It’s no secret that the internet is dangerous. Your safety, physical, and mental health are at risk just by browsing. Although the spread of information through the mass media is important, it can lead to an information overload which could cause or influence anxiety or stress. This stress could lead to mass hysteria. Mass hysteria or Mass psychosis is a phenomenon where a group of people will share similar symptoms, behaviors, or feelings. These symptoms are psychological, though they may become physical with conversion disorder.
We see mass hysteria in recent media with the Pokémon shock in 1997 and the tics from TikTok. Around 2020, there was an increasing number of teen girls who were making involuntary movements and sounds ( much like the symptoms of tourette syndrome ) showing up at neurology clinics. After ruling everything out, they found out that these involuntary movements known as “tics” were related to the girls’ screen time on TikTok, since many influencers with tourettes had become popular at the time.
Less recently in December of 1997, many kids in Japan experienced seizures after watching a Pokémon episode named “Dennō Senshi Porygon.” At the climax of the episode, the team gets hit with an antivirus and red and blue quickly flash on the screen for about six seconds. Since there was no warning for the flash, thousands of kids with photosensitive epilepsy started having seizures. Hospitals were flooded, but the reports were off. Out of 12,000 kids, 1 in 100 had epilepsy and an even fewer amount of them had photosensitive epilepsy. People found out that though some kids had watched it that day, a lot of kids had watched it the next day after, and the chatter had already spread around the school.
If you know someone who looks a little stressed out on their phone and has already started to have symptoms of something that shouldn’t be possible, unofficial treatment like reassurance, figuring out the root of their stress, and taking them to therapy may help them.
