Social networks and social anxiety
I’m writing a book at the moment about social anxiety. It’s an emotional disorder that makes you terrified of being negatively judged or humiliated by others. It was only officially recognized by the DSM Manual of clinical disorders in 1980, but since then, psychologists have come to think it could affect between 6 and 12% of the population in the US, making it the most common anxiety disorder and the third most common mental illness (after depression and alcoholism) in the West.
My book is looking at the cultural determinants of the illness. One of the questions I ask is, why is it so prevalent in the West, particularly in the US, and why does it hardly appear in east Asian communities, where studies suggest it affects just 0.5% of the population?