Digital environments offer unprecedented opportunities for accessing information, connecting across distances, and engaging in interactive and immersive experiences. At the same time they are reshaping how people work, learn, communicate, and connect. For mental health, these changes bring both opportunities and risks, particularly for young people.
Recognizing this, the World Health Organization works to understand how digital environments influence mental health and well-being across the life course. WHO supports research, policy development, and disseminating evidence-based information to help ensure that digital environments contribute positively to mental health and harms are flagged.
Digital environments are now embedded in daily life. Their impact on mental health can be both positive and negative. They can strengthen connection, learning, and access to services. But they can also expose users to harmful content (including marketing of products like alcohol), heighten risks of excessive use and addictive behaviours (such as gambling or gaming), and contribute to a range of mental health conditions, including depression and eating disorders, and suicide in the worst case. They may also contribute to other serious problems such as online violence, sexual exploitation, cyberbullying and isolation. Policies and interventions that promote safe, healthy, and supportive digital experiences are essential.
WHO works with researchers, governments, and international partners to strengthen the global evidence base of helpful and harmful content and support policies that promote healthy digital environments.
Key areas of work include:
From social media and online gaming to generative AI systems, digital environments are powerful determinants of people’s health. That is especially true of children and young people. Around the world, childhood is being reprogrammed by digital technologies that shape how young people learn, play, and connect.
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