Jonathan Rottenberg

We're using some of the tools that enabled us to differentiate ourselves from other species and have, in a sense, mastery of the entire earth.

But these are some of the tools that are also used against ourselves.

So again, a perfectly good adaptation, but in the hands of a highly intelligent person using language, we become our own worst enemies.

It is the point that I'm making.

And

I make it a little bit different for depression because some of the environmental factors involve our culture.

So, for example, we don't simply experience our mood.

We also experience our mood relative to what we believe we should be experiencing or what we believe other people are experiencing.

So this phenomenon of social media has really changed how people experience their mood, because what people often project on social media are lives where I am leading an ecstatic existence of a series of amazing experiences.

And if you witness other people's social media feeds, you may come to believe that other people are experiencing off-the-charts positive affect, which leads you to ask the question, why am I not experiencing this?

So you're experiencing a big...

discrepancy between what you believe you ought to be feeling and what you are feeling and what you believe other people are feeling.

So your mood becomes a big problem in this environment.

And then you start to ask the question, what is wrong with me?

that I feel this way.

And I believe that more people are asking that question right now than have ever asked that question in human history.

Certainly, if I think about my Russian and Eastern European

peasant ancestors in the 19th century who were living in villages, I do not think that they were all the time thinking, what is wrong with the way that I am feeling?

I think there was a greater acceptance that negative emotions perhaps were the par for the course to be expected.

So there's a number of things that are going on in our contemporary environment that are probably exacerbating low mood.