August has brought an uncomfortable question into focus: are we actually tired because life is demanding, or are we tired because we never seem to get a chance to switch off?
The answer may be a little of both.
This month, conversations about wellbeing have increasingly moved beyond the simple advice to sleep more, exercise more and take better care of ourselves. There is growing recognition that exhaustion can be connected to the environment people are living in. Work is changing. Technology is becoming harder to escape. Artificial intelligence is creating uncertainty about careers. Digital communication keeps people connected while, at the same time, many are experiencing less genuine human contact.
Recent research published in June found that academic stress, digital fatigue and loneliness were significantly connected with mental health problems among university students. The study involved 388 students and found that digital fatigue partly explained the relationship between academic stress and mental health difficulties.
There is also increasing attention on what technology is doing to working life. The International Labour Organization has warned that AI can change the psychological and social conditions of work through issues such as surveillance, reduced autonomy and data driven management.
Then there is loneliness.
Recent reporting on young adults in Britain found that people aged 18 to 29 are spending substantially more time alone than they did a decade ago, with remote work accounting for a significant part of that increase.
Perhaps this explains why simply telling people to relax can feel so inadequate.
Sometimes the problem is not that someone has forgotten how to rest. The problem is that their mind never feels completely safe enough to rest.
There is always another message, another deadline, another bill, another career decision, another notification, another reason to compare yourself with somebody else.
And artificial intelligence has added another layer for many people. The question is no longer simply whether technology will make life easier. People are increasingly asking what happens to their security, identity and sense of purpose when the technology becomes capable of doing more of what they were trained to do.
This month, perhaps the most important wellbeing question is therefore not:
How can I become better at coping?
It is:
What in my life keeps demanding that I cope in the first place?
Understanding that difference matters. Sometimes improving wellbeing requires changing ourselves. Sometimes it requires changing what we keep allowing into our lives.
August is reminding us to look at both.
