President Madam Halimah Yacob mentioned on inauguration of the 3rd Asia Pacific Conference and Meeting on Mental Health that “over the 5year period, from 2015 to 2020, the number of adolescents seen at IMH for depression has increased about 60%”. The growing Generalized Anxiety Disorder cases in Singapore had statistically significant increase from 0.9%to 1.6% during the period of 2010 to 2016. (Source: IMH Singapore). These data are alarming.

Mental illness is complicated to deal with for the individual, their families and ultimately it has huge impact on our society and future generations. It is a tricky one to treat, it could relapse, creates drug dependencies, lead to suicide, self-harm and the list is endless. Equally this creates a huge resource burden on national health services and social services to treat and deal mental illness issues.

Social media has become part of life. It has brought people closer virtually, responses faster but distanced us physically and emotionally, taken the time out of life for self and family. Screen time has increased with decreased quality me time and we time. Constant notifications make us feel important not knowing that the expectations looking into it causes anxiety leading to stress, depression, and other related mental illness. Fear of being left out is human nature. This emotion at present is being scientifically and technologically manipulated by social media companies that make us glue to screen. High level of commercialization is at stake to maximize shareholder profits. In the process social media platforms are indirectly grooming activities that affect the multiracial social fabric that has taken years to weave.

Changing contents of posts while scrolling make the conscious mind unsettled leading to reduced attention span, which is now less than 7secs. Lack of focusing and concentration are one of key factors for growing mental disorders. Need for immediate responses to notifications are leaving individuals always in a state of excitation. Consciousness is always turbulent, and as we all know turbulent mind is troubled soul.

As of 2019, Singaporeans spend on average 2hours and 8minutes on social media. Globally a person spends an average 4years of their lifetime on social media. This is further expected to increase with Gen-Z’s. The increasing time spent on social media in recent years and the increasing individuals seeking medical attention for mental illness are corelated. This will have significant impact on society which will lead to major social, human rights and economic consequences.

Too much of anything is abysmal. Take a step back from social media, there is too much negativity in the posts scrolled. Everything needs a break. The recent Facebook outage on 04-Oct-2021, which included WhatsApp and Instagram gave that break. Many felt good and slept well that night for that few hours. When such outage is able to give much wellbeing, it should be made as law. We strongly believe, it should be mandated by law to have scheduled time-off by shutting down the social media weekly for 6 hours. This is what you need to counterbalance the stress and negative effects of social media, so people can have more time to themselves. Individuals will have more time to analyze, reflect themselves to understand better their needs. This will enhance communal bonding and harmony in the society thereby reducing communal tensions, save the multiracial social fabric from getting torn.

WHO’s Mental Health Action Plan calls for more effective leadership and governance for mental health with implementation of strategies for preventing mental disorders. Self-restrain could be the ideal choice. But as we all know when you advocate self restrain as an "optional choice" human behavior will not leave the comfort zone. Hence, we sincerely request, Mr. Masagos Zulkifli, Mr. Desmond Lee, Mr. Ong Ye Kung and Mr. Janil Puthucheary, to prioritize this petition and bring in scheduled pause of 6hours weekly to social media within Singapore jurisdiction. This is a sensible and cost-effective solution.

Our society is battling division, hate, racism, cyber bullying, and mental illness every second on these digital platforms. Youngsters are the most vulnerable. There is no time to lose before we regret another teenage suicide, murder, or discuss the rise of mental illness cases in the country. Government should understand that we are at WAR here, ACT now and START to introduce mandatory / scheduled outage of 6hours weekly. Because if it is not done now, very soon we would have too many walking zombies scrolling the screens with no compassion taring down the social cohesion in Singapore.

We thank all conscientious individuals who sign this petition. Please leave your comments below for the voices to be heard by government officials.