00:00What are anxiety products and do they work? Adult coloring books, weighted
00:04blankets, fidget spinners, sleep masks, tinctures, serums. These are literally all
00:09of my favorite things. But they're also just a few of the products capitalizing
00:13on our rising anxiety. Anxiety is the most common mental health disorder in
00:18the US and America is the most anxious country in the world. So it's not
00:23surprising that there are a slew of new products out there trying to chill us
00:27out. But do these products have the power to tackle the things that Americans are
00:32most anxious about? Like stable jobs, healthcare, student loans, relationships,
00:38the news? Or do they just make us more anxious? I asked Vox reporter Rebecca
00:43Jennings. So anxiety consumerism comes from the idea that we can buy our way out of
00:48our anxiety and it came from these companies that have found their niche by
00:53creating these products that help the symptoms of anxiety. Rebecca explained
00:58that many of the anxiety products that we know and love today actually started out
01:02as clinical tools for mental health patients before they were made sleeker
01:06and sexier for mainstream consumption. So the fidget spinner actually comes from
01:10this device that this engineer in Florida created in the mid 90s. She wanted a way to
01:15like play with her daughter and she created this like spinning toy and they were sort of
01:20marketed as these like ways to help kids with ADHD, with autism, with sensory
01:25processing disorders. So a version of that eventually became a fidget spinner.
01:29Weighted blankets, they were things that therapists gave their patients who were
01:32struggling with anxiety, autism, sensory processing. At the end of the day they're
01:36still just stuff and this stuff is not going to cure your anxiety. Maybe nothing
01:40will. That's the fun part about anxiety. But I do think that they can be really
01:44useful tools. Everyone's experienced the urge to fidget, everyone's had trouble
01:48sleeping. These are all very universal things. So it's very easy for companies
01:52to be like, you need this, it will solve this. So do products like the fidget
01:56spinner actually solve anxiety? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say no, since
02:00studies show that the average teenager today has the same level of anxiety as the
02:05average psychiatric patient did in the early 1950s. None of these products will
02:09actually solve the underlying cause of your anxiety. They might quell the symptoms,
02:14which is totally fine. That's great. These products in and of themselves are
02:18not bad. It's just that nothing will solve a person's underlying anxiety and in a lot
02:24of people's cases the best treatment is going to therapy regularly, is taking
02:28medication, is exercising, is making these sweeping lifestyle changes that are
02:33really hard to do and that no product alone is gonna do for you. We all know that
02:38therapy, exercise, healthy eating, maybe a little medication and a lifestyle change
02:42are the answers. But they're also much bigger asks, especially when we lack
02:48comprehensive health care. So as a result, it's a lot easier to buy a really
02:52expensive, beautifully packaged, non-medical alternative on goop. I love my
02:57Yanni egg. I'm wearing it right now. And as a result, the cycle continues. The genius
03:02and the sadness of anxiety products is that we kind of demanded their existence.
03:07This is also like a very American thing. We just like want to buy our way out of
03:12all problems. And so this is not going to go away until we have, you know, universal
03:17health care, universal access to therapy. I don't think there's going to be any
03:20shortage of anxiety products that are fads for six months and then end up in
03:25garbage dumps. We all know that anxiety products don't exactly solve anxiety, but
03:30is there an upside to all this stuff? So one of the ones that I found was that
03:34these products actually help us feel seen and heard and understood and just their
03:40existence alone helps us talk about anxiety and that helps us bring mental
03:44health out of the shadows. So maybe they'll even help us lay the groundwork to do
03:48the harder stuff to solve our anxiety. The intersection of capitalism and mental
03:54health is a busy one. I'll see you back here next week.
