This preprint proposes a systemic interpretation of the increasing vulnerabilities observed among young people in relation to sustained attention, emotional regulation, empathic capacity, and certain forms of aggression. The central thesis is that these phenomena cannot be adequately explained by a single cause. Instead, they emerge from the non-linear interaction of multiple factors: dysregulation of reward circuits associated with problematic digital media use; chronic sleep deprivation and stress; erosion of critical thinking within fragmented educational and informational environments; and social isolation with the impoverishment of embodied relationships. The essay argues that these factors may operate superadditively: their combined effect can exceed the sum of their individual effects. Youth distraction, insensitivity, and aggressive dysregulation are therefore interpreted not as moral defects of a generation, but as possible emergent states of an altered formative ecology. A final appendix extends the framework to the issue of technological acceleration and artificial intelligence. It asks whether a society already marked by attentional fragmentation, weakened critical thinking, emotional stress, and fragile social bonds can adequately govern increasingly powerful technologies without deepening its existing systemic vulnerabilities. The work is intended as an independent theoretical and interdisciplinary preprint, connecting developmental neuroscience, media studies, sleep research, education, social psychology, and future-oriented reflections on artificial intelligence.
Nicolò Colombaro (Tue,) studied this question.