tech & mental health

Technology and Mental Health Poster Call:

Bienal del Cartel Bolivia BICeBé 

"Technology has been designed to be at the service of people by providing effective solutions on a daily basis.

Today, not being up-to-date reduces the chances of interaction. Children grow up with more tech skills than their grandparents and the current education faces all these challenges considering that students will make full use of the capabilities that technology provides for their education.

During the pandemic the world has depended on it. We have been forced to redefine everything: education, health, basic needs, finances and work. We have got many things in favor thanks to technology, but it has also affected other aspects of our lives that are not visible to everyone. Lack of attention span and information retention; affective bonds broken; low self-esteem generated by idealizing realities of other in social media has generated serious disorders such as depression and anxiety.

Mental health is one of the most affected ones. Professional advice invites us to stay away from the excessive use of devices and limit the hours so that we could enhance our effectiveness and reconnect with our environment.

In a reality where smartphones seem to dictate the pace of an incomplete life, this “epidemic of anxiety disorders in the 21st century” only generates lives of stress, psychological, and body dysmorphic disorders. And no app can provide you with the ideal filter to hide what you have inside."

Each illustrated icon represents something we have lost. 

Not that each item has fully disappeared, but most of us do not appreciate them for their simplicity and benefits. 

Technology has been decreasing our happiness since 2010. Our time spent on screens is infiltrating relationships, personal health, our time outdoors and sleeping. In other words, digital media may have an indirect effect on happiness as it displaces time that could be otherwise spent on more beneficial activities.* We need to evaluate what we have lost to the “ease” of technology, and decide what really matters.

---

*Twenge, Jean M. “The Sad State of Happiness in the United States and the Role of Digital Media.” The World Happiness Report, 20 Mar. 2019, https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2019/the-sad-state-of-happiness-in-the-united-states-and-the-role-of-digital-media/.