ALGORITHMIC ANXIETY AND THE PRODUCTION OF SUBJECTIVITY IN DIGITAL SOCIETY

Abstract

Anxiety has become one of the most recurrent psychological experiences in contemporary society, often treated in an individualizing manner within the clinical field. At the same time, there has been an intensification of the algorithmic mediation of everyday life, particularly through digital platforms that organize flows of information, visibility, and social interaction. This article aims to analyze the relationship between anxiety and algorithmic mediation, proposing the concept of algorithmic anxiety as an analytical category to understand the psychosocial effects of digital society on the production of subjectivity. This is a theoretical-reflexive study with a qualitative approach, based on a critical review of the literature in Social Psychology, Psychology of Contemporaneity, and critical studies of technology. It is argued that algorithms operate as sociotechnical devices that intensify social acceleration, permanent comparison, and continuous anticipation, creating structural conditions favorable to the emergence of anxiety as a diffuse affective disposition. It is concluded that algorithmic anxiety constitutes a central psychosocial phenomenon for understanding collective mental health in digital society, calling for critical approaches that move beyond individual pathologization and incorporate the analysis of the technological conditions that produce psychological suffering.