Digital Madness: How Social Media Is Driving Our Mental Health Crisis—And How To Restore Our Sanity

Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is at the forefront of researchers sounding the alarm about the impact of excessive technology on younger brains. In Glow Kids, he described what screen time does to children, calling it “digital heroin”. Now, in Digital Madness, Dr. Kardaras turns his attention to our teens and young adults. For them, the digital world is a bubble of content you’re meant to “like” or “dislike.” Two choices might be considered easy, but just how detrimental is this binary thinking to mental health? From body image to politics to personal relationships to decisions, the world doesn’t exist in an “up or down,” “black or white,” “good or bad” dynamic, and social media shouldn’t either. Digital Madness explores how technology promotes sedentary isolation, polarization, rewards extremes on both sides, and has spawned a mental health and suicide pandemic from which enormous corporations profit. Dr. Kardaras offers a path out of our crisis, using examples from classical philosophy that encourage resilience, critical thinking, concentration, and other beneficial habits of mind. Digital Madness is a crucial book for parents, educators, therapists, public health professionals, and policymakers who are searching for ways to restore our young people’s mental and physical health.