Integrated Understanding of The Psychology of Pervasive Digital Internet Technology In Adolescents' Lives as Critical to Care

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to gain an integrated understanding of the psychology of pervasive digital internet technology (DIT) in adolescents lives. The basic premise is that in this digital age this understanding is critical to counselling care. Through a heuristic process the writer looked at the DIT culture as it relates to adolescents and adolescent development, the effects of DIT use on adolescents and considerations for assessment. The major finding is that DIT, although not systematically studied in the literature, appears to have far-reaching consequences in the form of changes in interactional patterns, in attentional processes, in pervasive situational awareness, in baseline levels of psychological arousal, in fragmentation of experience. The heuristics sought in this paper point to the need for research questions and designs that take into account dose, duration, and situational pervasiveness of DIT in producing long-term effects that may be very deleterious.