Читать книгу Cyberpsychology - Juan Moisés De La Serna - Страница 8

Cyberpsychology is one of the newest branches in psychology that emerged from the necessity of understanding how technology affects individuals and how they change in function of more or less extensive use of new developments.

While in many universities’ no such program exists, it is undeniable the necessity to analyze and comprehend human behavior when we use technology, either for leisure or for work.

Cyberpsychology therefore incorporates the technological element as the central axis of its analysis, without losing site that the person is the one interacting one way or another. Describe and comprehend the habits, use and misuse of that technology have been the object of study of Cyberpsychology.

We have to take into account that, with neurosciences, they are the psychology branches that change the most, since both of them allow to offer a better understanding as instruments of evaluation and observations are each time much keener and enable details that beforehand were indispensable.

A lot has been said about the negative effects Internet use has in maintaining healthy social relationships, but is it like this on all cases?

The technological mediums as a computer or smartphones allow friends, acquaintances and old school buddies to be connected thanks to digital applications such as Facebook, in this world every day more globalized.

But now it has been considered that an excessive use of one’s hours with this or any other leisure driven activities such as watching television or listening to music encourages social isolation and it would favor the apparition of depression.

Other studies considered that the consequences of a depressed state have a previous origin that have much more to do then just isolating one’s self and avoiding human contact with what a computer screen or a cellphone gives you.

Something that might seem contradictory with new results and with the idea that communication mediums such as the Internet is that allows more connections and not isolation, then, how can someone isolate themselves from the world being connected via social networks with so much people on the other side of the screen? To resolve this question a study has been carried out by the New England University (Australia) whose results have been published on the scientific magazine Open Journal of Depression.

In it were forty-one teenagers evaluated on two separate occasions with a year separation where we implemented various measures to examine both mood and use of social networks through the Internet where they had in mind not just the time invested but also the quality of their communication.

The results in spite of supporting a depressed state of mind and massive use of communication mediums through the Internet, established that this type of relationship is a positive type. That said, people will find necessary support with the ones they interact to overcome their negative personal situations, converting so in a tool of depression prevention.

The difference with the previous results can be that in this study they do not take to account just the number of daily hours invested on massive communication, it has been proven to be related with people that have depression tendencies and even so this can be determined to an addiction problem to new technology, but also the quality of it has been evaluated, that is to say, where interaction happens with significant persons that help serve the model for example, or to simply know how to listen and support when it is needed, it is enough to help people to not fall into depression.

Despite the small number of study participants, the conclusions seem to explain the contradictory of the previous results by introducing a new factor not taken into account so far, the quality of communication, this being the determinant for the technology-mental health relationship to be positive or not.

Below is a series of research on what is currently being studied in this area and what conclusions have been drawn so far. For this, the results are presented grouped according to their theme and study, the virtual world with its avatars and the most used social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter; and the specific software for neurorehabilitation.

There are many demands that this young branch of psychology receives, in order to answer the questions that health professionals and even parents raise, such as, for example, what risks does technology entail in the youngest?