GE said:
The pandemic has introduced something external, meaningful, and difficult into people's too easy, inward-focused and boring lives. At least that's one potential explanation.
That's an interesting take. I would argue the opposite; that the lockdowns (necessary or not) exacerbated the ease, inward-focus and boredom for millions. They slipped into a 100% digital world where all social interactions become filtered through the screen, from class to work to church and socializing. It's like we took an entire civilization and said "you know all those bad habits that are making you fat, lazy, lonely and unhappy? Let's just do those and stop doing anything real."
You know how everyone (who's an adult, regardless of age) knows that texting is a terrible way to talk about anything important, since it doesn't covey nuance, tone, etc? That became the primary means of communication for millions. You know how people that you actually like in real life are morons/idiots/racists/sheep/pick-your-pejorative if you just go by their social media feeds and comments? Well in the last 12 months that's the only way we communicated with friends and family. We've fetishized safety and risk-aversion beyond parody, even while Covid itself has taken a real, genuine toll on the lives of millions of people, both from deaths and from lingering symptoms.
Obviously those are generalizations, but I don't agree that the mental-health problem with the last year is that we've challenged people too much. I think it's that we've taken far too much meaningful challenge away, be it in-person work, school or relationships, and replaced it with a cheap facsimile of zooms and social media comments. Our souls recognize the cognitive dissonance even if our brains are fine binging on Netflix and TikTok.
