back. The Anxious Generation gives a very good explanation of what we are seeing.

Children born in the age of internet, smartphones and social media have had a very different childhood than the previous generations. These children, by and large, have spent a lot less time socialising with real friends, playing outside their home or in the neighbourhood with other children; they have had less interaction with the larger family and neighbourhood elders, less time being on their own, less time with physical books, and have been less engaged in movement and physical activity.

There is far more stress, anxiety, and depression among the youth than previously.

These children spend a lot more time online; their friends and social circles are also more online; their social interaction is more in the virtual world too; and social media is where their ‘communities’ are.

Previous generations were not as much online and wired into social media. The difference has significant consequences. It is not only that spending too much time online can impact one’s social life, eyesight or ability to concentrate, according to evidence marshalled by Haidt, it can actually rewire childhood completely.

Besides, 24-hour exposure to and presence on social media leads to high levels of anxiety and stress and can be triggers for depression. It isolates children and increases their distance from ‘real’ people and can undermine ‘real’ relationships. Social media exaggerates peer pressure and can be a very harsh and callous critic. The impact of social media on girls, according to the research Haidt shares, is of far more significance than for boys.

In most countries, 18 years is the age when adulthood begins. In many places, this is the age when young people can get a driving licence and are able to buy tobacco and alcohol products. But, Haidt points out, though social media can have a much larger impact, even in terms of addiction, most countries do not have stringent laws regarding children’s engagement with social media and how much time they can spend on it, etc.

The US has an old law that allows 13-year-olds to sign into social media and give their consent for use of their data to companies. The companies ask if the 13-year-old has parental consent but do not actually check if they do. So, effectively, children can go online on social media at any age. Parents over-protect their children from threats in the real world (this is one explanation for the decline in the outdoor activity of children over the last few decades) but most parents are not even aware of the threats and harm they expose their children to when they spend time on social media.

Australia has recently taken the radical step of banning social media for children under 16. Why not 18, if we take it as the age when adulthood begins and know that social media has a significantly negative effect on younger people? Most other countries have not even started this debate yet.

Of course, on the other side are the very large social media companies. Like the tobacco companies of previous decades, these social media companies have a strong interest in lobbying against bans; they highlight the positives of social media and suppress information about the negative impacts. They even have an interest in underwriting and producing research that ‘shows’ that the causality claims about the harm social media can cause are false or exaggerated. Or they present correlation as causation.

There is some literature on Pakistan that shows high levels of anxiety and stress amongst youngsters. But we do not have a lot of research about the impact of the internet, smartphones and social media on the Pakistani youth. Part of the reason might be that internet penetration is not universal as yet, though it is increasing over time. But the phenomenon is clear in schools and universities. I have only my own and my colleagues’ experiences to go by, and we await more systematic research on the issue. But if we are going down the path other countries have taken, we are in for difficult times.

There is a lot that can be done by parents, schools and the government. Parents can limit their child’s exposure to social media and schools can ban phones during school hours. Countries can enact laws that regulate the exposure of children. But all this requires awareness of the issue. Currently, we are at this first stage in Pakistan.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives, and an associate professor of economics at Lums.

Published in Dawn, December 20th, 2024