PSYC08019 2022 Cyberpsychology

Cyberpsychology examines the impact of new technology on the developing minds of young people. Smartphones, computers, social networking sites, digital TV and the internet have significantly changed the way we communicate and learn. The module content will focus on the exciting new work in Psychology addressing the positive and negative ways that these technological advances impact on the cognitive, social, emotional, linguistic and physical development of young people. For example, it has long been understood that our personalities are greatly shaped by our social interactions. Today, many such interactions occur online. Are there implications therefore for developing personalities? The module explores questions such as these.

This module maps to the CORU Standards of Proficiency below:

Domain 1: Professional Autonomy and Accountability

Domain 2: Communication, Collaborative Practice and Team working

Domain 5: Professional Knowledge and Skills

In Mind Change, Susan Greenfield discusses the all-pervading technologies that now surround us, and from which we derive instant information, connected identity, diminished privacy and exceptionally vivid here-and-now experiences. In her view they are creating a new environment, with vast implications, because our minds are physically adapting: being rewired. What could this mean, and how can we harness, rather than be harnessed by, our new technological milieu to create better alternatives and more meaningful lives? Using the very latest research, Mind Change is intended to incite debate as well as yield the way forward. There is no better person to explain the situation in a way we can understand, and to offer new insights on how to improve our mental capacities and well being.

Renowned media scholar Sherry Turkle investigates how a flight from conversation undermines our relationships, creativity, and productivityand why reclaiming face-to-face conversation can help us regain lost ground.

We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.
 
Preeminent author and researcher Sherry Turkle has been studying digital culture for over thirty years. Long an enthusiast for its possibilities, here she investigates a troubling consequence: at work, at home, in politics, and in love, we find ways around conversation, tempted by the possibilities of a text or an email in which we dont have to look, listen, or reveal ourselves.
 
We develop a taste for what mere connection offers. The dinner table falls silent as children compete with phones for their parents attention. Friends learn strategies to keep conversations going when only a few people are looking up from their phones. At work, we retreat to our screens although it is conversation at the water cooler that increases not only productivity but commitment to work. Online, we only want to share opinions that our followers will agree with a politics that shies away from the real conflicts and solutions of the public square.
 
The case for conversation begins with the necessary conversations of solitude and self-reflection. They are endangered: these days, always connected, we see loneliness as a problem that technology should solve. Afraid of being alone, we rely on other people to give us a sense of ourselves, and our capacity for empathy and relationship suffers. We see the costs of the flight from conversation everywhere: conversation is the cornerstone for democracy and in business it is good for the bottom line. In the private sphere, it builds empathy, friendship, love, learning, and productivity.
 
But there is good news: we are resilient. Conversation cures.
 
Based on five years of research and interviews in homes, schools, and the workplace, Turkle argues that we have come to a better understanding of where our technology can and cannot take us and that the time is right to reclaim conversation. The most humanand humanizingthing that we do.
 
The virtues of person-to-person conversation are timeless, and our most basic technology, talk, responds to our modern challenges. We have everything we need to start, we have each other. 

In this ground-breaking and compelling book, Nicholas Carr argues that not since Gutenberg invented printing has humanity been exposed to such a mind-altering technology. The Shallows draws on the latest research to show that the Net is literally re-wiring our brains inducing only superficial understanding. As a consequence there are profound changes in the way we live and communicate, remember and socialise - even in our very conception of ourselves. By moving from the depths of thought to the shallows of distraction, the web, it seems, is actually fostering ignorance. The Shallows is not a manifesto for luddites, nor does it seek to turn back the clock. Rather it is a revelatory reminder of how far the Internet has become enmeshed in our daily existence and is affecting the way we think. This landmark book compels us all to look anew at our dependence on this all-pervasive technology.

To be updated at begining of term. 

http://www.psychology.org/links/Resources/Teaching/ Teaching
resources in psychology

http://www.mprcenter.org/mpr/ media
psychology review

http://www.bps.org.uk/ British psychological society.

http://www.mprcenter.org/mpr/ American
psychological association.

As a 5 credit module the student is expected to complete 3 hours of independent study per week.