Last week I gave a guest lecture at Boston College on the topic of internet addictions and other concepts best described as technology use disorders. It’s not every day I get to talk shop with graduate students preparing to launch their own careers in this field. Colleague and MaMHCA president emeritus John Ciervo has heard me hold forth quite a bit at board meetings on the limits of technology in clinical work and professional development and asked me share my perspective his Addictions in Mental Health Counseling class.
Though it looks good on paper, the concept of internet addiction or gaming addiction as a diagnosis does not do justice to the impact of personal technology on psychopathology. For such a discussion to be useful, addiction could only serve as a point of embarkation rather than a major focus.
Most discussion about the attention economy focuses on how individuals engage with platforms and companies. There is less discussion of how physiological mechanisms and network effects combine to give the attention economy its teeth to create a vicious feedback loop in which the macrocosm of society and the microcosm of individual experience influence one another to the detriment of both.
We considered philosophical and ethical approaches to technology adoption as a framework for decisionmaking. Even when people do not approach technology with a specific approach in mind, their assumptions and expectations about what technology can do and can signify indicate a certain framework, and all frameworks have their blind spots.
We also examined our own experiences: How does technology inform, interrupt, support, and sabotage our clinical work? When technology becomes a third point in a relationship triangle, or a mediating factor in an interaction, or someone has a conflict with a so-called inanimate object, how we can mindfully utilize such moments for the purpose of assessment and intervention?