We are the first generation in history with worse mental health than our parents

1. A counter-intuitive fact

Sapien Labs' Global Mind Health Report 2025 surfaced a set of numbers that very few people are taking seriously:

People over 55 sit at a normal-range mind health score of 101. Each younger cohort scores lower. 35-44, 25-34, 18-24 — each generation worse than the one before.

This is the first time on record that "young people's mental health is, on aggregate, worse than their parents'" has become a fact that holds up across multiple institutions and methodologies.

WHO data from September 2025 added another blow: over 1 billion people worldwide live with a mental health condition. Research from May 2026 has pushed that number to 1.2 billion — anxiety disorders up 65% over the past 30 years, depression up 41%.

If you've been feeling like you can't breathe lately, you're not being dramatic. You're a number in a statistic.

The real question isn't the number. It's why us — when we have better material conditions, better healthcare, more information and longer lifespans than our parents — why are we the ones who can't hold up?

This piece tries to unpack four layers: acceleration, self-exploitation, technology, and the specific suffocation of the Chinese version.

2. Acceleration: why time feels like it's speeding up

The German sociologist Hartmut Rosa has an uncomfortable line for the modern condition: "We run faster and faster just to stay in the same place."

He breaks the acceleration of modernity into three layers:

• Technical acceleration: transport, communication, computation each generation faster than the last
• Acceleration of social change: the half-life of careers, relationships, knowledge and values keeps shrinking
• Acceleration of the pace of life: more and more crammed into the same unit of time

Here's the counter-intuitive piece: the first two layers accelerating should, in theory, give you more free time — the time the washing machine saves you should be time you can spend doing nothing. Instead the third layer is the fastest.

Why? Because tech expands the range of "things you should do". You can answer 100 emails in 5 minutes, so you're now expected to. You can read a paper on the subway, so you're now expected to. You can scroll 10 pieces of content in 30 seconds, so "not scrolling" becomes wasteful.

Rosa's name for this state is the "temporalized precarity of the self" — you've lost your "resonance" relationship with the world, and every experience becomes a form of check-the-box consumption. You went to that landmark, but you weren't there. You had dinner with that person, but you weren't at the table. You read that book, but you didn't read it.

The clock didn't speed up. The amount you have to fit into each 24 hours did.

3. Self-exploitation: you are exploited by your own boss

The Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han's diagnosis goes harder than Rosa's.

Foucault wrote about the disciplinary society of the 20th century: external power telling you "you are not allowed to". Prisons, schools, factories, hospitals — different shapes of the same disciplinary apparatus.

Han argues the 21st century isn't a disciplinary society but an achievement society (Leistungsgesellschaft). The keyword of the disciplinary society is "not allowed to". The keyword of the achievement society is "should". Nobody tells you "don't smoke" anymore. Everybody tells you "you should run, you should go to the gym, you should sleep early, you should keep learning, you should grow, you should have self-discipline".

Sounds freer, right?

No. Exploitation just changed location.

In the era of capitalists exploiting workers, at least you knew who to fight. In the achievement society, you become your own boss — you set your own KPIs, you set your own deadlines, and when you miss the deadline, you yell at yourself.

Han's exact phrasing: "The achievement subject is master and slave at once."

In this structure, the thing you would resist disappears. You can't strike against yourself. You can't march against yourself. You can only — get depressed.

Depression replaces anger. Burnout replaces resistance. That's why the suffering of this generation looks "nameless" — you can't say "this is who's pressing me down", because the one pressing you down is you.

And the reason you press yourself down is that the whole system has internalized "you should be working harder" as a part of who you are. Take it away and you don't know who you are.

4. Technology: how short-form video is physically rewiring your brain

Beyond the theory, 2024-2026 has produced a wave of hard-science evidence — not opinion, EEG-level fact:

• Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2024 EEG study: phone-based short-form video use significantly degrades attention function, with changes observable at the EEG level.
• Behavioral Sciences, August 2025: after exposure to short-form video, task-switching preparation drops — scroll TikTok for 10 minutes and your "context switching" for the next hour is slower than usual.
• Nature, 2025 short-video learning study: fragmented learning disrupts the brain systems responsible for information integration, cognitive control and semantic processing — it's not "you forgot", it's "your brain can't stitch the information together anymore".
• 2026 stat: average global attention span is 47 seconds. Twenty years ago it was 12 seconds. But that 12 was 12 minutes.

A line the Chinese-language internet rarely faces: this is not a "weak willpower" problem.

Platforms use millions of A/B tests, neuroscience consultants, reinforcement learning algorithms, to systematically train you to lose the ability to focus. Each swipe is a random reward. Each random reward bends your dopamine system further toward a "short stimulus → instant reward" loop. It's the same mechanism casinos use to train gamblers with slot machines.

You're not fighting your phone. You're fighting an engineered, optimized addiction device.

And it's in your pocket 24 hours a day.

5. The Chinese version: three more layers

Young people everywhere are being accelerated. Young people in China carry three more on top:

1. The 35-year-old cliff

Lin Wenlian's 2025 research confirms a structural finding in the Chinese labor market: the 35-year-old hiring cliff. Before 35 you're told "grind". After 35 you're told "not flexible enough, too expensive, kids and aging parents".

This produces a particular sense of time: the "usable window" of a life is compressed from the Western 30-65 to the Chinese 22-35. You have 13 years to fit in marriage, kids, a house, promotion and your first pile of savings.

The tighter the time, the harder the acceleration. When Rosa talks about "acceleration" in Germany, it's a metaphor. In China it's literal.

2. The deadlock of "involution" and "lying flat"

"Involution" and "lying flat" look opposed. They're two sides of the same trap.

Involution is: everyone doubling their effort, per-capita return going down. Effort no longer buys reward. It just keeps you from falling behind. Lying flat is: since doubling effort doesn't help, opt out of the race.

It's not a coincidence these two words went mainstream. Reality is offering only two options: keep accelerating until you break, or stop moving altogether.

The middle option — "live at a reasonable pace" — has been structurally cancelled.

In March 2026, the Made in China Journal named this state "political depression", extending the Republican-era concept of "neurasthenia" into the present. It's not individual pathology. It's the body absorbing a structural condition.

3. Pain plus inability to name pain

The most important piece, and the most uncomfortable:

Western "acceleration burnout" at least has an exit — you can curse capitalism, you can curse 996, you can march, you can push for legislation, you can quit and go do Slow Living for a year and come back.

The Chinese version is: you can feel the acceleration, you can feel the squeeze, but you can't name it / naming it doesn't help / naming it might get you censored.

996.icu got pressured. "Lying flat" as a topic got softened. #MeToo got pressured. The "four no" youth (no relationships, no marriage, no house, no kids) got pressured.

Which leaves a simple equation:

Pain + inability to name the pain = depression.

Depression isn't fragility. Depression is what the body does when every exit has been closed.

6. The way out: active opt-out vs passive retreat

The world is growing several counter-movements. Lining them up next to each other reveals an interesting difference:

The thing worth noticing isn't the movements themselves, it's the difference in their nature:

Slow Living and Digital Minimalism are active choices — I have something I'd rather be doing, so I opt out of certain things. Lying flat and Quiet Quitting are passive retreats — I don't have something I'd rather be doing, but I'm also not willing to keep going like this.

The first is building. The second is protest.

The Chinese specificity is: the active version gets suppressed (it gets labeled "slacking" or "not positive enough"), so only the passive version goes mainstream.

That's why "lying flat" can go viral in China while Slow Living never quite catches on. It's not because Chinese people prefer lying down. It's that lying down is the only posture that hasn't been put under review.

7. Closing: this is not a personal problem

I don't want to end this on a "you can do it" pep-talk. I also don't want to end it on a "uninstall the app and your life will change" practicality piece.

What I want to say is something more uncomfortable:

This isn't your problem. It's a structural problem. But admitting it's structural doesn't mean you don't have to carry it.

You're still the person who has to pay rent, pay back loans, hit deadlines, deal with the 35-year-old crisis. The structure doesn't disappear because someone names it. The point of naming the structure is —

You stop yelling at yourself "why am I so useless". You stop assuming it's your willpower. You stop assuming everyone else is doing fine and only you are not.

You start to know: what you're catching is the weight of an era landing on you.

Knowing this won't make the weight any lighter. But it lets you, under the weight, keep a part of yourself that won't be crushed by it — the part that can see this is happening, can name it, can choose which parts to participate in and which to opt out of.

Inside the age of acceleration, not letting it train you into its tool might be the hardest, and the most valuable, thing this generation can do.

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References

Mental health data

• Sapien Labs Releases the Global Mind Health In 2025 Report. Sapien Labs. https://sapienlabs.org/whats_new/the-global-mind-health-in-2025-report/
• Over a billion people living with mental health conditions. WHO, 2025-09. https://www.who.int/news/item/02-09-2025-over-a-billion-people-living-with-mental-health-conditions-services-require-urgent-scale-up
• Global mental health snapshot: 1.2 billion people are living with mental disorders. El País, 2026-05. https://english.elpais.com/health/2026-05-25/global-mental-health-snapshot-12-billion-people-are-living-with-mental-disorders.html
• The Global Decline in the Mental Health of the Young. NBER Reporter, 2025. https://www.nber.org/reporter/2025number1/global-decline-mental-health-young
• Young adults in a changing world. AXA Mind Health Study, 2025. https://www.axaglobalhealthcare.com/en/about-us/reports/mindhealth-reports/

Social acceleration / achievement society theory

• Social acceleration. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_acceleration
• Hartmut Rosa says we're running faster just to stay in place. Christian Century. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/books/hartmut-rosa-says-we-re-running-faster-just-stay-place
• Social Acceleration and the Need for Speed. Los Angeles Review of Books. https://admin.lareviewofbooks.org/article/social-acceleration-and-the-need-for-speed/
• Acceleration, Alienation, and Resonance — Reconstructing Hartmut Rosa's Theory of Modernity. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354372391
• Han, Byung-Chul. The Burnout Society.

Short-form video and the neuroscience of attention

• Mobile phone short video use negatively impacts attention functions: an EEG study. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2024. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11236742/
• Swiping Disrupts Switching: Reduced Cue-Based Preparation Following Short-Form Video Exposure. Behavioral Sciences, 2025-08. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12382645/
• Fragmented learning from short videos modulates neural activity and connectivity during memory retrieval. Nature, 2025. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-025-00399-y
• People with short-video addiction show altered brain responses during decision-making. PsyPost. https://www.psypost.org/people-with-short-video-addiction-show-altered-brain-responses-during-decision-making/
• Long Story Short: The Harm of Short-Form Online Content. Psychology Today, 2026-05. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/a-deeper-wellness/202605/long-story-short-the-harm-of-short-form-online-content

The Chinese context

• Hard work, little reward: What's driving China's 'lying flat' generation. ThinkChina. https://www.thinkchina.sg/society/hard-work-little-reward-whats-driving-chinas-lying-flat-generation
• 35 and Out — Lin Wenlian's Study Confirms Mid-Career Hiring Cliff in China. EastIsRead. https://www.eastisread.com/p/35-and-out-lin-wenlians-study-confirms
• [Vox pop] Is there a 'curse of 35' in China?. ThinkChina. https://www.thinkchina.sg/society/vox-pop-there-curse-35-china
• What are the bigger questions behind Chinese youth 'lying flat'?. The Lowdown. https://thelowdown.momentum.asia/chinese-youth-lying-flat/
• Political Depression and the Afterlives of Neurasthenia. Made in China Journal, 2026-03. https://madeinchinajournal.com/2026/03/09/political-depression-and-the-afterlives-of-neurasthenia/

Counter-movements

• Newport, Cal. On Digital Minimalism. https://calnewport.com/on-digital-minimalism/
• Digital Minimalism: A Philosophy of Technology Use. Slow Living LDN. https://slowlivingldn.com/journal/live-better/digital-minimalism/
• Walking Alone: On "Digital Minimalism". Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/walking-alone-on-digital-minimalism/