"A respected Swiss scientist, Conrad Gessner, might have been the first to raise the alarm about the effects of information overload. In a landmark book, he described how the modern world overwhelmed people with data and that this overabundance was both “confusing and harmful” to the mind. The media now echo his concerns with reports on the unprecedented risks of living in an “always on” digital environment. It’s worth noting that Gessner, for his part, never once used e-mail and was completely ignorant about computers. That’s not because he was a technophobe but because he died in 1565. His warnings referred to the seemingly unmanageable flood of information
unleashed by the printing press."
A respected Swiss scientist, Conrad Gessner, might have been the first to raise the alarm about the effects of information overload. In a landmark...
slate.com
Mental Illness is "becoming more common" because the stigma around being mentally ill is breaking down. Instead of having the "Weird Uncle no one talks about" people actually move toward and get the accommodations they need, these days. In part because people are more connected to identities and experiences beyond their own neighborhood. It's not more common, it's just more accepted that people have -always- been neurodivergent in various ways.
Here's the rate of Left Handedness by Birth in the 20th Century.
What happened in the 1920s and 30s to result in three times as many Lefties as in the previous decades that it stayed flat 'til the 2000s?
People stopped tying kids' left arm to their desk and forcing them to write right handed is what happened. Once we stopped caring about someone writing in a sinister fashion, people stopped pretending to not be left-handed to avoid the stigma.
Same reason there's more trans people around, these days. Gay people, too. As the stigma falls away, we're free to be ourselves and exist in our own lives.
Also of note: This "Everyone's got a mental illness these days!" screed is pretty much a rehash of the late 80s through the 90s "Everyone's got a therapist" and "Everyone's got a neurosis" screed that was so common it became a media trope to harp on in movies, TV shows, and magazine articles.
As far as breakdowns: You're just seeing more of them. They're not more common than they've ever been, they're just more -visible-. In the past people would have their breakdown in private and no one would notice, often to their -extreme- detriment. These days? When someone has a breakdown their friends know about it and rally. Either because they're at least digitally connected when the breakdown hits, or when their friend is gone for the better part of a day they reach out instead of shrugging their shoulders.
But that's been a more and more common thing to happen since the Telephone became massively popular across the world. Probably best shown in Media with the craze of showing Teenage Girls -constantly- on the phone (only one line in the house) back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s before Cell Phones became popular...
And then girls were on their cell phones in media in the 2000s and 2010s.
Why? 'Cause in reality, teenage girls (and all other teens, but less visibly because of misogynistic stigma of the time) were staying in contact with their friends more than previous generations did to a point their parents found uncomfortable.
Anyway. Here's another paragraph from that first article that's really relevant to your post:
"There is, in fact, a host of research that directly tackles these issues. To date, studies suggest there is
no consistent evidence that the Internet causes mental problems.
If anything, the data show that people who use social networking sites actually tend to have better offline social lives, while those who play computer games are better than nongamers at absorbing and reacting to information with no loss of accuracy or increased impulsiveness. In contrast, the accumulation of many years of evidence suggests that heavy television viewing does appear to have a negative effect on our
health and our
ability to concentrate. We almost never hear about these sorts of studies anymore because television is old hat, technology scares need to be novel, and evidence that something is safe just doesn’t make the grade in the shock-horror media agenda."
