Despite all the technology that connects us, much of it there supposedly to make our lives easier and better, people have never been more depressed.
A case in point: the UK’s National Health Service disclosed last week that a record number of antidepressants were prescribed in England last year. Worldwide the figures are no more reassuring. World Health Organization statistics show more than 322m people were afflicted with depression worldwide in 2015, some 4.4 per cent of the global population. What’s equally concerning is that the numbers keep increasing. In the past decade they have gone up 18.4 per cent, affecting both developed and developing countries.
This state of global psychological misery runs counter to the message that greater digital connectivity, faster access to goods and services and instantaneous gratification through frictionless systems is the pathway to universal happiness.