Mapping the terrain of technology

Managing your gaming and social media habits: From science to solutions. It's a title that does what it says on the tin, so to speak, and it was the most difficult book I've had to write. Being asked to write by the BPS/Routledge wasn't like proposing it myself, and this is an area where several top researchers in our field are working and publishing. Imposter syndrome constantly tapped on my shoulder as I tapped on the keyboard.

How I wish I'd had Pete Etchells' book as I dithered over what to include in mine. I had already written five books about the world of technology, children and behaviour, which includes mental health and wellbeing, addiction, or not, gaming, child sexual abuse, health and fitness industries and all of the harms that have been a major part of my clinical practice for almost 14 years. I could have pilfered content from those, but I knew that the book needed to be for a general audience and not stay on the library shelves.

In the end, the book actually drew on all my work from the last 30 years, which includes optronics engineering – in simple terms I am a mechanical, electrical, and electronic engineer skilled in a previous life in the military – moving into the world of IT, working with companies such as Siemens Nixdorf, Dell Wang, Hewlett Packard, Esso and Natwest. 

My work encompassed cybersecurity, data/infosec, training on what the internet was, first- and third-line support and even drilling into customers' walls for the new home computer tower with multiple wired monitors! Having this very particular skill set gave me an advantage when working with young people as I wasn't a typical boomer.

I have also raised two children, through the advent of chatrooms, forums and plenty of Halo, GOW, COD, 4Chan and Ebaums. As a child and adult therapist I found myself talking about all the spaces the young people frequented, knowing the sites they referenced when the school teacher was oblivious. And so the book was a cathartic way to bring the 'why we do what we do online' into a space where I could speak more than my 12-minute TEDX talk, to hold some of the data to account. 

I could help parents and carers understand this complex language, to map the terrain of 'technology' and its ills. Often I came back to a central idea; we don't have enough evidence, and often that data is flawed and/or correlational.

What about the 'addictive' nature of why people use their devices? How could this book help them? That became more of a meta-perspective social commentary taken from many years of working with parents, children, schools, foster carers, residential settings. I've seen how the scare has been overblown by mainstream media, leaving parents feeling helpless and shamed. Often I find that parents need to understand that their children do not live in a vacuum and cannot manage in today's world without technology… not really.

The book is written as I converse and empathise with my clients – with meetings around the child, and through a lens of trauma-embodied practice and compassion. I am a privileged parent who understood what technology can bring to my children, and so I took an active interest (they say too many questions) in what was changing. I myself use technology in therapy with children – Gaming, VR and Biofeedback – and I think that helps me to debunk a 'fear of tech'.

Our motives for social media and gaming use, time and interactions do not make us demons, addicts or otherwise. Rather, we are people with feelings, desires and needs. Ultimately this is, in the words of psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist, the business of being integrated, and whole. 

We are an extended set of cyber synapses – the name of my podcast too – and we are evolving with tech, getting to grips with what we find ourselves doing with it. Through the exercises, reflections and interventions in my book, for both adult and child, we can learn to work with tech rather than abstain, hide from it or even ban it. 

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