By Ron Cheong
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Tues. Oct. 21, 2025: When did the world change and become more smartphone focused? According to British psychiatrist Dr. Russell Razzaque, the shift began around 2010 and crystallized by 2016 – the year of the Brexit referendum.
Razzaque’s research focuses on how human beings respond to trauma and disruption, but this framework also offers a striking lens on our broader political and cultural environment: we have entered an alternate reality powered by smartphones, relentless stimulation and outrage.
This article is an attempt to understand the apparent global unraveling of civility. At first, I wondered if the growing sense of discord – despite the comfort and connectivity brought by technological leaps – was merely an illusion. Perhaps the digital age was simply exposing realities that had always existed but remained hidden. Then I encountered Razzaque’s work, which offered a clearer explanation.
He argues that the world really has changed, and so have we. Our brains, he says, have been rewired. Since the convergence of smartphones, social media, and algorithmic feeds, humanity has entered a new mental ecosystem where attention is the most valuable currency. The human mind – wired for novelty and emotion – has been subtly reprogrammed as the competition for our attention intensifies.
In the past, media consumption was largely passive: reading a newspaper or watching a half-hour newscast. Today, information flows in a ceaseless, interactive stream. Each swipe delivers a microburst of stimulation – humor, anger, desire, fear. Over time, this rewires our expectations. Ordinary reality, with its slower rhythms and nuanced reasoning, simply doesn’t compete. We now crave sharper edges: stories that spark emotion and outrage rather than invite reflection.
One consequence is that democracy itself is changing. It cannot be assumed that all voters will to act rationally – or even in their own interest. Competence alone does not guarantee winning elections. Spectacle, controversy, and constant social media presence is louder than fairness, equality, optimism, or policy substance. And this is the new habitat of growing segments of society caught in the digital vortex. It isn’t imagination: the world has changed, and so have people.
Media And The Economics Of Disruption
It isn’t only social media that drives this transformation. Much of mainstream media has also been drawn into the same current. Confronted by shrinking attention spans, falling ad revenues, and the need to compete with the speed and immediacy of digital platforms, many outlets now favor conflict, outrageous headlines, and personality scandals. Complex policy discussions and constructive debates rarely fit into a viral clip.
The result is a feedback loop: the public demands stimulation; the media delivers outrage; outrage shapes politics; politics feeds back into media spectacle. The moderate middle – where reasoned discourse lives – is drowned out by noise. Even nations once known for pragmatic politics are now polarized as algorithmic feeds replace shared public forums.
The Internet once promised the democratization of information; instead, it has produced the fragmentation of truth. Fringe narratives – from conspiracies to historical revisionism – find oxygen in this fractured ecosystem. They spread faster than facts, propelled by algorithms that reward engagement, not accuracy. What was once outrageous now feels familiar, and familiarity breeds normalization.
The Guyana Backdrop
Closer to home the phenomena is less pronounced. The September , 2025 elections showed the majority of voters chose competence and performance. Nevertheless, the Razzaque phenomena was also evident in Guyana: manifested as spectacle, where scandal, U.S. sanctions, braggadocios conduct and ostentation drew attention rather than raised alarm for many voters.
Maybe there were other reasons for some, but certainly for many it would have been the numbing to outrage brought on by immersion and constant stimulus of social media in which shock value is the hook by which many are drawn in and held captive – in this alternate reality little is appalling and glitz and performative glamour are portrayed, peddled and repeatedly consumed for their narcotic recharge.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Ron Cheong, born in Guyana, is a community activist and dedicated volunteer with an extensive international background in banking. Now residing in Toronto, Canada, he is a fellow of the Institute of Canadian Bankers and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toronto.
