By Ezekiel “Zeke” Stoltzfus, Cultural Affairs Correspondent January 25, 2026 – Lancaster County, PA
LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa.—In a rare moment of national consensus, mental-health professionals, sociologists, and the entire comment section of every major news outlet have reached the same grim conclusion: American society has finally collapsed so thoroughly that the only people still exhibiting recognizable sanity are the Amish.
“Honestly, we should have seen this coming,” said Dr. Rebecca Kline, chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Committee on Societal Delusion. “We’ve spent decades pathologizing anyone who doesn’t own a smartphone, then spent the next decade pathologizing everyone who does. Meanwhile, the Amish just keep churning butter, raising barns, and refusing to doomscroll. Turns out they were the control group the whole time.”
A sweeping new study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry compared 1,200 Amish adults against a matched sample of 1,200 “regular” Americans and found that the Amish scored significantly lower on every metric of modern psychological distress: anxiety, depression, social-media-induced rage, FOMO, existential dread, TikTok brain rot, and the sudden urge to buy a $400 candle that smells like “clean linen and unresolved childhood trauma.”
“They don’t even have the vocabulary for half these disorders,” noted lead researcher Dr. Marcus Hale. “We asked one participant if he ever felt ‘doomscrolling fatigue.’ He just stared at us, then politely offered fresh goat cheese. That’s not denial. That’s functional adulthood.”
Public opinion has followed suit. A viral X poll asking “Who is currently the sanest group in America?” returned the following top responses:
- Amish – 78%
- People who still use physical alarm clocks – 11%
- That one uncle who refuses to get Wi-Fi – 6%
- Actual feral children raised by wolves – 5%
Mainstream Americans, when confronted with the findings, largely shrugged and returned to their phones. “Yeah, sure, the Amish seem chill,” said Chad Whitaker, 34, of Boise, while refreshing a live feed of someone else’s meltdown. “But they don’t have DoorDash. Or group chats. Or the dopamine hit of watching strangers argue about whether pineapple belongs on pizza. I’ll take my nervous breakdown with extra notifications, thanks.”
Amish community leaders, reached by carrier pigeon because they do not answer landlines after 8 p.m., issued a characteristically understated response. “We wish everyone well,” said Bishop Eli Yoder through an interpreter. “But perhaps if you spent less time staring at glowing rectangles and more time talking to actual humans, you would not need so many pills.”
As calls grow louder to “just let the Amish run things,” federal officials are reportedly exploring a pilot program that would relocate high-stress urban populations to Lancaster County for mandatory barn-raising therapy. Early volunteers include several venture capitalists, a TikTok influencer who recently cried on camera about “algorithm fatigue,” and the entire marketing department of a major cryptocurrency exchange.
In related news, butter production in Pennsylvania has reached all-time highs.
