Digital Madness: How Social Media Is Driving Our Mental Health Crisis--and How to Restore Our Sanity

by Nicholas Kardaras

Overview

From the author of the provocative and influential Glow Kids, Digital Madness explores how we’ve become mad for our devices as our devices are driving us mad, as revolutionary research reveals technology's damaging effect on mental illness and suicide rates—and offers a way out.

Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is at the forefront of psychologists sounding the alarm about the impact of excessive technology on younger brains. In Glow Kids, he described what screen time does to children, calling it “digital heroin”. Now, in Digital Madness, Dr. Kardaras turns his attention to our teens and young adults and looks at the mental health impact of tech addiction and corrosive social media.

In Digital Madness, Dr. Kardaras answers the question of why young people’s mental health is deteriorating as we become a more technologically advanced society. While enthralled with shiny devices and immersed in Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat, our young people are struggling with record rates of depression, loneliness, anxiety, overdoses and suicide. What’s driving this mental health epidemic? Our immersion in toxic social media has created polarizing extremes of emotion and addictive dependency, while also acting as a toxic "digital social contagion”, spreading a variety of psychiatric disorders.

The algorithm-fueled polarity of social media also shapes the brain's architecture into inherently pathological and reactive "black and white" thinking—toxic for politics and society, but also symptomatic of several mental disorders. Digital Madness also examines how the profit-driven titans of Big Tech have created our unhealthy tech-dependent lifestyle: sedentary, screen-staring, addicted, depressed, isolated and empty—all in the pursuit of increased engagement, data mining and monetization.

But there is a solution. Dr. Kardaras offers a path out of our crisis, using examples from classical philosophy that encourage resilience, critical thinking and the pursuit of sanity-sustaining purpose in people’s lives. Digital Madness is a crucial book for parents, educators, therapists, public health professionals, and policymakers who are searching for ways to restore our young people’s mental and physical health.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250278494
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/13/2022
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	174,080
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

DR. NICHOLAS KARDARAS is an Ivy League educated psychologist, one of the country’s foremost addiction and mental health experts and the bestselling author of Glow Kids. A former clinical professor at Stony Brook Medicine, he’s developed treatment programs all over the country, has written for TIME Magazine, Scientific American, Salon and Psychology Today, and has appeared on Good Morning America, ABC's 20/20, CNN, the CBS Evening News, PBS, NPR, FOX & Friends and in Esquire and Vanity Fair. He lives in Sag Harbor, NY with his wife and twin sons.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I A World Gone Mad

1 Addicted to the Matrix 15

2 A World Gone Mad 43

3 The Social Contagion Effect 61

4 Viral Violence 87

5 Social Media and the Binary Trap 116

Part II Digital Dystopia

6 The New Technocracy 143

7 Maintaining the Dystopia 161

8 God Complexes and Immortality 182

Part III The Ancient Cure

9 My Personal Odyssey 197

10 Beyond Therapy 212

11 The Philosopher-Warrior 238

Acknowledgments 259

Notes 261

Editorial Reviews

07/25/2022

Psychologist Kardaras (Glow Kids) delivers a sobering account of how social media damages mental health. Because humans evolved for face-to-face communication and physical activity, he explains, “our tech has outpaced our biology” by fostering a sedentary and fragmented lifestyle that leads people to feel overworked, exhausted, and depressed. Comparing social media companies to Big Pharma, Kardaras excoriates such platforms as Facebook and Twitter for creating interfaces that are addictive by design, noting that users need an ever-increasing level of stimulation to achieve the same dopamine rush in a process that renders offline activities unbearably dull by comparison. The consequences, he suggests, are rising incidences of personality disorders, depression, and obesity, as well as such sociogenic conditions as TikTok Tourette’s, in which TikTok users who follow influencers with Tourette’s syndrome sometimes start manifesting tics of their own. Kardaras uses easy to understand language to provide a bracing look at the toxic psychological effects of too much tech, though some of his pronouncements come across as over the top: “immortality-seeking megalomaniac tech oligarchs... want nothing more than to addict us, harvest our ‘digital exhaust,’ and put us in an alternate and illusory reality.” Readers will be unnerved. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Digital Madness:

“Mental health has become one of the biggest issues of our time and Dr. Kardaras highlights a perfect storm that may have irreversible damage to our health if we don’t act quickly. The growing risks and distractions prevalent in our society have never existed as they do now, and I can only thank Dr. Kardaras for his perceptive insight that will no doubt lead to real solutions to tackle the greatest mental-health crisis of our time. A must-read.”
—Dr. Vanila M. Singh, M.D., Clinical Associate Professor, Stanford School of Medicine,
former Chief Medical Officer, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

“Digital Madness is the book we need now! So many of us have participated willingly in the creation of a society addicted to digital devices and social media. Those willing to put down their devices long enough to read this book will not only learn how we can begin to unplug, they will also learn how we can begin to recover and regain our collective sanity.”
—Pedro A. Noguera, Ph.D., Dean of the Rossier School of
Education at the University of Southern California

“Kardaras guides readers through a whirlwind exploration of social media–induced societal sickness. In our downward spiral of cultural crisis, Digital Madness—like Glow Kids before it—should be required reading for anyone who has ever clicked the Like button.”
—Jeff Greenberger, Ph.D., Stony Brook University,
Professor of Classics, and Fulbright Scholar

“Kardaras expertly dismantles the world of big tech in Digital Madness, blending personal and professional experience to write an essential guide to the relationship between technology and mental health. The result is a book that’s moving, convincing, and—given Kardaras’s strength as a writer—a pleasure to read.”
—Adam Alter, New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible and Drunk Tank Pink and NYU Stern School of Business Professor of Marketing and Psychology

“Digital Madness is as fascinating as it is alarming, reminding us that just because social media is now ubiquitous, it doesn’t have to go unchecked at the expense of mental well-being. Calling on individuals and society at large to acknowledge and address a myriad of implications, Dr. Kardaras is leading a movement to prioritize public health as we navigate uncharted waters.”
—Former congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, founder of the Kennedy Forum

“Digital Madness highlights in the most eloquent way our unnoticed prisoner self in the dark cave of social media. Dr. Kardaras addresses the impact of technology on mental health and our attempts to socialize in an ever-polarized digital world. In the wake of COVID-19, this book reflects our deepest concerns about life online, but also points the way out of the mental-health crisis. An outstanding contribution to contemporary mental-health matters, this is a must-read.”
—Zoe Rapti, Deputy Minister of Mental Health, Greece

"Something has gone seriously wrong with American society, and the root cause is digital technology.... A frightening diagnosis of a corrosive plague by an articulate expert in the field." —Kirkus

“Psychologist Kardaras delivers a sobering account of how social media damages mental health. … Kardaras uses easy to understand language to provide a bracing look at the toxic psychological effects of too much tech. … Readers will be unnerved.” —Publishers Weekly


Praise for Glow Kids:

"A paradigm shifting, mind bending account of excess and tragedy that should serve as a clarion call to rethink our ever evolving relationship with advancing technology." —Dr. Howard J. Shaffer, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

"Read this book. Save our children's brains, now." —Paula Poundstone, comedian, author, Social Commentator, Screen-Free Kids Activist

"An invaluable resource and a wake up call about the risks our children face when we allow unfettered access to 'screen time.'" —Pedro A. Noguera, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Education at UCLA

"With the rigor of an investigative journalist and the insight of an addiction specialist, Kardaras manages to make a complex and uncomfortable topic both palatable and accessible. A highly recommended read." —Victoria Dunckley, MD, integrative child psychiatrist and author of Reset Your Child's Brain

From the Publisher

2022-06-01
Something has gone seriously wrong with American society, and the root cause is digital technology.

As the director of a mental health clinic and a one-time heroin addict, Kardaras understands the nature of addiction. As he shows, social media and computer games can be as addictive and toxic as any chemical, leading to anxiety, depression, and despair. In his 2016 book, Glow Kids, the author examined the impact of the internet on children. Here, he takes a broader view, looking not just at teenagers and adults, but at society as a whole. Though he has seen many patients with borderline personality disorder, he believes that it is dramatically underreported. Many intense users of technology have fallen into a pattern of binary thinking, able to see only extremes and suffering from a lack of empathy. They are perpetually angry, fearful, and impulsive—all signs of BPD. Others have a deep sense of self-loathing and frustration, terrified that they will never meet the standards of the media influencers they follow. This has also led to political polarization, isolation, and a breakdown of long-standing social contracts. Added to the mental troubles are the physical effects of spending so much time glued to screens, particularly obesity and diabetes. Kardaras emphasizes that the effects of addiction are known by the tech companies, but they choose to do nothing because their profits are based on it. “I freely concede that we have achieved wondrous advancements in our technological abilities,” he writes. “But our species is deteriorating; we’re getting weaker, both physically and mentally.” As a therapist, he offers a plan for breaking the cycle of addiction, focused on finding a meaningful purpose and building real-life social connections. The difficulty with this is that it only works for those who want to recover, and the reality is that most tech addicts—like any other category of addict—won’t admit the problem.

A frightening diagnosis of a corrosive plague by an articulate expert in the field.

Kirkus Reviews