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Send this Speaker to a Friend - Copy and Paste Link http://www.wolfmanproductions.com/elias_aboujaoude.html |
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Americans are spending a shocking amount of time logged on and plugged in. Stanford University psychiatrist Dr. Elias Aboujaoude conducted the largest study to date on Internet addiction and has spent years treating patients whose lives have been disturbed by their cyber lifestyle. Aboujaoude's talk is a penetrating examination of the effects of the new virtual world and what he calls the "big social experiment" we are engaged in online. In the virtual world, we come alive as distinct beings: more confident and efficient, but also more aggressive, impulsive, and child-like. This new self, which Aboujaoude dubs our "e-personality," manifests itself in every curt email we send, emoticon we draw, Facebook "friend" we make, and "buy now" button we click. Too potent to be confined online, however, those e-personality traits seep |
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offline. There is a constant back-and-forth between our online and offline lives. The rudeness we are capable of in our e-mails and the lack of judgment we show in our online purchases and sexual hookups do not stay "there." Rather, they bleed into our real lives, leading to the propagation, offline, of undesirable personality traits such as impatience, immoderation, impoliteness, and impulsivity. For example, how does easy access to Internet pornography affect our sex and love lives? Does the fact that we have 300 superficial Facebook "friends" make us less likely to invest time and energy nurturing deeper, offline, friendships? Does the Internet enrich us with its surfeit of information, or could it also provide a false base of knowledge upon which we try to diagnose ourselves and fix whatever ails us? Does the immediate gratification promised by the Internet, and the fast pace of online transactions, lead us to become speed-obsessed in real life and unable to enjoy a down moment? And what of the permanence of the Internet and the fact that so much of our personal information is easily accessible by anyone on the Web? Does this affect the way we behave in our dealings with others and make us paranoid about sharing more, like "the world knows enough about me already"? |
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The end result of interacting with the virtual world is a "whole new you," as countless products that have nothing to do with technology often promise but, unlike the Internet, almost never deliver. Yet foreign as it may seem, it is still you, virtually speaking, and you still own it and own its consequences--that our virtual half has a mind of its own is hardly a good enough defense when it gets us in trouble. That is why it is imperative that we contemplate our new psychology, even as the virtual world, a contemplation-averse medium, may be slowly compromising the skills we need to fully assess its impact on our lives. How are our day-to-day reality and sense of ourselves changing as a function of our online browsing? The author of the upcoming VIRTUALLY YOU, Aboujaoude uses examples from his reseach and clinical and personal experience to answer this question, highlighting how real life is being reconfigured in the image of a chat room and how, more and more, we resemble our avatar. |
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Send this Speaker to a Friend - Copy and Paste Link Wolfman Productions |
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