An Explosive Rise in Anxiety and Depression: Why Gen Z in Particular?
The 24th Christmas film seminar of the HSE Laboratory for Studies in Economic Sociology (LSEI), held at the end of December, was devoted to the causes of anxiety and depression among young people. The focus of the discussion was the 2018 film Eighth Grade, whose main character is a 13-year-old schoolgirl.
Opening the seminar, Vadim Radaev, Head of the Laboratory and First Vice Rector of HSE University, noted that this year, according to the results of online polls conducted by Chitai-Gorod and Gramota.ru, the most popular words were ‘anxiety,’ ‘zoomer,’ and ‘burnout.’
Vadim Radaev admitted that he had not previously known about the film Eighth Grade: it was suggested to him by a neural network among other films on the topic and ranked first. The 28-year-old American director Bo Burnham made the film during a difficult period in his life when, by his own admission, he was struggling with mental health problems—panic attacks, anxiety, and the like. As the HSE first vice rector put it, the film turned out to be ‘quite depressing.’
A Heroine of Our Time
The film’s heroine, 13-year-old Kayla, runs a video blog with only a handful of views, in which she talks about the importance of being oneself, becoming confident, brave and popular, and so on—essentially voicing problems she cannot cope with. Her own images increasingly disappoint her and become yet another source of frustration.
When she wakes up, Kayla immediately reaches for her smartphone; at one o’clock in the morning she is still staring at the screen. This leads to morning lethargy, irritability, and aggression towards her father. ‘There is no conflict between parents and children in the conventional sense here. She has an excellent relationship with her father—he is loving and patient—but they live in orthogonal worlds,’ Vadim Radaev explained.
Going to a party is a superhuman effort for Kayla; it is much easier for her to stay on her phone. Real-life communication skills do not develop because of a lack of practice: she does not know how to attract attention, and her environment does not help. ‘My favourite scene is when she talks to two classmates: they sort of respond to her but never take their eyes off their screens, and at the end she thanks them for chatting with her,’ Vadim Radaev added.
At the end of the film, Kayla takes a break from blogging and writes a message to her 18-year-old self for a time capsule, anxiously awaiting a better future. Her attempts to communicate with a boy are shown; they end up discussing sauces, but this hardly looks like a happy ending. In the speaker’s view, Kayla is one of the new heroes of our time—an extreme type through whom broader, shared problems become clearly visible.
Smartphones and Gen Z
HSE First Vice Rector Vadim Radaev cited data from the book The Anxious Generation by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, which show that since the early 2010s it has been Gen Z—and, to some extent, younger millennials—who have been experiencing a mental health crisis, one that has been worsening over time. The main disorders are anxiety and depression, and the younger the group, the steeper the upward curve on the graph. Social class makes no difference.
According to the speaker, Russian data would likely show a similar picture. Among the possible explanations, he pointed not to external shocks or a lack of experience—which existed before the 2010s as well—but above all to parental overprotection. Children are not allowed to go outside and are even transferred to home schooling; parents try to fill all their free time with clubs and extracurricular activities. Kayla’s father follows her around the shopping centre where she meets older students because he simply cannot do otherwise.
As control increases in the real world—coming not only from parents but also from the state—children move into the online world, where there are virtually no restrictions. It was in the 2010s that smartphones with 24/7 internet access spread explosively, radically changing the situation. Gen Z became the first generation whose puberty coincided with the smartphone era and for whom ‘hypnotic content consumption’ has been characteristic from an early age.
Vadim Radaev noted that the smartphone begins to crowd out other forms of experience at the most inopportune moment—when a person’s identity has not yet been fully formed. This is especially true of girls, for whom rising levels of depression, anxiety, and even self-harm are more pronounced. The reason lies in their greater susceptibility to visual and social comparison on social media, while growing anxiety and dissatisfaction with themselves are driven by unattainable beauty standards.
At the same time, young people’s fascination with smartphones has had a positive side as well. As early as the 2000s, rates of teenage injuries began to decline: Gen Z drink less, fight less often, and are involved in fewer accidents. By distancing themselves from the physical world, they have become more cautious, albeit at the cost of psychological instability.
Different countries are trying to combat adolescents’ dependence on smartphones. In Russia, their use during school lessons was banned two years ago. Universities, however, have no such restrictions: students are adults and make their own decisions. ‘I hope that gradually some of them will realise the need for a reasonable balance between real and virtual life, for periodic digital detoxes, that multitasking is a dead end, that you should not leave your phone by your pillow at night or switch it on first thing in the morning. Is it difficult? Give it a try!’ Vadim Radaev concluded.
Compensatory Responses
According to the tradition of the Christmas film seminar, the head of the laboratory’s presentation is followed by two co-presentations—by Vitaly Kurennoy, Professor at the School of Philosophy and Cultural Studies, and Sergey Filonovich, Professor at the HSE Graduate School of Business.
Drawing on his teaching experience, Vitaly Kurennoy noted that about ten years ago a rise became noticeable in the student environment not only in anxiety, but also in what he called ‘general traumatic sensitivity.’ In his view, the cause lies not only in screens and the digital environment—important though these are—but also in a shift of focus away from formal institutions and careers towards experiences, emotions, values of self-realisation, and so on. This turn has been discussed in philosophical, sociological, and other studies, using different terminology.
Vitaly Kurennoy then raised the question of compensatory reactions. ‘This entire screen-based reality cannot but provoke resistance within culture. That is how culture works—otherwise humanity would have died out long ago,’ he believes. It is therefore unsurprising that digital detox today takes many different forms, with one of the most expensive types of holiday being a log cabin off the grid somewhere in the Karelian taiga. ‘Today everyone understands that the greatest privilege is being able not to be reachable, rather than the other way round,’ he concluded.
Sergey Filonovich returned to the discussion of the film, suggesting that the director deliberately made it boring. If a person does not communicate with others and constantly sits on a gadget, they are deprived of meaning. ‘The director showed precisely such a dull life—nothing happens in the film, and there are no events of any real significance in the girl’s life. This is a warning about the consequences that an obsession with gadgets can lead to,’ the co-presenter believes.
According to Sergey Filonovich, in order to avoid the situation Kayla finds herself in, what is needed is not a detox—since detoxes are designed to help people out of a critical state—but communication with children: ‘simply direct conversations, when parents do not begrudge the time spent on this, diverting children from gadgets and instilling in them an interest in, and a love of, communicating with others.’ Children should develop a desire to talk to adults and to tell them things, and they do so when they receive engaged and interested feedback from adults.
‘We must not be lazy, otherwise irreversible changes will occur,’ the co-presenter believes.
Kayla and Other Zoomers
During the discussion, the question arose as to whether too much weight is being given to survey results that record rising levels of depression and anxiety among young people, given that the topic is fashionable and that the increase may be linked to the fact that people are simply thinking about it more. Vadim Radaev replied that some indicators—for example, the rise in self-harm and severe depression treated clinically—are not related to subjective self-perception. Moreover, trends matter: previously the curve had been declining, whereas now it is rising sharply.
Olga Kuzina, Senior Research Fellow at the Laboratory for Studies in Economic Sociology (LSEI), suggested that dependence on gadgets is more a symptom than a cause of anxiety. She drew an analogy with alcohol, which people try to use to ‘treat’ anxiety: some become dependent, while others do not. In the same way, some children become addicted to gadgets and others do not, and in her view this depends on the family. In the film, Kayla’s father is not interesting to her; otherwise, the situation would have been different.
Other seminar participants also expressed doubts about whether Kayla’s anxiety should be generalised to all zoomers. At the party, with its raucous atmosphere and pool games, all the children except her feel comfortable. Perhaps the problems are specific to this particular girl, who is growing up without a mother; she is different from the others, and children at that age can be cruel and reject those who are different. Kayla is intelligent enough to sense her own awkwardness and inability to fit into this world, and only her smartphone helps her stay afloat.
LSEI research assistant Milana Neshcheretova said that she watched the film Eighth Grade at the age of 14 and was surprised that an American girl with a MacBook, an iPad, and her own room with distinctive lighting could have any problems with communication at all. In her assessment, based on personal experience, the situation in the Russian provinces in 2018 was different: zoomers with button phones played outside in courtyards and around garages, stepped on rusty nails, and did not worry about their safety. Generation Alpha, however, really is in the risk zone and needs to be worked with.
Commenting on his colleague’s remark, Vadim Radaev noted that the key phrase here was ‘button phones.’ ‘I would suggest that as soon as button phones were replaced by touchscreens, you stopped running around garages,’ he said, adding that digital technologies today are so widely accessible that everyone uses them, regardless of social background or material circumstances.
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