I am convinced that the American way of life is the
cause of the rampant mental illness that we see in America today. The skyrocketing levels of depression, and feelings of being isolated from other people, despite not actually being "technically" isolated.
The obesity epidemic, which no one really talks about anymore in America, is driven by the way our suburbs and cities are designed. In most places, you can't just walk to a store and get what you need. They're almost always out of walking distance. So even if you just need some burger buns or something, you have to hop in the stupid car and drive to a place to get your stuff.
Everything seems to be designed to waste your time, make you fat, and keep you in debt to corporations. This apparently is the American dream. :/
I dunno, American suburbs not being walkable, lacking public spaces, and requiring a car for everything has been around for as long as I've been alive.
IMO, the mental health issues we see now are related to several factors, including smart phones (constantly putting obligations on you), social media, the aftermath of the pandemic, the corpocracy, constant attempts to trick you/get your money (scammers), and society being more open about people having mental health issues.
One psychology paper I read a while ago hypothesized that living in what they called a "scam culture", where you have to be on guard 24/7 against scams, has created a society where we are far less trusting of each other. I think there's something to that.
I've also read that Gen Z's are starting to keep their phones on Do Not Disturb all the time, because it becomes overwhelming when they don't, with all the notifications, texts, etc. Keeping it on DND provides them some measure of control.
And just on a personal note, it's been sad to see so many of the things that were predicted in the 90's about how we were heading to a corpocracy come to be. Too many times we've gone to buy something and found that our choices are ridiculously limited, and effectively we are left with choosing which vendor to buy the same exact, mass-produced product from.
Finally (as long as we're just complaining here
), I had an interesting exchange with a customer service person from a bank the other day. I was trying to transfer money from one bank to another and the number of hoops I had to jump through were ridiculous. Verification codes, activations, confirmations, log-ins, and of course a call to customer service. Then when I finally got it all done, I got an email notification, a text asking "how did we do", and another email asking for me to rate them.
When I finally got it all done I told the customer service person, "You know, I think we've reached the point where it's a heck of a lot easier to just write a check". She laughed and said "I believe you're right".
Old man rant over....