Human evolution and connection
Intimate social connectivity, woven together in our communities, was a fundamental mechanism for human survival. Historically, for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, the community provided access to our fundamental needs, such as safety from predators and access to substantive nutrition.4 Community allowed our ancestors to survive and procreate, and facilitated their triumph over predation and disease.5 Our distinction as the dominant species on Earth has been afforded by our social connectivity. Unfortunately, in the virtual worlds of our electronic devices the intimate social connectivity of community is absent. Our children wander in isolation, left to navigate age-old evolutionary pressures in the absence of the fundamental advantage for our survival as a species.
Dr. Dana S. Kaminstein
Unlike the living, breathing bears and wolves that threatened our ancestors, in the virtual world of the electronic device children are stalked by invisible predators seeking sexual or monetary exploitation. Children are being consumed by digital advertising and social media platforms that perpetually reinforce the requirement of perfection, and they fall prey to cyberbullies who mercilessly disparage their imperfections. In their virtual worlds, where their value is predicated upon anonymous others’ opinions, they succumb to the idea that they will never be enough.6 Their fundamental needs of competence and relatedness go unmet, and they lose their sense of purpose, belonging, and often their will to live. More importantly, absent from their children’s virtual worlds, and preoccupied within their own, parents cannot protect their children from online predators, deflect the vicious attacks of cyberbullies, or reframe their children’s imperfections as distinctive or empowering. They are unable to provide their children with the substantive interpersonal contact necessary for resilience and that bolsters their self-worth.
Human beings are inherently social creatures, who regardless of era require community to meet their fundamental needs. As the duration of daily screen time steadily increases, our youth are spending more and more of their waking hours living in isolation in an electronic world. Without the protective social connectivity of community, they are hunted by online predators, and they are consumed by the predatory culture of perfectionism that is contradictory to the reciprocal caretaking necessary to support their healthy development. Evolutionary biology informs us that, when children are isolated, they are susceptible to predation and disease. And in the socialized isolation of their electronic worlds, they are succumbing to predation and to the depressive diseases that are exacerbating the pediatric mental health crisis.
Creating and building community amid a pandemic has been challenging at best. However, now that we have better tools to fight COVID, it is important to encourage our young patients to reduce their nonacademic screen time, and to get outside and engage with others. Their mental health depends on it.
Dr. Loper is a pediatrician and child and adolescent psychiatrist at Prisma Health–Midlands in Columbia, S.C. He is an assistant professor in the department of neuropsychiatry and behavioral science at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Dr. Loper has no conflicts of interest. Dr. Kaminstein is an adjunct assistant professor at the graduate school of education and affiliated faculty in the organizational dynamics program, School of Arts and Sciences, at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He is a social psychologist who has been studying groups and organizations for more than 40 years. He has no conflicts of interest.
References
1. MMWR. 2021 Jun 18;70(24):888-94.
2. Ray G. “Pediatricians, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists and Children’s Hospitals Declare National Emergency in Children’s Mental Health.” Childrenshospitals.org. 2021 Oct 19.
3. JAMA Netw Open. 2020(8):e2011381.
4. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2018 April:165(4):777-800.
5. The influence of predation on primate and early human evolution: Impetus for cooperation, in “Origins of Altruism and Cooperation. Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects.” (Basingstoke, England: Springer Nature, 2011, pp. 19-40).