Digital Isolation, Student Mental Health, and the Collapse of Meaning in the Connected Age

We live in the most technologically connected era in human history. Messages cross continents in seconds, ideas circulate endlessly, and validation is only a click away. Yet beneath this unprecedented connectivity lies a Digital Addiction disturbing paradox: digital isolation has become the defining condition of modern students and young adults.

Platforms promised community. Universities promised belonging. What we received instead is a student mental health crisis, a surge in digital addiction, declining academic performance, and a quiet but devastating social disintegration.

This crisis is not accidental. It is structural, cultural, and philosophical—and it demands serious analysis, not slogans.