How do you cope with the challenges of everyday life? Which emotional/psychological problems can occur in the face of our complex world?

"All people should be as simple as possible, but not more simple." (Albert Einstein)

The Challenges in our Complex World

by Felix Wolter, VKS Växjö/Sweden

In our world where technology advances every single day and globalization is spreading faster than ever, they also bring challenges with them. These challenges are both emotional and psychological. This text will carry my thoughts (including research) on the world as a human born in a generation where great changes are happening due to the development of technology and globalization. There are many things worth discussing in this article but I will be focusing on the things I feel are the most necessary.

Social media are one of the biggest things inflicting on our current lives emotionally. The things that are affecting us are bound with our constant presence and reachability online as well as never being relaxed and how we feel about our bodies.

https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/depression

The possibility to reach someone in an instant whenever and wherever is surely positive and efficient considering how much time is saved. Unfortunately, social media don't only come with upsides but also downsides such as anonymously harassing and bullying people online. Suicide rates have been rising exponentially the last decades and social media's part in the rising numbers is pretty much a fact. We humans are very social creatures and social stimulation is a very important factor in our lives, since it affects our well-being significantly. If we’re not happy mentally, it certainly can influence our psychological health. An illness bigger than ever that is hitting the world right now is depression, with one of the causes being different social factors.

One may think that we aren’t affected psychologically by using our smartphones or computers but there are hidden effects that we may not notice until it’s too late. When people aren’t occupied they usually tend to pick up their phone. Often at evening hours this is the case and it is leading us directly into a bad night’s sleep. Tiredness decreases our overall productivity which disturbs adults and students at their work causing both of the groups to show worse results. Also, it promotes inactivity that very often is the root to an evil sickness such as diabetes type 2, but also cancer. Social media also have positive psychological effects on us. One example is that social media readers have gotten more aware of their health after reading different kinds of articles as well as they have gotten more active.

Social media are inflicting on our lives but it the end it’s up to ourselves to decide how much it is allowed to affect us by managing our screen time, the time spent on our electronic devices, and what we actually choose to do with the information we collect from the web. The most important thing is not to overthink what you are doing and enjoy life just like you want to.

posted on 15.03.2019

I really like the article "The Challenges in our Complex World". Your writing style is very nice and the vocabulary is pretty nice to read.

However you mostly stated negative things about social media, maybe you could have written a few more positive aspects, since there are not that bad.

Furthermore, a little bit more of your own opinion would have been nice at the end.

All in all, it was very good and pleasant to read.

Anna Wischnewski - 30.04.2019 @ 15:52

I really enjoyed your article "We are all guilty", I totally agree with you and you took the words from my mouth. I'm very familiar with climate change and crisis. What I really found interesting in your text was that all these students risking their education take stand and want a change. But some of them do nothing else for it except striking, they still fly, buy new things and do all these things that are incredibly bad for the environment. But they still do it, call themselves "victims" although they are not the ones who are going to be affected first.

As I see it, if you want to demand change, you should act like it and do something about it. We can't just sit around and wait for big companies to stop producing things or politicians to do something, we have to stop consuming so much and do something with our education that we have. I think we all know who the activist Greta Thunberg is and what she's doing. We follow her with striking from school but we still go shopping and buy cheap things from Bangladesh, we fly on our vacations so we can lie on a beach all day. Why do we say something and do the opposite? 

We all have a responsibility to do what we can with the resources that we have but we should also try to change the minds of bigger companies, friends, families etc. so that we can reach our goals and dreams and not "burn up" in 10 years or so. We have to change our lifestyles to be able to change the climate as well. 

Overall I just wanted to say that your text is very accurate to my  thoughts and probably many more. Keep up the good work!

Christina Stefansson - 09.05.2019 @ 11:28

Dear Felix, your opinion of social media and how they affect our lives was very interesting to read. I think you made a lot of great points on how and why too much screen time a day can seriously harm us. It is extremely important for our generation, which practically grew up with the internet to still be skeptical and question things that maybe seem “normal”. I noticed it myself;  after I spent some time on social media I am not satisfied with what I do in my free time but even if I try to change something I will probably end up on my phone later. Some of my friends deleted social media platforms such as Instagram because they were unhappy with how much time they spent on their phone. However, they often re-download them after some months which sadly shows how much we depend on apps like these. 

Nevertheless, there are also a lot of benefits of the internet as you mentioned, we can reach someone in an instant and are more aware of our mental health. But not only that, the internet and social media platforms open us access to communicate and befriend with like-minded people all around the world and raise the awareness of many important topics which we maybe never thought of before.

In the end, social media is what we make of it. Most platforms are programmed to shows us things which we perversely click on. Therefore, we can choose the content which is shown to us ourselves. So, I don’t think the internet itself is a bad thing but we definitely have to learn how to use it responsibly.

Magdalena Dessl - 20.05.2019 @ 21:36

I found your article very interesting, social media affect a person's life in surprising and disturbing ways. The thing is that the Internet is quite new and we aren't able to do any important research at this point. So the people now (especially young) are exposed to things that may harm them in long term.
I agree that it’s up to ourselves to decide how much it is allowed to affect us. Everyone could use this healthy attitude. Social media are great but we need to set boundaries and concentrate on our relationships and self-development instead of mindlessly scrolling up and down on Instagram.
I used to have problem with this and I was wasting most of my time. I found out that a great replacement for Instagram is listening to a podcast for example when you are travelling by bus. It makes you interested in many topics and educates you.
Thank you very much for the article!

Jagoda Wnęk - 11.06.2019 @ 19:56

We found the artical interesting because Felix mention great things about social media for example that you can reach a person by just calling or texting the person. But social media are also a platform were it is easy to bully people because you cant see the person in front of you, there is just a screen which doesn't really mean anything and we liked that there were different perspectives on it. There were a lot of facts and interesting information that made us think in another way, but he could have written more about his own experiences about social media so that the text could have been a bit more personal. One last thing is that social media are usually just shown in a positive way but people are affected in a bad way while using their cellphones for example, a bad night sleep can be caused.

Felix Barkéus - 03.10.2019 @ 13:55