The Mental Health Crisis Created by the Digital Age of Distraction

I used to be an avid reader. I would pick up a book from the library and lose myself for hours in the world the writer had created. I used to write school papers that required cognitive strain, hard work, and thoughtful research. But in the process, I would gain knowledge and feel a real sense of accomplishment when I finished. I read the newspaper and subscribed to magazines known for long-form journalism. When I reflect on this now, I’m hit with nostalgia for those times and their relative simplicity compared with today’s fast paced world.

Many of those habits have fallen away because of the demands of life—work, parenting, household chores—but the digital age has also played a major role. I’m certainly grateful for the progress that has come from advances in technology. It has given us considerable benefits, saved us time, and helped us stay connected. BUT it has also made us busier and lonelier than ever!

In my free moments, I feel myself drawn to my phone, scrolling mindlessly. When I’m working hard on a task and feel the inevitable cognitive strain, I consider using ChatGPT to do the “hard work” for me. I turn to ChatGPT to research a product I’m considering buying, then don’t check the sources (spoiler alert: the sources are awful and unreliable). I also notice that my mental health is struggling and my brain feels weaker. Where did my hard-earned critical-thinking skills go? What is really going on here?

The tech corporations that dominate our society intend for us to unthinkingly turn to them for information and entertainment, while simultaneously gathering data about us to anticipate our every need (Foer, 2017). We’re living in an attention economy. Our attention is being monetized, and now, with the rise of AI, we’re being offered the convenience of offloading our thinking. There are dangerous consequences to this.

Before I dive into what we can do on an individual level, I want to emphasize that governments and institutions have a role to play in protecting us. I hope we’re moving, albeit slowly, in the right direction through recent efforts to regulate technology and restrict social media use in schools and among youth more broadly. Meta’s recent agreement to pay $17 billion US to settle claims by American states that Facebook and Instagram were designed to be addictive and unsafe for children is a big deal (CBC News, 2026). May this be a watershed moment!

What Is the Impact on Mental Health?

Regardless of whether or not governments and institutions develop a moral compass and do what they should to protect their citizens, we can still act. Individually and collectively, we can better understand what is happening and fight for our right as human beings to think deeply!

Social media usage activates powerful responses in the brain’s reward, attention, and emotion-regulation systems. Dopamine plays an important role in reward and reinforcement (Harvard Health Publishing, n.d.). Frequent social media use causes changes in brain activity in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala, leaving a person more emotionally sensitive and less adept at decision-making (De et all., 2025). AI-driven algorithms intensify this by continually optimizing the content we see to hold our attention, reinforcing patterns that can contribute to addictive behaviours.

Recent research on AI engagement shows that our reliance on these assistants is lowering our overall brain connectivity leading to skill decay and decreased information retention. (De et al., 2025) This is resulting in a weakened sense of ownership over the work we do and just general under-engagement.

Through a perverse reward system, these technologies motivate us to engage with content that provides little or no value. They fracture our attention and promote tribalism instead of an acceptance of difference.

The fallout of this is increased anxiety, depression, mood and sleep disorders, and just an overall decline in our confidence AND concrete abilities (Devi & Singh, 2023). Our brains are becoming weaker and we are becoming more passive. The non-contemplative life is more internally reactive.

What’s Being Lost?

What’s being lost is significant.

Our human capacity for deep focus allows us to gain intensive knowledge, think critically, cultivate creativity, remember things, invest in meaningful human connection, and expand our moral imagination.

All of this is at the core of what it means to be human.

Without the time for or nurturing of deep thought, our sense of self becomes more fractured, leaving us with a diminished form of humanity (Newport, 2016). We need time to think about who we are. We also need support from our environments and institutions (i.e. cognitive scaffolding) to support the development of deep thought and understand ourselves in relationship to the world.

Take Action

We can be intentional about our cognitive fitness in the same way we are about our physical and mental health. In the current climate, I think this requires a sense of resistance: a commitment not to sit by passively and take the easy route being spoon-fed to us on a silver platter.

This starts with taking a critical look at what we consume cognitively and deciding what to do about it. Think about it like the food we eat: there is nourishing food, and there is junk food. Social media apps are like junk food for the mind.

Avoid short-form video content that is curated by an algorithm. If you can’t cut it out completely, limit it to specific times and set time limits. Make it a little harder to access by deleting the apps from your phone. With AI, using it to reduce tedious work makes sense. Of course we want to leverage available technologies to become more efficient. But think twice before using AI to avoid cognitive strain altogether.

Carve out dedicated time to exercise your mind. Read real books. Take time to reflect and write. Deep reading processes are the cognitive equivalent of going for a jog: it strengthens the mind and helps us produce original thoughts and insights (Newport, 2016). You might feel some resistance, but the benefits are worth it. With the brain, we know that the more you practice something, the better you get at it.

In a busy world, this may seem overwhelming. We need to function in the reality we live in. I use technology every day for work. I’ll use it to post this blog. I’ll use social media to reach a wider audience. And every day, I work hard to limit my consumption of junk technology and make time for reading and writing. Do I have lapses? Absolutely! But I get back on the proverbial horse again and again. When I do, I notice a marked improvement in my mental health.

Therapy is a place that cultivates deep reflection, which is another form of cognitive fitness. It provide a safe place to help you reflect on and redefine your sense of self. The therapistprovides the cognitive scaffolding that helps you make sense of yourself in relationship to others and challenges you to grow. Much like reading and writing, taking the time to reflect and work on yourself involves a certain amount of cognitive strain. It’s hard work. It takes time. Yet it is a commitment to maintaining your wholeness as a human being and a form of resistance against the attention economy that seems committed to making us stupider and less connected than ever.

References

CBC News. (2026, August 27). Meta agrees to $16.7B US settlement over social media harms to children. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/meta-social-media-harms-settlement-9.7320919

De, D., El Jamal, M., Aydemir, E., & Khera, A. (2025). Social media algorithms and teen addiction: Neurophysiological impact and ethical considerations. Cureus, 17(1), Article e77145. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.77145

Devi, K. A., & Singh, S. K. (2023). The hazards of excessive screen time: Impacts on physical health, mental health, and overall well-being. Journal of Education and Health Promotion, 12, Article 413. https://doi.org/10.4103/jehp.jehp_447_23

Foer, F. (2017). World without mind: The existential threat of big tech. Penguin Press.

Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Penguin Press.

Harvard Health Publishing. (n.d.). Dopamine: The pathway to pleasure. https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/dopamine-the-pathway-to-pleasure

Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y. T., Situ, J., Liao, X.-H., Beresnitzky, A. V., Braunstein, I., & Maes, P. (2025). Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task [Preprint]. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.08872

Newport, C. (2016). Deep work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world. Grand Central Publishing.