Taming the chimaera-hydra: disconnecting from the net to fortify our mental health

Abstract

In our ever digitalising society, our engagement with the online world has significant potential to have a negative impact on our mental health. Although the roles of public health and psychiatry are debated, clinicians are in a strategic position to assess usage and intervene, to prevent harms from problematic engagement with the internet.

Healthy lifestyle approaches to eating, drinking, sleeping or keeping active are important topics of discourse. In the ever digitalising 21st century, it is pertinent to bring another key lifestyle factor to the discussion table – our relationship with the online world.

Digitalisation offers users remarkable efficiency, in terms of time and effort. From the convenience of our homes, we perform many tasks of our normal day-to-day lives online, including education, work, entertainment, communication and healthcare. We also complete essential transactions, like paying bills, declaring tax and voting. Through digital applications (Apps) we get food delivered to our doors and choose the music we like. We find jobs, acquire ideas and build new relationships. However, bad things also happen to us online: some individuals get defrauded, bullied, become radicalised, marginalised or are exposed to traumatic or age-inappropriate material or subjected to fear mongering. Others lose control of the time they spend online, owing to manipulative and attention capturing algorithms built into online programmes for commercial reasons, to the neglect of family, social, educational and occupational roles. The online world has evoked pervasive and irrevocable changes to our lives, some for the best and some for the worst – only time will tell.

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ORCID for Sam Chamberlain: orcid.org/0000-0001-7014-8121

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