Elias Aboujaoude
Dr. Elias Aboujaoude is a psychiatrist, author and researcher based at Stanford University. His work has focused on obsessive-compulsive disorder, impulse control disorders, the intersection of technology and psychology, online personality, telemedicine, and telepsychiatry. Besides Stanford, he has taught at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. His books include Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the e-Personality.[1] and Compulsive Acts: A Psychiatrist's Tales or Ritual and Obsession[2].
In 2006, Aboujaoude published the first large study[3] to test the prevalence of Internet addiction, calling the condition "problematic Internet use". In his book Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the e-Personality (2011)[4], he went beyond the concept of addiction to identify personality traits that are magnified in all people online, whether or not they can be considered "addicted", namely narcissism, aggression, regression, inattention, and impulsivity. Spending hours daily online acting more narcissistically, aggressively, immaturely, inattentively, or impulsively, constitutes an "e-personality" that can be quite different from who people are and how they behave offline. And because we are not as good at compartmentalizing as we might think, the end result is to "become" our online avatar and for society overall to be transformed in the image of a social network or the blogosphere, as unhealthy online traits are incorporated offline. The effect, he explained, is a more polarized, angrier and self-absorbed society—a problematic reality that is anything but virtual.
In the second part of Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the e-Personality[5], Aboujaoude introduced the psychological damage that can come with the online reconfiguration of several crucial spheres of life. On the knowledge front, he pointed out how technology has negatively impacted reading, writing, attention span, and memory—all crucial components of cognitive life. A related risk he warned about, well before the rise of populism seemed to prove it, is the dangerous effect on democracy: By replacing deep and focused analysis of the issues with simple tweets and distracated texts, Internet-related technologies are a godsend for propagandists. Instead of democracy, we are edging closer to demagoguery, he wrote, a real irony given how early Internet enthusiasts hailed it as an "Athens without slaves".
The psychological damage linked to the end of privacy is another domain he cautioned about early on. Individuation, a psychological process by which independence and maturity are achieved through a process of healthy separation from others, is threatened in the "open book" online world, where all manner of personal information is easily accessible and impossible to protect. The result, he wrote, was an impossibility of individuation and, consequently, psychological arrestation. He saw an inviolate zone of privacy around the individual as a requirement for civilization and warned that the end of privacy was a threat to civilization itself.
The effects on the romantic and sexual sphere were equally concerning, he wrote in a chapter devoted to the topic. The rise of the online "hook up" culture has turned dating on its head. While romance and sex may have always existed in a sort of tenuous equilibrium, Internet-related technologies have skewed the balance in favor of the latter. Sex is in the Internet's DNA, as evidenced by the number of essential online activities that received some of their earliest testing on pornographic sites (online video, credit card transactions, etc.). Even ubiquitous online dating sites, a wonderful tool for the millions of couples who met online, can pose risks to romantic relationships: Endless access to potential dating mates makes it so that we may give up too quickly on relationships that are imperfect or have grown somewhat boring but that are fundamentally good, opting instead for new ones out of conviction that an even better match is only a few searches away.
In subsequent research and writings, Aboujaoude explored other topics related to the technology-psychology interface, including: cyberbullying vs. traditional bullying[6]; the reconfiguration of the suicide landscape by Internet-related technologies[7]; and the effects on memory when little needs to be memorized because all information is online[8].
As technology evolved to make remote technology-delivered care a realistic component of healthcare, Aboujaoude investigated the promise and limitations of the field of telepsychiatry[9]. If these technologies are here to stay, and if their effect on personality and mental health is often negative, can they still be put to positive use? Can they still be a force of good by enhancing wellbeing? Telepsychiatry, might be better suited than other medical disciplines to leverage technology platforms. This, Aboujaoude explains, is due to the "hands off" nature of much of the care (e.g., the relatively lesser need for physical exams and lab draws); the big obstacles to accessing mental health care; the stigma of visiting mental health facilities; and "diagnosis specific" obstacles, such as social anxiety symptoms that complicate office visits.
Aboujaoude explored telepsychiatry solutions by cofounding one of the earliest Silicon Valley telemental health startups to use online video therapy. He also addressed it in his 2015 Oxford University Press book, Mental Health in the Digital Age: Grave Dangers, Great Promise[10]. Among other technology-enabled telepsychiatry interventions, his work discussed algorithm-based "computerized" therapy that does not use therapists; online video-based or chat-based psychotherapy with a therapist; virtual reality therapy; and "serious games" that use platforms similar to video games but are meant for treatment rather than entertainment. While Aboujaoude acknowledged the need to rely on technology to increase access to mental health care, enhance efficiency, decrease costs, and confront stigma, he also pointed out obstacles that continue to hinder the field, some of which relating to habits people automatically adopt online and that were discussed in Virtually You (e.g., it is as easy to fire an online counselor as it is to "unfriend" someone on Facebook or block them on Twitter, resulting in high attrition rates compared to face-to-face traditional therapy). Besides poor adherence, other obstacles to telepsychiatry highlighted in Aboujaoude's work include: the rise of online "coaching" as a substitute to treatment by licensed providers; comparisons with video games, which makes people think of the therapeutic intervention as only entertainment (e.g., virtual reality therapy); security concerns; infrastructure cost; and technical know-how.
Aboujaoude's work on the compulsive use of technology, online personality traits, technology-mediated mental health delivery systems has been widely covered, including by The New York Times[11], The Wall Street Journal[12], The Washington Post[13], The Chronicle of Higher Education[14], The Harvard Business Review[15], NPR[16], CNN[17], and ABC[18]
References[edit]
- ↑ Aboujaoude, Elias (2011). Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the e-Personality (1 ed.). New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393340549. Search this book on
- ↑ Aboujaoude, Elias (2008). Compulsive Acts: A Psychiatrist's Tales of Ritual and Obsession (1 ed.). Berkeley: University of California Pres. ISBN 9780520259850. Search this book on
- ↑ Aboujaoude, E; Koran, LM; Gamel, N; Large, MD; Serpe, RT. "Potential Markers for Problematic Internet Use: A Telephone Survey of 2,513 Adults". CNS Spectrums. 11 (10): 750-755. PMID 17008818.
- ↑ Aboujaoude, Elias (2011). Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the e-Personality. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393340549. Search this book on
- ↑ Aboujaoude, Elias (2011). Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the e-Personality (1 ed.). New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393340549. Search this book on
- ↑ Aboujaoude, E; Savage, MW; Starcevic, V (2015). "Cyberbullying: Review of an Old Problem Gone Viral". 57 (1): 10-18. doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2015.04.011.
- ↑ Aboujaoude, Elias (2016). "Rising suicide rates: an under-recognized role for the Internet?". World Psychiatry. 15 (3): 225-227. doi:10.1002/wps.20344. PMID 27717270.
- ↑ Harris, KM; Starcevic, V; Ma, J; Zhang, W; Aboujaoude, E (2017). "Suicidality, psychopathology, and the internet: Online time vs. online behaviors". Psychiatric Research. 255: 341–346. doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2017.06.012.
- ↑ Aboujaoude, E (2015). "Telemental Health: A Status Update". World Psychiatry. 14 (2): 223–230. doi:10.1002/wps.20218.
- ↑ Aboujaoude, Elias; Starcevic, Vladan (2015). Mental Health in the Digital Age: Grave Dangers, Great Promise. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199380183. Search this book on
- ↑ Saletan, William. "The Computer Made Me Do It". The New York Times. The New York Times. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
- ↑ Westervelt, Amy. "Virtual Reality As a Therapy Tool". The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
- ↑ January, Payne. "Caught in the Web". The Washington Post. The Washington Post. Retrieved November 15, 2015.
- ↑ Aboujaoude, Elias. "Violin Requiem for Privacy". The Chronicle for Higher Education. The Chronicle for Higher Education.
- ↑ Aboujaoude, Elias. "Grandiose, Narcissistic, Impulsive E-Personalities — and What They Might Do to the Economy". The Harvard Business Review. The Harvard Business Review. Retrieved November 15, 2015.
- ↑ Aboujaoude, Elias. "Is Internet Addiction Real?". National Public Radio. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
- ↑ Voight, Kevin. "Sticky Web: Science Ponders Internet 'Addiction.'". CNN. CNN. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
- ↑ Heussner, Ki Mae. "Are You Your Avatar?". ABC News. ABC News. Retrieved November 25, 2015.
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