What is ‘Cyberpsychology’ and Its importance in 2020?
Cyberpsychology is not a common term that people generally use while talking about changes in human behavior due to the excessive usage of the internet and social media. It is like a big umbrella that covers the sub-topics to study, which comes under Cyberpsychology. Thus, it is important to know what is Cyberpsychology and its importance in 2020.
What is Cyberpsychology?
According to Webopedia, Cyber implies the relationship between IT (Information Technology) and the internet and computing. Besides, the Cyber word is also used as a prefix to carry out the study related to the internet and human life.
In terms of Cyberpsychology and its importance, It is one of the emerging fields of psychological studies (Suler, 2004) where scientists, psychologists, and scholars study the relationship and impacts of the cyber-world on a human mind with their positive or negative behaviors (Elhai, J., & Rozgonjuk, D., 2020).
According to “Cyberpsychology: Defining the Field” (2020), it has become essential to study these five cyberpsychology areas in today’s world of technological advancement in 2020:
- Online behavior and personality
- Social Media use and Psychological functioning
- Games and gaming
- Telepsychology
- Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and Applications
Whereas, in the study of Kumar Singh, A. & Kumar Singh, P. (2019), he brought the attention not only to human behaviors and digital devices but also Cyberpsychology is important for mental health well-being and clinical psychology through the cyber world. Besides that, cyberbullying and online dating are the major concerns these days because of internet addiction and data breaching cases (Widman, J., 2020)
What is the importance of Cyberpsychology?
The life of human beings is surrounded by technology, smartphones, and digital entertainment. Social media control us, not as we control the trend and addiction to social media. However, addiction tracking applications are intended to make you habitual by their tracking and notification features.
Thus, there is no possibility of living a life without a smartphone and internet in situations like the COVID19 viral pandemic where a worldwide lockdown happened, and social distancing was required.
Only smartphones and advanced technology like VR and AI saved the scope of education, online shopping, virtual celebration, and more in those crucial days of covid 19 lockdowns.
However, these are not the only importance of Cyberpsychology. Moreover, these are the current major finding of Datareportal 2020:
- More than half of the world’s total population (4.14 billion) use social media every day.
- In the past 12 months, there has been a sudden spike in internet users with a rate of 321 million or 875,000 new users every day.
- According to the current data from GSMA Intelligence, there are approximately 5.20 billion new mobile phone users in total, with 102 million last year.
How much time do people spend on Digital media?
The image below from Datarepotal clearly shows how much time people give to entertainment or digital platforms. Approximately, 13 -14 hours people spend on TV, the internet, social media, and TV.
Source: Datareportal
Therefore, it is important to study people’s minds in the concept of Cyberpsychology because, in the late 1960s, Albert Bandura did an experiment to study children’s social learning theory. The experiment is popularly known as the ‘Bobo doll experiment’ to understand the human mind acts what he/she repeatedly observes (observational learning) even watching violent media. And the human mind acts the same way.
Conclusion
Cyberpsychology and its importance is a field of study or research for the scholarly and psychologist because it is related to the human mind and behavior due to the internet and social media engagement.
Besides, it is an emerging field due to the covid 19 pandemic and lockdown in the year 2020. Suddenly, the digital platform came to rescue people’s life and let the world on track amid lockdown. For instance, virtual classes started, work from home was introduced, and online coaching took place. Besides, online grocery shopping increased as compared to the last year.
However, Cyberpsychology and its importance is an amalgamation of both positive and negative results. Negatives impacts are related to mental disorders such as insomnia, ADHD, aggression, and anxiety. Besides, it can also affect personal and social terms with family and friends.
Bibliography
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