Are We Living In An Age Of Anxiety?

We ask author and educationist Abha Adams, for answers

- Ria Singh

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.