I happened to scroll through all 54 responses to a rather innocuous tweet by an elected official the other day, and was disturbed to see that every single one was rude. That elected official, along with others I’ve talked to about this, said he never reads any responses on social media — smart guy. But most of us don’t have that discipline; our interactions have become part of our jobs or hobbies.

You take a perfectly normal person, who has lived an exemplary life, perhaps someone in Christian ministry, and put them on social media where they add a couple thousand connections. Having worked hard to keep their nose clean, they are unequipped to deal with the onslaught of personal insults. They can’t keep up with filters, so when they wake up in the morning and check their phone, the first thing they see is hate. Then they are constantly pinged all day long with more hate. They can’t sit and enjoy a dinner with friends because of the incessant interruptions. Many people don’t set up filters since they are worried they might miss an important message from loved ones or work, and it’s not that easy to set up those filters adequately. And it doesn’t even have to be pure hate, even regular criticism 24/7 is demoralizing…

The end result is depression, anxiety and more serious mental health problems among everyone who isn’t a Luddite. People now act out these manifestations by slamming the other political party — and sometimes even their own, because they’ve become super sensitive, manic and less able to control their emotions. It’s considered socially acceptable to lash out in politics, but not in other ways such as screaming at your spouse, so it’s an easy avenue for many to vent their mental illness, which in turn contributes to someone else developing mental illness.