Go to the ‘Lifestyle’ section of a broadsheet and they paint a picture that we are all struggling to deal with stress and overwhelm. This is portrayed as an unavoidable feature of modern life.
A few things make it hard to believe –
- Firstly, it just doesn’t square with my daily experiences. I’m not stressed out and overwhelmed, while living a pretty normal lifestyle with full-time work plus childcare and sports etc.
- The stats don’t bear it out. Working time has gone way down – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Average_annual_hours_per_worker – it’s below 35 hours a week most places, 46.25 in the highest in that table. Yes when I worked 80 hours a week I was exhausted, but that’s not the norm, and the papers talk about it like it’s some inescapable trend.
- Then there’s the stats on TV-watching. How can it be true that modern life is hectic AND people watch telly for three hours a day?
I know this is coming across as a rant diguised as an AskLemmy question, but I have real curiosity about it… am I the exception for not feeling busy? Is there some explanation I am missing for why people in a society with 35-hour workweeks feel busy? Do you find the ‘hectic modern life’ narrative relatable? Do you think people are lying about being busy for some reason, e.g. to avoid being asked to do things?
I take like 12 pills every morning and half of them are just for my mental health. I know personally it’s always been there but has gotten tougher to manage recently primarily due to external factors. I think it’s important to remember that other people are going through wildly different things than you. Other people have a harder time dealing with stress and depression than you do. Plus it’s become much more common to actually get help when you’re struggling which would explain the higher numbers being reported.
Also a high tv viewership if anything counters your argument. A lot of people use television as an escape so higher viewership would mean more people trying to ignore their stress/issues.