On one level, the causes of this epidemic are structural; the unavoidable collateral damage of living in this day and age.

For example: we can’t disconnect, because smartphones, email, and messaging apps didn’t just change the way we communicate; they’ve effectively rendered us on-call 24/7, both in our professional and personal lives. Not only has the concept of ‘after hours’ become all but moot, being ‘always contactable’ is often conflated with being ‘always available’.

Expectations have evolved at all levels, from clients making last-minute requests to ‘unofficial overtime’, like WhatsApp discussions about work that continue long after leaving the office (particularly in smaller business environments, where work processes can be more informal). Similarly, we think nothing of receiving texts from friends and family throughout the day (or texting them ourselves), be they about weighty personal matters or someone sharing yet another meme to the family group chat.

This is the technological equivalent of a stream of people banging on your door at all hours of the day, and it’s just as mentally draining. Even if you choose not to answer immediately, you can’t tune everyone out.

We’re all intimately acquainted with the tyranny of the blue ticks—all those messages you’ve left ‘for later’ nagging away at the back of your head, elbowing you in the brain, reminding you that they’re still unanswered.

Similarly, we’re constantly distracted and overstimulated, at the cost of our ability to focus. The detrimental effect of tech on our attention spans has been getting a lot of press lately, and for good reason: it’s designed to make us behave like five-year-olds in a candy store.

As experts have pointed out, there’s a legitimate explanation, known as Directed Attention Fatigue, for why always being distracted is so draining.

Human attention manifests in two ways: as ‘directed attention’ (the ability to focus on tasks requiring conscious effort, like reading a book), and ‘involuntary attention’ (which governs our responses to unexpected stimuli, like a notification popping up on your phone). The problem is that we only have a limited capacity for directed attention, and as anyone who’s found themselves flagging as the day wears on will recognise, the more things there are competing for our attention, the quicker we end up depleted.

We’ve also had a lot to worry about lately.

The rising cost of living and whether we’ll be able to afford a BTO. The devastating impact of climate change. Whether our jobs will still be around ten years down the road, and whether we’ll be equipped for them. Whether we’ll be able to look after our parents when the time comes. Moreover, within the last few years, many norms we grew up taking for granted have been interrogated and turned on their heads: race, gender, consent, meritocracy, and success, just to name a few.

None of this is to say that becoming more critically engaged and thoughtful citizens is undesirable—far from it. However, learning to navigate adult life at a time when so much is uncertain can contribute to us feeling anxious, disempowered, confused, and ultimately, exhausted.