EMOTIONAL PROXIMITY DISTORTION (EPD)

Digital networks have eliminated informational distance faster than human psychology has adapted. A person can now witness tragedy on another continent, compare themselves to extreme wealth in another country, and internalize success narratives unrelated to their own economic reality within minutes. This paper introduces Emotional Proximity Distortion (EPD), a proposed structural framework explaining how geographically distant, socially irrelevant, or statistically exceptional events are processed as emotionally immediate and personally relevant burdens. Unlike existing research that separately examines social comparison, doomscrolling, or algorithmic amplification, EPD provides a unified model to quantify the collapse of three critical boundaries: Distance, Relevance, and Probability. The framework details how "Success Inflation" and "Survivorship Bias" lead to "Burnout Before Achievement," a condition where individuals experience fatigue from replicating distorted global baselines. This research serves as a roadmap for psychologists, digital architects, and policy makers to address the systemic mental health crisis caused by the mismatch between human emotional architecture and borderless algorithmic reality.

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