As a bibliophile, I participate in book clubs. The WiCyS (Women in Cybersecurity) book club met today to discuss The Cyber Effect by Mary Aiken, Ph.D. Based on the discussion it seemed like the term cyber psychology was new to all of us. While I’ve been a proponent of a multidisciplinary approach to cybersecurity for years, I had no idea that a subdiscipline of psychology was emerging.
There is so much badness coming out of the spaces we have created online. Some of it comes from intentionally bad actors. Sadly, far too much of it is incidental. This is the part that concerns me the most. We’ve all heard of cases of gamers staying so drawn into their games that they suffer from blood clots. The term for this specific condition is called gamers thrombosis. No one set out to create a gaming experience so enthralled that players would put their lives at risk. It, nonetheless, happens. We are now starting to see cases of parents neglecting children because they are too engrossed in their online activities (not all gaming). Some of these instances resulted in death due to malnourishment. That is not an acute condition. The parents would have failed to tend to their children over a period of time.
I haven’t even touched on sexually addictive behaviors yet. For many, online interactions heighten the intensity of their emotions. This makes spending time lost in these virtual relationships too enticing to bear. And just as we see with real world addictions, people start to pay less attention to their in-person relationships and their jobs.
I don’t like leaving things on a sour note so I’m going to mention some of the positive developments in the realm of psychology we've had as a result of the web. I’ll start with people being able to stay better connected. Families that are living in different geographic locations are able to communicate with each other frequently. My generation and those before me were lucky to get a weekly phone call and that had to be when the long-distance rates were lowest. Now families can video chat multiple times a day at a minimal cost. This helps keep the family ties stronger and reduces the estrangement that can develop from long-distance family living situations.
People who are physically isolated, due to mobility issues, are able to be socially active via online communities. This includes people in rehabilitation and senior living facilities and those in their own homes. Smart homes provide greater quality of life for individuals who would otherwise be physically limited in what they can do. The impact of being able to care for one’s self is tremendous on a person’s psyche.
Cyber psychology is new. It’s newer than cybersecurity which is still in its infancy. We have a lot to learn. We better get to it.
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