Are you living in the real world or a cyber simulacrum?

Helen Smith brings us news that suicide is increasing among women. Ace of Spades has some thoughts:

I can't think of a reason for this general trend in women committing suicide more often, except my go-to reason for everything: Society is undergoing the most profound social experiment in history -- shifting the main locus of where life is lived from the real world to a cyber simulacrum -- and that has big effects on people and their psychology and physical health that we will not understand even partly for 30 years. Social competition, evaluations of one's looks, fitness, and lifestyle to check if one is pulling ahead or falling behind in the rat race, bullying and conformity-monitoring, and instant-stress via social media feeds are now things people often experience every minute or two rather than a few times per week.

It may also be that the brain itself has preferred rhythms of excitement and boredom. But with instant stimulation always a key-push away, we might be overstimulating our brains (often with junk stimulation, of course) without giving it the expected lazy pauses in between.

A lot of people think that it's healthy to have a mind at rest on occasion. Anyone who meditates believes that, certainly. And many artists, writers, philosophers, and theologists and scientists have sought out places of quiet (and even boredom) in which to do their deeper thinking.

Add into that the fact that the brain is designed to navigate a physical world of scent and sounds and pheromones, and not a virtual world of text and pictures and pornography. Previous generations have bemoaned man's alienation from God, and man, and society; we're now dealing with an alienation from physical reality itself.

There may well be plenty of benefits to our Always Online Age, but there are undoubtedly huge negative consequences as well.

What are your thoughts?