In the post-Covid world, workers face an ever more alienated and isolated environment.
Questions of work-life balance have been tossed to the wayside as a growing number of Canadians are required, out of economic necessity, to prioritize the former over the latter. For many, work is life, encapsulated by the rise of hustle culture, individualism, and the neoliberal drive to capture the “entrepreneurial spirit.”
Recent data from Statistics Canada quantifies this trend. According to a just-released report, nearly one in four Canadians feel high levels of time pressure compared to just one in seven in 1992. The feeling that there isn’t enough time is having ramifications on both our mental health and social relationships.
According to the same report, 43 per cent of Canadians feel they are under constant stress, while 36 per cent said they don’t have time for fun. Respondents also express concern that they aren’t spending enough time with family or friends.
The data also shows clear disparities between genders and generations. Women tend to feel more pressed for time than men, while young people spend less time with friends than previous generations.
While the report offers important insights into the sentiments of working Canadians, it doesn’t venture to ask why a growing number are feeling this way. As the late political philosopher and culture theorist Mark Fisher argued, discussions around mental illness are predicated on the denial of their social causation. Through this lens, stress, anxiety, or depression are portrayed as highly individualized conditions, the symptoms of a “chemical imbalance” or one’s personal shortcomings with respect to work and time management.
The pandemic may have forced us to reconsider the relationship between our environment and mental health, though it is worth asking whether this realization has gone far enough.
In 2020, one in five adults reported moderate to severe symptoms of anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) before rising to one in four as of 2023.
While the push to destigmatize mental health is important, it’s not just the pandemic that’s driving this. There are other, equally pressing, drivers of mental deterioration, like increasingly alienating work, financial strain, and growing surveillance by Big Tech companies.
By the time they reach 40, one in two Canadians will have or have had a mental illness. Rather than accept this as an inevitable fact of life, it is worth considering Fisher’s call to politicize conversations over mental health by addressing their social causes.
With a recent report finding that Canadian workers are some of the most stressed in the world, rethinking our notion of the work-life balance is a great place to start.
It isn’t an individual problem, it’s a social one
Rising stress, anxiety, and loneliness are by no means “natural” phenomena, nor should they be dismissed as individualized sentiments. Instead, they are quantifiable realities that can be linked to Canadians’ socio-economic reality.
Income inequality is the highest it’s ever been in this country, with the gap widening over the course of the pandemic. This is correlated with an erosion in the broader standard of living as Canadians grapple with the rising cost of everything in the wake of inflation and tariff-related price hikes.
Moreover, generational challenges persist, as young people continue to struggle with housing affordability and employment opportunities.
Contrast this with the rising number of Canadians turning to “hustle culture” or “gig work” as a means of supplementing their income, and the time pressure reported by Statistics Canada makes perfect sense.
Social relationships and free time become necessary sacrifices to maximize one’s productivity and make ends meet. As work becomes a more pervasive aspect of one’s life, the need to always be “plugged in” becomes an ever more exhausting reality.
This is exacerbated by the dominant role technology plays in our lives. As the pandemic heralded the rise of remote work, those who worked from home tended to experience higher levels of pressure, despite being as, if not more, productive than their in-person counterparts.
There are also the increasingly blurred lines between home and work life as basic internet access means that one is always accessible to their employer.
In the regulatory sense, Ontario is the only province with a “right to disconnect” law, though its scope is limited and only requires an employer to have some policy in place. For the majority of workers, however, the constant need to be “plugged in” is an additional source of stress as they may be asked to perform tasks, unpaid, outside of their conventional hours.
This technological challenge is further compounded by the significant role social media and Big Tech have in our lives. The “plugged in” analogy can be used literally, as more screen time means more time-consuming ads and spending money.
Meta is taking this further with AI, planning digital companions to address real forms of social isolation. The traditional distinction between work and life is being subsumed by an alternative work-consumption cycle, where our free time is spent glued to screens, aimlessly scrolling in a perpetual state of what Mark Fisher referred to as depressive hedonia.
Under this framework, rising stress and anxiety should be viewed as symptoms of an increasingly fragmented and alienating way of life. Conventional views on the work-life balance was a likely obstacle for capitalism, as any time spent outside the market—whether that be at home or in third spaces with friends—was time spent not consuming.
While recent technological advancements have created opportunities in remote work and communication, they have also created new spheres for monetization. The result is a reconfiguration of what we do outside of work as traditional, and gendered, obligations are compounded by growing financial strain and the seemingly endless drive for consumption.
“Quiet quitting” wasn’t a bad thing
The study of the relationship between capitalism and one’s mental health is by no means a new phenomenon. In a system whose sole purpose is to exploit as much of one’s labour, and thus time, as possible, heightened levels of alienation, stress, and anxiety are bound to occur.
Though even with limited avenues for opposition, it is not entirely impossible. Novel developments like “Quiet quitting” briefly captured the cultural zeitgeist to the ire of the corporate world.
Spurred by younger TikTok users, the premise was simple: in the workplace, only do what is required of you. According to one post, the objective was to reject the hustle culture of the 21st century economy and recognize that we are more than our labour.
Despite being misrepresented as “doing the bare minimum”, Quiet quitting forced us to confront our increasingly toxic relationship with work. With as many as two-thirds of Canadian employees believed to have engaged in it, it has encouraged a reconsideration of our expendable nature as workers under capitalism while asking an equally capitalist question: what’s in it for me?
What additional compensation will one get if they go “above and beyond” in their tasks? Employers will reap the benefits through increased sales or profits, yet one’s wages will likely remain stagnant as the cost of living increases. In other words, there is no market incentive for workers to do more.
Capitalism has always benefited from this unequal relationship, as socio-economic pressure creates a dependent workforce. With declining rates of unionization and labour laws, which haven’t kept up with technological or economic changes, workers have few means of pushing back against these conditions. Despite these limitations, Quiet quitting emerged as a grassroots phenomenon, notably perpetuated by a younger generation vocally frustrated by the blurring of the modern work-life balance.
Returning to the Statistics Canada data, stress and anxiety relating to time pressure and social isolation are not the product of individual failings but, rather, broader trends triggered by an increasingly alienating capitalist workplace.
This changing reality requires us to reconsider how we view ourselves in relation to work and, out of a psychological necessity, find ways to make more time for the things we enjoy. Such ideas inspired the Quiet quitting discourse, and a similar movement is needed to create the political climate for social and regulatory change.
Work may be a necessity, but it must not be allowed to define us.
