Mohammed Umer Waris is a family physician.

AI and human connection: an ethical crisis

Conditions and Diseases
December 17, 2025

Causing quite a stir, Mark Zuckerberg (Meta’s CEO) recently proposed Artificial Intelligence (AI) companionship for those suffering from social isolation. All of this unfolds amid a climate of epidemic-levels of loneliness, as declared by the Surgeon General, and the storms it has unleashed upon the edifices of our personal and collective health. The irony, even horror, was not lost on many: The very tools and companies, in …

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AI and human connection: an ethical crisis

Regulating social media’s effects on mental health

Social Media in Medicine
September 4, 2023

There can be no denying that, since its mass-scale introduction, social media has encompassed more and more of our lives, particularly in the lives of young people. As of 2022, among teens ages 13 to 17 years old, 95 percent report using social media, with more than half reporting that it would be hard to give it up.

As this technology has grown, so has its grasp over …

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Regulating social media’s effects on mental health

Deaths of despair: an urgent call for a collective response to the crisis in U.S. life expectancy

Health Policy
March 20, 2023

Some grim news has emerged revealing the sad decline in the health of the United States. America saw its most significant 2-year fall in life expectancy, 2.7 years, in almost 100 years. This has led to U.S. life expectancy being at its lowest since the mid-1990s. This unprecedented fall requires deep examination.

 While COVID is a major cause behind this decline, another …

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Deaths of despair: an urgent call for a collective response to the crisis in U.S. life expectancy