Therapy was once an elite luxury: expensive, lengthy, and largely inaccessible. That began to change in the late 20th century as talk shows, expanding insurance coverage, and a booming self-help industry pushed the topic of mental health into the mainstream. Decades of steady growth turned into a sprint during the COVID-19 pandemic as entire generations scrambled to navigate unprecedented global isolation. Like most modern tools, mental health care quickly went digital. Telehealth surged and social media feeds were suddenly flooded with psychologized terminology, mental health trends, and viral personal testimonies. Today, young adults are the most likely demographic to seek mental health services. Recent national surveys show that adults aged 18 to 25 receive mental health treatment at higher rates than any other adult age group. By 2023, nearly one in three adolescents had received some form of mental health treatment. Many view this explosion as a promising sign of a self-reflective generation. For those seeking help out of genuine curiosity or tragic necessity, therapy offers profound value. For others, however, cultural shifts toward mental wellness have created a paradox: the true beneficiaries of psychology are rarely the ones most inclined towards its language. The constant consumption of TikTok-packaged symptomology and shrewdly spliced advice from self-proclaimed experts has serious drawbacks. Most notably, it encourages one of the most common pitfalls in psychology: self-diagnosis. “Therapy-speak” is now so ubiquitous online that failing to use terms like gaslighting, trauma bond, boundaries, trigger, or toxic can make someone seem culturally out-of-step. Armed with these bite-sized theories, young people online have become increasingly focused on categorizing their flaws. Instead of booking an appointment to gain objective insight, many walk into a therapist’s office already convinced they fit a specific textbook label. This environment normalizes mental distress, but it also normalizes rigid, checkbox explanations for complex human behavior, thought patterns, and emotional struggles. As therapy culture pushes psychological language beyond its appropriate clinical boundaries, self-discovery can become haphazard and counterproductive. True emotional growth requires sitting with and reflecting upon discomfort, but modern Internet culture often mistakes it for a symptom in need of constant validation. Mistakes that should inspire healthy self-reflection are more easily filtered through the lens of self-diagnosis. In doing so, therapy culture risks transforming a tool meant to challenge faulty perceptions into a vehicle for constructing convenient narratives. Personal growth is nurtured through neither neglect nor overfixation, yet the latter has increasingly been presented as the cure for the former, thus blurring the line between self-discovery and self-obsession. Despite enjoying a higher material standard of living than previous generations, young adults report historically high rates of anxiety, depression, and psychological distress. While many factors undoubtedly contribute to this trend, therapy culture alone has not delivered the emotional flourishing many expected. It is worth asking why.
By Mia Downing
Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, set strict rules on his kids’ technology use. In the 21st century, digital technology is an essential complement to human workers in virtually every industry. To prepare the children of today for the jobs of tomorrow, schools have increasingly adopted screen-based devices for their students, often starting in lower grade levels. As a result, schools have largely given assignments to students online, both during and outside of school hours. Even when minors are not at school, recreational screen time dominates their day, often spent on social media websites. And, with the rise of artificial intelligence in the past few years, students are becoming increasingly reliant upon it to complete assignments as opposed to seeking in-person assistance from peers or instructors. With technology becoming unavoidable early in our lives, its effects on social skills, brain development, and overall intelligence must be carefully monitored. But how can we detect the dangers that accompany the domination of digital technology in our children’s lives? A closer investigation into the routines of the founders of many tech giants would certainly give a few hints. The founders of Apple and Microsoft, whose products have dominated the market for smartphones and personal computers, respectively, had several children of their own who grew up during eras in which these products were used worldwide. But this usage was not widespread amongst the children of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. The billionaire founders of tech giants did not allow their kids to use phones at young ages. They restricted screen usage to a narrow timeframe and purpose. They asserted that their discipline existed to ensure that their children’s social skills, school performance, and creativity would not be hindered by time lost to said devices due to their addictive nature. These CEOs are not misguided in their reasoning. Studies from multiple psychologists link increased screen times among younger children to worse states of mental health involving depression and anxiety. Aggressive behavior issues also rise due to screen time’s constant overstimulation. Furthermore, poor physical health and worsened school performance have been observed as a result of longer screen time with obesity, physical inactivity, and worsening eyesight all increasing. In fact, even outside the random samples of families from around the world used in these studies, evidence from a whole, compact community from decades ago supports these conclusions. Notel, a pseudonym given to a secret town in the Cascades of British Columbia, was isolated from television networks due to its geography, unlike most of Canada during the 1970s. But after TV services were finally introduced, researchers were eager to study the effects on the community. And, in a stark contrast to the era before the TV, children’s schools and playgrounds reported a surge in instances of aggressive behavior. Furthermore, the town’s culture changed: participation in events that brought the community together, such as sporting matches and dinners, decreased. As a result, its cohesion and trust sharply fell too. If we want to best prepare our children for the world of the future, it starts in a real-life—not digital—environment.
By Edward Kim
Last week, the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws panel recommended that South Carolina again hold the first Democratic presidential primary on January 22nd in 2028 ahead of Nevada, New Hampshire, and other states. The impulse is understandable and, in part, admirable. The Democrats are trying to show loyalty to Black voters, who reliably vote for Democratic candidates and comprise a significant portion of South Carolina’s electorate. But, this is a mistake. The move of putting South Carolina first is based on two main arguments: The first argument, which I have already alluded to, is that Black voters reliably vote for Democrats and the Democratic Party should reward that loyalty by giving them a chance to heavily influence which nominee is selected. This makes sense given that Iowa previously went first, which is a state with a predominantly white population. There is nothing wrong with that, but if Black voters are the ones who constantly show loyalty to Democrats, it is reasonable to reward them by letting them set the tone for how the presidential primary shapes up. The second argument is that this move is an investment in the South. Rather than having Democrats retreat from the South—a region where the Party has typically lost in recent decades—putting South Carolina first in the primary map will allow Democrats to build a deeper ground game in a state they have not won since 1976. “The South is not the past, we are the future,” said Christale Spain, chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party. “And if we are serious about changing this country, Democrats have to start winning in the South.” Both arguments have merits, but they miss something critical: South Carolina is not a swing state and the short to medium-term return on investment is low. South Carolina has not been won by a Democratic Presidential candidate in the last 50 years, and it is very unlikely to flip in the general election. If winning in 2028 is necessary for the Democrats, why invest in as long of a shot as South Carolina? If Democrats actually want to win, they should invest in a swing state to build the ground game early so that come the general election, they are in a far better position to win the White House. One state stands out as a far better option: Georgia. As part of the South, it has a significant Black population and it is a large swing state. Georgia has all the elements that the Democratic leadership is arguing as a basis for choosing South Carolina, plus the fact that Georgia will actually play a large part in determining the winner of the presidential election in 2028. In terms of Black voters, and their relative population within a state, Georgia actually performs better than South Carolina on this metric as shown by recent data from Pew Research: While Black voters comprise 26% of eligible voters in South Carolina, in Georgia, that number is a much larger 33%. Thus, one of the main arguments to start the presidential primary schedule with South Carolina does not hold up against the data, especially when it is not even in the top five states with the highest share of Black voters. Secondly, regarding the argument that Democrats should invest in the South, that is the right direction to move in. But why invest in South Carolina, which only has 9 electoral votes and has no chance of influencing the general election at the Presidential level, when we have at least two more viable alternatives? Georgia is part of the South, is a swing state, and provides 16 electoral votes. North Carolina, where 23% of eligible voters are Black, also provides 16 electoral votes and is a swing state. South Carolina is clearly the wrong state for Democrats to invest in, especially in the immediate term. If Democrats truly want to win the general election, they should start with Georgia and North Carolina, thus setting the tone of the primary by rewarding candidates who can mobilize voters in two key swing states, not a state that will have no bearing on who wins the White House in 2028. Here is the bottom-line: Democrats keep insisting 2028 is existential. If they believe it, they should start the presidential primary in a state that will actually help them win it—and that state is Georgia, not South Carolina.
By Vaibhav Sinha
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