The New Disease with the Most Patients in Modern Society: Electronic Screen Syndrome

In May 2019, the World Health Organization announced that it was adding gaming disorder to its International Classification of Diseases and classifying it as a mental health disorder. As society develops, the spectrum of human diseases keeps changing, so the appearance of new diseases is not surprising.

Actually, in the field of psychiatry, doctors have gone further than the WHO. Some psychiatrists believe that "Electronic Screen Syndrome (ESS)" has already become a new disease universally suffered by humankind—a disease whose victims far outnumber those of gaming disorder.

Electronic products have altered human brain chemistry, arousal levels, hormones, and sleep, ultimately affecting human thinking, emotion, behavior, and social skills, so the harm electronic products do to human physical and mental health should not be underestimated. The earlier people are exposed to television, mobile phones, and computers, the more likely they are to develop Electronic Screen Syndrome.

Children and adolescents are more susceptible to Electronic Screen Syndrome than adults. Every year quite a few children and adolescents die by suicide because of "Electronic Screen Syndrome," and even more children and adolescents develop symptoms of various mental disorders because they are addicted to electronic products.

But this does not mean adults are spared. More and more adults are also developing symptoms of depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and insomnia because of "Electronic Screen Syndrome." The negative impact of electronic products on the human brain, nervous system, and adrenal cortical function has not yet received sufficient attention.

If a person, after staying completely away from all electronic devices for 4–6 weeks, shows substantial improvement in sleep, mood, some somatic symptoms, and interpersonal skills, then one can basically be certain that the person has "Electronic Screen Syndrome."

In my actual work I encounter a large number of adult and pediatric oncology patients. From these patients I have observed some patterns: those patients who are heavily addicted to electronic devices and the internet have a markedly lower chance of recovery than those who use electronic products less. This is especially true for tumors closely related to the nervous system and adrenal cortical function, such as neuroblastoma and adrenal tumors.

There are not many people in the medical community who can truly speak out to reverse this situation. Electronic product developers and producers are far more financially powerful than doctors, so they can always exert greater influence than doctors and play down this negative impact.

This is much like what the tobacco industry once did. In the mid-20th century, when the medical community discovered the fact that tobacco causes cancer, the tobacco companies felt greatly threatened. Relying on their vast financial resources, they conducted political lobbying, denied that tobacco causes cancer, attacked the medical community's views, influenced policy-makers' decisions, and disregarded public health in order to promote the tobacco industry.

Only when the incidence of cancer induced by smoking rose sharply and aroused public outrage, and the medical community, patients, lawyers, public-interest organizations, and the media joined forces against the tobacco industry, did the tobacco companies finally have to yield and admit the fact that tobacco has a strong carcinogenic side effect.

Even so, the tobacco companies were still able to downplay the impact on the tobacco industry. What we can still see on cigarette packs today is only the vague warning that "smoking is harmful to health." If the warning read "cigarettes are strongly carcinogenic," public enthusiasm for cigarettes would surely drop sharply, and the cancer incidence rate would also decline to some degree.

Today, although the impact of electronic products on human physical and mental health has attracted public attention, it is clear that people's understanding of the damage electronic products do is still insufficient. Electronic Screen Syndrome is repeatedly misdiagnosed as "autism," "depression," "bipolar disorder," "insomnia," "obesity," and other diseases that seem to have nothing to do with electronic devices.

Some parents even find that electronic products can make their children "quiet." From the moment their children are born, most Chinese parents use television, computers, mobile phones, and other electronic products as electronic nannies for their children. They use these to play cartoons for the children or let the children play games, because they find this makes their children behave better. Little do they realize that such behavior has a great adverse effect on their children's physical and mental health.

As for the malignant tumors I am familiar with, epidemiological studies have clearly pointed out that electronic products are one of the main pathogenic factors in diseases such as neuroblastoma and malignant adrenal tumors. Although whether malignant tumors such as brain tumors are related to electronic radiation remains controversial, more and more scholars believe that using electronic devices has the side effect of promoting the progression of brain tumors.

Electronic products are the stimulants of the new era. Fast-paced animation and video games promote the rapid and massive secretion of dopamine and serotonin. The overly intense "fight-or-flight" mode induced by electronic products easily puts people under high nervous tension and stimulates the secretion of adrenal hormones; the blue light of electronic screens also affects the secretion of melatonin and raises the probability of inflammatory lesions in the body.

A large number of studies have proved that since television, computers, mobile phones, and other electronic products appeared in our lives and occupied a large amount of our free time, the incidence of depression, anxiety disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorder has risen rapidly in humankind.

Human IQ values were on the rise until the 1990s. After the 1990s, developed countries were the first to show a year-by-year decline in national IQ; then, as living conditions improved, the national IQ of developing countries, where IQ had previously still been rising, also began to decline year by year.

For a long time, psychologists and psychiatrists believed that rapidly advancing urbanization and industrialization were the chief culprits behind the rapid rise in the prevalence of mental illness. Only in recent years have we discovered that the widespread use of electronic products is more likely the real cause of the rapid rise in mental illness prevalence.

The American psychiatrist Victoria L. Dunckley, through extensive clinical practice, found that many children and adolescents diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder, or autism who had long failed to improve—after receiving the "electronic fast" therapy she advocates, in which all electronic devices are confiscated for 4–6 weeks—had virtually all their symptoms disappear.

The symptoms electronic devices can induce are bizarre and varied: depression, anxiety, aggression, irritability, fragility and sensitivity, social disorders, low libido, cold-heartedness, insomnia or hypersomnia, binge eating, obesity or rapid weight loss, compulsive behavior, loneliness, fear, self-isolation, dizziness and nausea, headaches, palpitations and anxiety, low self-evaluation, self-blame, self-harm, and even strong suicidal urges.

These symptoms are very easily diagnosed as other diseases, but in fact they are all Electronic Screen Syndrome. As long as such patients stay away from electronic screens for 4–6 weeks, their clinical symptoms almost completely disappear, and their social skills can be restored.

Many Electronic Screen Syndrome patients, after receiving an electronic fast under the help of a psychotherapist, have greatly improved academic performance or work efficiency and a much better quality of life. The various psychiatric medications they had been taking not only failed to relieve their symptoms but, on the contrary, had the side effect of worsening them.

I often see children with neuroblastoma who come to my clinic beating up their parents over a phone or iPad. These children are also harder to rehabilitate than other patients. This firsthand impression leaves me in no doubt that electronic devices affect the rehabilitation of cancer patients.

The same is true of some adult cancer patients. For example, among patients with malignant tumors such as liposarcoma and lymphoma, those who are less active online recover more easily than the internet-addicted enthusiasts. Because patients with little interest in electronic devices can rest better, their mental state is better than those obsessed with electronic devices, and they are under less stress.

So recently, when I see patients and hear them complain of symptoms such as insomnia, depression, anxiety, or aggression, I suggest they try giving up electronic devices for a while and observe whether these symptoms still persist.

My personal feeling is that in our era, far too little attention and importance is paid to "Electronic Screen Syndrome." It is also far too often misdiagnosed as depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or adolescent rebellion, so that many doctors, having misjudged, give wrong advice.

I also often see Moments posts from some of my patients or patients' families; judging from the content, during their hospitalization the attending doctors took a completely laissez-faire attitude toward the abuse of electronic products, showing that most doctors are indifferent to this issue.

And some psychological counselors or psychiatrists are themselves patients with "Electronic Screen Syndrome"; they are simply not aware of its existence, so they overprescribe psychiatric drugs to their patients. Wrong diagnosis and wrong treatment leave the patients completely unable to escape their predicament.

All of this is caused by the fact that, at present, society at large still lacks an understanding of Electronic Screen Syndrome.