Cyberpsychology as Everyday Digital Experience across the Lifespan

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Understanding Digital Technology as Everyday Experience

   • Dave Harley, Julie Morgan, Hannah Frith

   Pages 1-22

3. Growing up Online

   • Dave Harley, Julie Morgan, Hannah Frith

   Pages 23-49

4. Being Yourself

   • Dave Harley, Julie Morgan, Hannah Frith

   Pages 51-76

5. Having a Social Life

   • Dave Harley, Julie Morgan, Hannah Frith

   Pages 77-104

6. Being ‘Sexy’

   • Dave Harley, Julie Morgan, Hannah Frith

   Pages 105-132

7. Behaving Badly

   • Dave Harley, Julie Morgan, Hannah Frith

   Pages 133-152

8. Being Alone

   • Dave Harley, Julie Morgan, Hannah Frith

   Pages 153-173

9. Growing Older

   • Dave Harley, Julie Morgan, Hannah Frith

   Pages 175-198

10. Dying

    • Dave Harley, Julie Morgan, Hannah Frith

    Pages 199-225

11. Reflections on a Digital Life

    • Dave Harley, Julie Morgan, Hannah Frith

    Pages 227-241

12. Back Matter

    Pages 243-251

    PDF

Digital technologies are deeply embedded in everyday life with opportunities for information access and perpetual social contact now mediating most of our activities and relationships. This book expands the lens of Cyberpsychology to consider how digital experiences play out across the various stages of people’s lives. 


Most psychological research has focused on whether human-technology interactions are a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ thing for humanity. This book offers a distinctive approach to the emergent area of Cyberpsychology, moving beyond these binary dilemmas and considering how popular technologies have come to frame human experience and relationships. In particular the authors explore the role of significant life stages in defining the evolving purpose of digital technologies. They discuss how people’s symbiotic relationship with digital technologies has started to redefine our childhoods, how we experience ourselves, how we make friends, our experience of being alone, how we have sex and form romantic relationships, our capacity for being antisocial as well as the experience of growing older and dying. This interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners across psychology, digital technology and media studies as well as anyone interested in how technology influences our behaviour.

• cyberpsychology
• Online Identity
• Cyberbullying
• Digital Technology studies
• digital immersion
• media studies
• psychology of gaming
• Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
• Hyperpersonal theory
• Media Effects Research
• Digital exclusion
• older people and the internet
• Online Disinhibition Effect theory
• Problematic Internet Use (PIU)
• Rational Choice Theory (RCT)

“This text moves beyond the aim of other books in the realm of cyberpsychology that parse the positive and negative impacts of technology, incorporating a broad range of topics … . Written in a clear, seamless fashion, the text uses the complex topic of cyberpsychology to illuminate how context and motivation help shape the social and psychological experience of the user. This text is extensively researched and well documented, and will appeal to scholarly and general audiences alike.” (J. Bailey, Choice, Vol. 56 (5), January, 2019)​


“Cyberpsychology as Everyday Digital Experience across the Lifespan is a solid and compelling work that makes itself conspicuous through criticism, inclusiveness, interdisciplinary perspectives, and sharp points of view. This book offers a distinguishable approach to Cyberpsychology, and it will be of great interest to anyone who wants to decipher the complex relationship between technology and our lives.” (Camelia Gradinaru, Europe's Journal of Psychology, Vol. 14 (4), 2018)

• School of Applied Social Science, University of Brighton, Brighton, United Kingdom

  Dave Harley, Julie Morgan, Hannah Frith

Dave Harley is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton, UK. His broad research areas cover Cyberpsychology and Human Computer Interaction with a particular interest in older people’s use of digital technologies. In 2016 he completed a Culture and Communities Network+ research project looking at older people’s experiences of online community.


Julie Morgan is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton, UK. Her research focuses on autobiographical memory, social anxiety and the development of social fears. She has also published research exploring the social dimension of nature-connectedness within mental health recovery.    


Hannah Frith is Principal Lecturer at the University of Brighton, UK. Her research centres on sexuality, embodiment and subjectivity including constructions of sexual consent/non-consent, orgasm and sexual pleasure, and the meaning of sexual practices. She previously authored Orgasmic Bodies published by Palgrave in 2015.

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