When Wearing a Mask Covers Up a Social-Anxiety Problem – The Wall Street Journal

TOKYO—Wearing a mask in situations with high Covid-19 risk makes medical sense. But what about covering up your face just because you’re embarrassed to show it?

With the transition to a post-pandemic world, some mental-health specialists worry about people who may have grown dependent on masks to shield themselves from human connection. If it gets serious enough, the dependency amounts to a form of social-anxiety disorder, they say.