Mental Health at Risk

ByAlejandro Calvillo

This column by Alejandro Calvillo originally appeared in the March 28, 2026 edition of Sin Embargo.

High consumption or use of “X product” is directly linked to increased anxiety levels. It causes high dopamine releases and momentary pleasure, followed by abrupt crashes that generate irritability, fatigue, and stress symptoms—such as tachycardia and cortisol release—creating an addictive cycle that affects mood and mental health .

What is this “X product”? What is it that we consume in this civilization from a very early age that gives us pleasure, generates addiction, affects our mood and our mental health, to such a degree that we can say that it has led us to become the society of anxiety or, rather, the society of dopamine-addiction-anxiety?

You’re probably thinking of something that might be that “X product.” First of all, it’s important to understand that it’s not just one product: it’s a vast array of products designed to generate that rush of pleasure, create addiction, and thereby capture and mold lifelong consumers from a very young age. Life, in its most intimate dimension, is dominated by corporate logic: that consumers who already use the product consume more, and that those who don’t yet use it start doing so. And the best way to achieve this is through addiction. A world of dealers who target from a very young age. And it’s not just about addiction to products we eat, drink, or inhale; it’s about ideologically shaping the citizen-consumer, creating a carefully crafted perception that is experienced as reality, all in service of power, whether economic or political.

You’ve probably heard recently that a 20-year-old woman won a multimillion-dollar judgment in Los Angeles, California, against Facebook and Instagram after it was acknowledged that the platforms had damaged her mental health and that they are designed to create addiction in their users. The extent of the addictive impact of these platforms can be appreciated when we consider that they reach a large portion of humanity. Facebook has approximately three billion users, while Instagram has around two to three billion active users.

Let’s take social media as our first “X product.” It’s a product consumed from a young age that generates a dopamine rush, a feeling of pleasure, followed by a drop in irritability, fatigue, and anxiety. And the corporation knows this very well. In legal proceedings against this company, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), an internal study known as Project Mercury was obtained, which focused on evaluating the impact of these platforms on mental health. In this study—commissioned by Meta and kept secret—a social experiment was conducted in which a group of people had their accounts deactivated for a week. After a week of being disconnected from social media, these people shared that they had experienced a decrease in their levels of anxiety, loneliness, depression, and the tendency to compare themselves to others.

The evidence of the damage to the mental health and lives of millions of people—at least two generations—may already be, to some degree, irreversible. The question is whether we will have the capacity to regulate these platforms, the use of AI, its algorithms, and its theft and capture of data, tastes, phobias, strengths, and weaknesses, for commercial and ideological exploitation.

In October 2021, I published the article “Facebook and its criminal algorithm”, where I reported on the appearance of Frances Haugen, the “Deep Throat of Facebook”, before the United States Congress testifying in relation to the actions of that company and Instagram to increase profits by spreading hate messages, promoting conspiracy theories and the psychological deterioration of adolescents.

This former Meta employee had leaked a series of internal documents from the corporation to The Wall Street Journal, revealing her sociopathic behavior. She was tasked with developing an algorithm to block racist messages against the Muslim population and various minorities, including the LGBT+ community. The project was abruptly shut down, and a Facebook executive justified the decision by saying that “prioritizing the safety of marginalized groups would be too political.” It’s not just that violent messages aren’t blocked: the algorithm tends to reward them and give them greater exposure. The documents demonstrated that the algorithms favored confrontational, conspiratorial, and violent discourses that kept users browsing longer and, therefore, exposed them to more advertising. More advertising means more profit for the corporation.

Frances Haugen started working at Facebook for one reason: because she lost her best friend to the corporation. Her best friend became interested in conspiracy theories, and the algorithm overwhelmed him with them; there was no way to continue interacting with him if you didn’t agree with his beliefs. Haugen pointed out how Meta was destroying democracy; she witnessed how Facebook was used to coordinate the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when Trump lost the election to Biden. Among the documents Haugen extracted from Meta were complaints from European political parties against these platforms, accusing them of creating confrontational political environments by amplifying the most violent messages. As these platforms become the primary media outlets, they not only have an addictive impact due to their format, but also an impact on governance, democracy, and values ​​through their content.

On the other hand, Haugen showed how these platforms exploit people’s vulnerabilities. For example, their algorithms immediately identify young women who are dissatisfied with their physical appearance, bombarding them with advertisements for cosmetics, trendy clothes, and junk therapies and advice that ultimately exacerbate those vulnerabilities. The same happens with those who suffer from other vulnerabilities, those with chronic illnesses, those who struggle with alcoholism, or those addicted to tobacco, vaping, junk food, soda, energy drinks, and so on.

In this collaboration, we discuss one of those “X products” that generate addiction and subsequently irritability and anxiety: we’re talking about the use of digital platforms. The phrase can be applied to many products, but originally, it referred to a product used daily from a very young age: sugar. This addictive product is consumed in high quantities from a very early age through sugary drinks. The consumption of these sugary drinks in Mexico—one of the highest in the world—causes 230,000 new cases of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases each year. We will discuss this product further in the context of the Copa Cola in future collaborations.

However, let’s end with some good news: the ruling in Los Angeles, California, against Meta, which recognizes the harm caused by these corporations and mandates that they begin to pay for it. This is the only way to ensure that their practices and product design are regulated, so that algorithms are designed for the well-being of the population, not for the benefit of a few at the expense of others, at the expense of dialogue and democracy.

Alejandro Calvillo is director of El Poder del Consumidor, a non-profit civil association that works to defend the rights of the Mexican consumer, as well as a sociologist with degrees in philosophy from the University of Barcelona and environment and sustainable development from El Colegio de México.

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