Anxiety has become one of the defining psychological conditions of today’s society. Despite unprecedented technological advances, material comfort, and greater individual freedom, many people still experience constant feelings of discomfort, emotional exhaustion, restlessness, and mental overload.
Modern life offers levels that previous generations could not imagine. Food arrives within minutes via delivery apps, entertainment is constantly available, and communication is instant across continents. Financial systems enable individuals to consume beyond their economic means through the expansion of credit, subscription culture and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) schemes. On the surface, modern systems appear to be designed to reduce friction, maximize comfort, and increase personal freedom.
However, the psychological discomfort remains.
This contradiction reveals an important insight: Human well-being is not defined solely by convenience, consumption, or technological efficiency. While modern capitalism has been very effective in solving the problems of access and speed, it has also created new forms of psychological tension rooted in excess, comparison, uncertainty, personality constant pressure and evaluation (Han, 2023; Twenge, 2023). The modern person may have more comfort than ever before and at the same time experience less peace of mind.
Traditional explanations often describe anxiety as an individual pathology or biological vulnerability. However, modern studies increasingly show that anxiety cannot be understood only at the level of the individual. Rather, it reflects the broader structural, technological, economic, and cultural changes that shape modern life (Hari, 2022; Twenge, 2023). In many cases, modern anxiety arises not from immediate physical danger, but from chronic psychological pressures embedded in the everyday environment: constant comparison, personality instability, information overload, economic instability, social acceleration and the expectation of constant self-optimization.
Historically, anxiety developed as an adaptive survival mechanism designed to protect individuals from visible and immediate threats such as predators, violence, starvation, or environmental uncertainty. Man nervous system developed under conditions that require vigilance against physical danger. However, while modern societies have changed significantly, human architecture stress the answer changed much more slowly. As a result, systems that were once calibrated for short-term survival are now overwhelmed by abstract and psychologically pervasive stressors such as unread emails, volatile job markets, rising costs of living, digital visibility, social evaluation, and fear lagging behind (Sapolsky, 2023).
One of the psychological characteristics of modern times is the expansion of choice. Modern societies celebrate independence, flexibility and self-determination as signs of progress. Individuals are encouraged to project their identity through career, relationships, consumption, travel, personal branding and lifestyle. But research in consumer psychology shows that too many choices often lead to decision fatigue, anticipatory regret, self-deception, and existential uncertainty (Schwartz, 2024). Increasingly, people don’t just choose what to buy or where to work; they feel they choose who they want to become.
The burden is compounded by the modern belief that every decision has life-defining consequences. Should one prioritize persistence or passion? Financial security or self-sufficiency? Visibility or privacy? Ambition or balance? In environments full of possibilities, uncertainty itself is psychologically exhausting. Freedom, while valuable, can also become emotionally unstable when people lack clear internal anchors.
Digital technologies have exacerbated this situation by turning social comparison into a continuous, global, and algorithmically enhanced experience. Humans have always judged themselves against others, but earlier generations compared themselves primarily within local communities and limited social circles. Today, people are surrounded by carefully curated representations of success, beauty, wealth, labor productivitytravel, relationships and lifestyle achievements every time they turn on the screen. What people compare is often their private emotional reality versus someone else’s publicly edited performance (Aissa et al., 2025).
Comparative culture is strongly connected with modern consumer systems. The modern economy encourages people not only to consume products, but also to consume personalities, dreams and lifestyles. BNPL schemes are particularly examples of this psychology. They reduce immediate financial stress while moderating rapid consumption and delayed economic stress. Consuming is emotionally detached from material limitations. People are encouraged to access the lifestyle immediately and postpone the psychological and financial consequences for the future. While such systems increase short-term satisfaction and convenience, they can also intensify long-term anxiety by reinforcing cycles of debt, comparison, and perceived inadequacy (Deloitte, 2024).
Contemporary culture is also increasingly recasting itself as an ongoing project. Productivity, health, appearance, emotional intelligencefitness, networking, and even entertainment are now under pressure to optimize. The modern individual is expected not only to live, but also to constantly improve, improve, monetize and manage himself strategically. While self-awareness can be constructive, the pressure to constantly optimize can create chronic self-doubt and emotional exhaustion (Han, 2015). In such conditions, rest becomes associated with it blamepeace with inefficiency and simple existence with failure. Therefore, anxiety becomes less episodic and more ambient – a constant state of modern life.
Another defining feature of modern anxiety is the imbalance between awareness and agency. Digital connectivity exposes individuals to a constant stream of information about war. climate changeeconomic instability, political polarization, public health crises and social conflicts. Awareness can increase engagement and social awareness, but constant exposure to threats on a scale beyond individual control can also increase cognitive impairment and overload. Psychological research consistently shows that chronic exposure to uncontrollable stressors is strongly associated with anxiety and emotional exhaustion (Tafet et al., 2025). Therefore, modern humans often exist in environments characterized by high awareness but limited perceived control.
Importantly, contemporary anxiety should not always be interpreted as dysfunction. In many cases, anxiety can be a rational psychological response to environments characterized by overstimulation, instability, fragmentation, incessant comparison, and constant evaluation. This perspective shifts the analytical focus away from simply asking, “What is wrong with a person?“to investigate,”What kind of environments do modern systems create for human psychology?»
