Are We Living In An Age Of Anxiety?
Reader's Digest India|May 2023
We ask author and educationist Abha Adams, for answers
Ria Singh
Are We Living In An Age Of Anxiety?

What, in your opinion, is this ‘age of anxiety’ we are going through?

It’s a time of increasing dissatisfaction in our lives. We feel great pressure to live up to unachievable standards seen on social media. The ever-increasing ‘busyness’ of our lives is driven by an intensely consumerist society. We have lost the art of connection, communication and conversation. As Microsoft chairperson Ravi Venkatesan puts it, it’s a VUCA world. It stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity—all hallmarks of an anxiety-ridden climate.

Children, it seems, are not immune to this climate, a worrying truth since childhood is a time one should feel most ‘free’ …

Of course, our children are affected too. When we as adults feel anxious all the time, children naturally pick up on these feelings of pressure coming from the unsettled world around them.

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