Praying to Our Screens

From a distance, it looks as though people are praying.

Their heads are bowed solemnly, their hands folded before them. But then I notice the phone. They are not praying—just looking at their screens.

Since the arrival of the smartphone, rates of mental illness have risen sharply: depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide, especially among the young. As Jonathan Haidt documents in The Anxious Generation, something fundamental has shifted in the psychic architecture of modern life. Our attention has been captured, our inner lives fragmented, and our sense of self quietly distorted.

This is where the philosopher Byung-Chul Han becomes indispensable. “The narcissistic-depressive subject hears only the echo of itself,” Han writes in his book In the Swarm. “Social media such as Twitter and Facebook intensify this development. They are narcissistic media.”

We live in a narcissistic age. And like Narcissus himself, many drown. Some

visit website