A lot of discussion in this thread assumes that hikikomori are a very new phenomenon. I see that they appear in the psychiatric literature as early as 1978. I also see that the number of hikikomori in Japan varies by survey, and is hard to measure, but still seems to be roughly the same as it was in 2010, if not a little lower.
What to make of that? Because the most obvious and most common explanations for them seems to be the internet, smartphones, and anxiety about the future (global warming, the economy, etc.). But if those were the reasons for hikikomori, I'd assume that the number of hikokomori would have increased significantly in the last 15 years, not stayed roughly the same, as it has. The gravity of the internet in our culture feels like it has increased exponentially. Climate fear doesn't feel exponentially higher, but subjectively it still feels a lot more widespread to me. Why not commensurately more people living as hikikomori, if the phenomenon supposedly tracks these factors?
What to make of that? Because the most obvious and most common explanations for them seems to be the internet, smartphones, and anxiety about the future (global warming, the economy, etc.). But if those were the reasons for hikikomori, I'd assume that the number of hikokomori would have increased significantly in the last 15 years, not stayed roughly the same, as it has. The gravity of the internet in our culture feels like it has increased exponentially. Climate fear doesn't feel exponentially higher, but subjectively it still feels a lot more widespread to me. Why not commensurately more people living as hikikomori, if the phenomenon supposedly tracks these factors?