The Endless-Entertainment-Problem: Investigating Screentime and Mental Health

Nearly 3 in every 5 teenage girls in America have felt “persistently sad or hopeless in 2021”. This new research from the CDC has circulated every corner of Facebook Mom group chats, Mental Health Awareness TikToks, and podcast bros. And for a good reason.

It’s fucking scary.

How is it that nearly 60% of teenage girls, 6 million of the estimated 10 million teenage girls in America have persistent feelings of sadness? How is it that 1/3 of these girls seriously considered suicide, an increase of 60% over the last decade?

How could have it gotten this bad?

Sure, the pandemic didn’t help. Sure, social media beginning to gain traction in 2012 exasperated the problem. But I think blaming all of the world’s ills on social media is reductionist and too easy. Though the constant comparison and popularity wars that plague Twitter threads and Instagram comment sections have not helped teen mental health in any capacity, I believe social media is just one cog, a very large cog at that, in the machine that has been engineering the current mental health crisis we see rising.

I deem it the Endless-Entertainment Problem. In an age of every show and movie at our fingertips, countless articles and YouTube rabbit holes just a click away, and social media apps employing our brain circuitry against us, we have alienated ourselves from our minds, and as a result, lost touch with ourselves. By losing touch with ourselves, our thoughts, our feelings, and our humanity, we’ve become unable to cope with the adversity we face, and as a result, become over-stressed and depressed, anxious, suicidal, or just sick.

In a way, we’ve dissociated from ourselves. Carl Jung believed that psychological disorders ensued after an individual’s subconscious and consciousness became separated, and I believe that’s the exact scenario we’re faced with here.

Our golden age of entertainment and the internet has not only provided us massive leaps and bounds in informing us about the world we live in, but in doing so, it has alienated us from ourselves, and unable to cope with the increasing stresses of the modern world, we are digging ourselves deeper into a mental health crisis.

Before I go further, I’d like to state this is a mere theory in the works. I’m some 20-year-old college kid on the internet who listens to too many podcasts, hits the gym questionably often, probably watches too many psychology YouTube videos, and reads a bit too much self-development “just for fun”, but alas, here I am. So if you’re reading, thanks. And if you’re about to click off, well, I’ll see you later! :) But without further ado, let’s dive into the Endless-Entertainment-Problem.

First, I’d like to define stress. That’s a buzzword we keep hearing more of. Whether it be through Mindfulness classes, Mental Health Days, or cucumber spas, we’re constantly being told that we need to de-stress. But what the hell even is stress?

Stress, defined by the World Health Organization(WHO):

“Stress can be defined as a state of worry or mental tension caused by a difficult situation. Stress is a natural human response that prompts us to address challenges and threats in our lives. Everyone experiences stress to some degree. The way we respond to stress, however, makes a big difference to our overall well-being.”

Okay. So basically, stress is normal, something that we all experience, whether we’re a millionaire on a yacht or a street food vendor. Furthermore, stress is something to be responded to! And the way we respond to stress, whether it be through exercise or meditation, or punching our pillow, makes a difference in our psychological, physical, and social well-being. Cool.

Those things I mentioned above, how we respond to stress, are known as coping mechanisms. Strategies or things we do to help us, well, cope, with stress. These can range from pumping iron to smoking weed to yelling at our partners. These coping mechanisms can help or hurt our health, but the bottom line is, they are meant to take us away and relieve the stress to some capacity. Now, I don’t think that we’re necessarily experiencing an abundance of more stress in modern times than we were in ye olden days.

I mean, 25,000 years ago we were probably being chased by mountain lions and jaguars wanting to rip us apart(please fact-check this, I have no idea what I’m talking about), and now, our modern stressors are having to talk to the Starbucks barista. Look, I’m not here to argue whether or not people experience more or less stress than we did in the past, but what I am here to say is that our ability to cope with stress has likely decreased.

Go back twenty or thirty years, before the internet explosion and the age of infinite entertainment, our coping mechanisms for dealing with stress were far more limited. We couldn’t just doom scroll for an eternity, no, we had to go for walks or hit the gym, or cry and be consoled by friends or family. Some turned to alcohol or drugs(keep in mind that Gen Z has the lowest rates of drinking in comparison to previous generations) or whatever other method was at hand. But when it came to having negative thoughts about oneself, about anxiety or depression or just the confusing directions one may be taking in life, they couldn’t just escape into Netflix, they had to deal with the problems.

How many people do you know need to scroll on TikTok for 30 minutes in bed before finally falling asleep? Scrolling and scrolling until their brain is sapped of dopamine and their receptors are fried. Swipe after swipe until their eyes finally force them shut. Maybe that’s you. I’d argue that these people that need to “swipe-till-they-see-sheep” are habituated to this routine, and one of the main reasons they need their brains to feel sapped before falling asleep is because if they didn’t have TikTok or music or a podcast or something to busy their brains, they’d be alone with their thoughts and feelings.

They’d be alone with all the regrets and dark memories of the past. Alone with their mistakes and doubts about their existence. Alone with all the existentialism and nihilism that accompanies their dreadful, boring existence. The doom scrolling before sleep is not something to make them happy or excited before they start seeing sheep, but rather, something to distract them from their thoughts. They don’t need to confront all the bullshit and difficulties which haunt them at night because their brain is so tired after doing dopamine-fueled marathons watching endless food reviews, celebrities dancing, teenage girls shaking their asses, and whatever cesspool of content is on TikTok.

Instead of confronting the human condition’s existential angst, people escape to binging Succession, staying up late to play Valorant, or endless scrolling on Instagram. They never have to confront their feelings or deal with the thoughts that haunt their nightmares because they can just whip out their phone and distract themselves. In an age of infinite entertainment at our fingertips, we’re essentially distracting ourselves from the questions and angst we all must confront, hence the Endless-Entertainment-Problem. And the longer one fails to acknowledge this darkness lurking in the recesses of their minds, the greater the list of mistakes, the more dreadful the anxiety, the more meaningless the life and the more severe depression takes hold.

In the same way, a wealthy, suburban, white dad escapes the existential dread of his life by purchasing a new shiny BMW in the hurl of a mid-life crisis, the teenagers and young adults of today turn to streaming services, social media, videogames, and any other form of entertainment to quiet the voices in their head.

The link between screen time and depression has been recorded in a few studies. Most of these studies have been observational, not introducing many experimental conditions or changing people’s behaviors under controlled circumstances, but this study uses data from the NHANES(National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) 2012 survey to tease apart the relationship between self-reported screen time(including social media, TV, laptop, phone) use and self-reported depressive symptoms. The sample was of 3200 US citizens from a variety of backgrounds, males, and females. The study revealed an association between higher screen time, markedly 6 or more hours daily, and a greater risk of depression. Thus one can conclude that most people who spend a lot of time on screens probably have more severe depression symptoms. More work needs to be done in this field, especially with the recent Covid-19 pandemic and concerning teens especially, however, this does answer the question of whether or not such an association between mental health and screen time does exist. And it does. Moving on.

Okay Armaan, great, so your theory is that people who spend more time on their screens, distracting themselves from their thoughts and feelings with social media, video games, and Netflix, are more depressed because they’re not confronting themselves. Cool, you’ve outlined the problem, now what are some solutions?

Well, dear reader, I’m so glad you asked. I’m going to write and talk more about this in the future, but I’d like to at least bring in some of the basics. Now, I’m not going to ask you to delete all social media, sell your Playstation, and cancel your HBO subscription. I do spend time on my phone, play Hogwarts Legacy on my PS4, and enjoy The Sopranos on HBO and I would say my mental health is better than most. But at the same time enjoying those things life has to offer, I also take walks by myself through the city or nature. Not with AirPods or a podcast playing, just me, my coffee in a thermos, and the birds chirping. I have my morning meditation and time to just sit with my thoughts. I take a second before I go to sleep to recount my day and recognize the things I’m grateful for. Even though I love podcasts and YouTube videos, I take some time away from them, when I’m cooking or eating meals, sitting outside reading a book, or just taking a second to breathe.

So please, dear reader, take some time to be with yourself. Go for walks, start journaling, begin a little meditation practice, and do something to just sit and be still. It will be difficult at first, especially if you’re someone with headphones always in your ear or music playing in the background. But it will be so worth it. Suddenly you’ll find solutions to problems you’re facing popping into your mind at random. You’ll think of interesting and creative ideas or ventures you’ll want to pursue. You’ll reminisce on the past or fantasize about the future or even just admire the present. You’ll find the beauty in everyday experiences like the magnificence of a tree or seeing a rat steal a slice of pizza. Taking time to just breathe and sit with yourself will reinvigorate your days, make you feel like you’re living instead of just existing, and allow you to rekindle your passion for life.

Confront your thoughts, emotions, and yourself by taking a break from the endless entertainment available at your fingertips. It’s worth it. Trust me.

Thank you so much for reading. Stay curious. 🙂

• Armaan