Throughout this book, we have introduced a number of ideas that should convince you by now that technology is here to stay. When I (KH) typically lecture on this topic to clinicians, frequently their response is to “remove technology” and set a very physical boundary through limiting access. And when I (MLCT) give talks to instructors about how to manage technology in their university classrooms, usually their solutions to this problem are to tell students that either they cannot use their technology at all in the classroom or they can use it without restriction. The trouble with these solutions is that technology is here to stay, and these are not effective long-term answers to any of the concerns that it does and will present. Technology is now almost like the air we breathe or like a part of our genetic makeup. The integration of technology in our lives, then, should be thoughtful, with purpose, and support the strengths of a specific individual, couple, or family/relational system.
The Technology Integration Plan (TIP) describes a decision-making process by which couples, families, scholars, educators, family consultants, and mental health professionals can design ways to responsibly and effectively integrate technology in daily life. In the development of the TIP, we were informed by the work of Brian Primack, who proposes an algorithm whose abbreviation is “REAL.” In this framework, “R” stands for “Renege Negativity.” As we have seen in this text, not all social media experiences are created equal—some will be better than others. Therefore, engaging in social media activities that are positive as opposed to negative will better protect one’s well-being (Primack et al., 2018). “E” stands for “Engage With Equilibrium.” Sometimes using social media in passive ways is associated with depression; in other cases, it is associated with decreases in depression. The best way to manage, then, is to engage in some circumstances and be passive in others—achieving a balance in one’s usage. “A” stands for “Actual Allies.” As we read earlier in this text, having those you have not met on your friend list is associated with depression. Ensure that the people who are on your social media are ones who can support you. Finally, “L” stands for “Limit Time, Frequency, and Number of Platforms Used.” These three distinct constructs are all important in managing the impact of social media use on one’s well-being. More time on social media was related to more depression. While the average person uses approximately four platforms, those with significantly more depressive symptoms are using between seven and 11 (Primack et al., 2018).
In addition, the TIP is informed by the Couple and Family Technology (CFT) framework (Hertlein & Blumer, 2013). A particular relational system’s (couple or family) TIP is a road map based on the CFT framework. One of the benefits to using the CFT framework is that it can be applied to diverse relational systems. At its core, the CFT framework does not advocate for one way or another of using the Internet and new media. The framework simply refers to the notion that technology affects process and structure—in some ways, the effect is positive, and in other ways, it is negative. In this model, the therapist reserves judgment about how the family should proceed with technology in their lives and instead assists the family with the implications and interventions congruent with their own beliefs and value system. In some families, for example, appropriate interventions may center around increasing boundaries between parents and their teens; in other cultures or family systems, it may be more appropriate to decrease the boundaries.
Take cellphones and secrecy—because cellphones are independent (as opposed to shared) devices, users have a certain amount of privacy regarding how they use the phone. Adolescents may opt to use the phone as one method of interacting with their peers in secret, but they may be at greater risk for cyberbullying in doing so. It may be a balance between honoring the teen’s privacy and helping them bring down the guard to develop trust, and ultimately help protect them from threats.
The plan for integrating technology into one’s couple and family life depends, in part, on who are the members of the relational system, and the behaviors the plan is designed to address. Is the focus the children? The parents? The partners? What is the relationship that is under investigation or in need of rehabilitation? One needs to consider who will be engaged in the discourse with others online, and how the audience will receive the discourse. Just because we are accessible in many ways, it is tempting to advertise one’s position more broadly. On the other hand, there have to be some decisions made about whom the audience is and how we can make decisions in anticipation of the audience. One example is the concept of revenge porn. This is where information sent to one person in an electronic format is compromised because of relational fallout.
One of the primary benefits of social media is the ability to connect with others. Certain specific elements of the advantages include but are not limited to: connecting with new and established friends, sharing ideas, engaging in opportunities for volunteerism and community work, and collaboration for education and training (O’Keeffe & Clarke-Pearson, 2011). Other benefits are related to identity development and finding space to explore one’s identity via videos, blogs, podcasts, electronic art media, etc. Other benefits described in Chapter 1 include the accessing of health information, which tends to spur individuals to have conversations with their doctors about conditions. Young people tend to be better at using the Internet for asking questions, are more likely to schedule appointments, and actually miss fewer appointments (O’Keeffe & Clarke-Pearson, 2011).
Altering of the boundaries may contribute to more communication among family members or with the outside world, depending on how the boundaries have shifted. For example, children with cellphones and diffuse boundaries in whom they may contact may have direct and immediate access to parents, siblings, and extended family members without having to go through their parents to navigate those connections. Such a structure may result in more communication with family. More communication with the outside world could involve children themselves receiving robocalls or from those who had the phone number of the previous owner of the line, an exchange in which they could conceivably be the receiver. The reorganization in roles, rules, and boundaries can also prompt changes in communication among family members and levels of closeness and support.
One of the considerations is to engage in reflection on one’s motivations in using technologies. Is the motivation to reduce anxiety? To connect with others? The honesty with which one can evaluate their motivations for phone usage may be key for understanding the rules that need to be developed in response to the motivations. For example, surveillance and using technology to monitor at a younger age may backfire and complicate relationships; at an older age, when the motivation is communication, such technologies may improve relationships.
The CFT framework may provide some insight into how accessibility, affordability, anonymity, approximation, ambiguity, accommodation, approximation, and accountability may give a clue of one’s motivation for technology usage. For example, if the motivation for using technology for teens is to avoid processing painful emotions, parents might wish to develop a plan to help the teen use technology via accommodation to process their pain rather than using applications (apps) and search engines to avoid. Some examples of these apps include Moodpath, Calm, Headspace, Anxiety Relief Hypothesis, and iMood Journal. If the motivation for teens is to connect with others and this connection is occurring so frequently and intensely that it is impairing the completion of school assignments, one solution may be to set rules around accessibility and affordability of messaging functions. If, however, that accessibility is proving that it assists the teen with support, then the family may wish to consider increasing accessibility to those in-person resources.
The ability for us to check our email instantly, whether it be for work or personal purposes, is helpful in our daily lives. The challenge in this, however, is not giving into those types of notification so that you remain in control of your own technology checking behavior. The scholarly literature is replete with studies attesting to the work-home interference now being a part of our daily lives when we have technology that keeps us virtually connected to work at all hours (Piszczek, 2017). One way to do this is to go into the settings on your phone and adjust the notifications so that you are not alerted to your work emails. Rather, you are the one who is in control of checking the work email when it is convenient for you. Once you establish this notification change and setting change, the next step would be to make rules for yourself about the circumstances under which you would check this work email. For example, you might make a decision that you are not checking the work email on weekends or on days off as you are not working. In addition, you may wish to explore the motivations that are contributing to your checking of email. Are you feeling like you are not being productive when you are in fact? Are you trying to avoid a situation with a partner or peer? Where do you feel it in your body?
Structure of relationships has a great deal to do with our computer and device usage. In a study by De Wolf, Willaert, and Pierson (2014), the roles one adopts have implications for the way in which privacy is managed. While this study had to do with groups and management of groups, families are inherently groups. The same results can be applied to families. Each member has to be clear about what their role is and make sure that they stay in that role. These rules should have clear roles in how privacy is managed (and by whom). Therefore, the same strategies that we use to manage individual privacy are not the same as for groups; as a result, families need to establish rules for individuals and make sure those rules are altered when in a family context.
Another interesting aspect of rules and privacy is the negotiation of such rules. The debates typically revolve around what information should be disclosed and what other information should be withheld. The conflict around someone disclosing outside of the identified rules can create issues for couples and family members (Petronio, 2002). In some cases, someone will disclose or give up private information in order to gain information. Online, this is often seen as giving up certain information to join a group. If you give up certain elements and ideas about you, then you can join the group. One issue is, however, that anonymity can prevent us from fact-finding any information disclosed to us that is assumed to be private.
The inability to maintain (or protect) privacy has pretty significant consequences. For example, people who use the Internet can fall victim to criminal endeavors. People who have malicious intentions may be fishing for information or fooling people into donating money. It may be the case that privacy is compromised and credit card information is stolen. Cybersecurity is quickly becoming a great business as a way to address some of these concerns. In relationships, there are significant implications for ambient apps as we may overtly (or covertly) observe former partners, present partners, and children via these apps. Privacy management varies based on who is using the Internet and in what capacity. Some data suggests that some users actually engage more privacy strategies because they acknowledge that other users around them may be lurking (Child & Starcher, 2016). Adolescents, in fact, rely more on texting and instant messaging rather than Facebook communication as a way to gain control over their privacy (Mullen & Hamilton, 2016). In addition, the extent to which one manages their privacy is somewhat dictated by gender and/or sexual orientation. For instance, men tend to engage in fewer privacy management strategies than women (Child & Starcher, 2016; De Wolf et al., 2014) and are more likely to use group privacy management strategies. And in comparison to their heterosexual peers, lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB)–identifying individuals and partnerships tend to employ a higher degree of privacy management strategies in non-queer-friendly online spaces as a form of electronic visibility management, in order to buffer themselves from things like cyberbullying (Twist, Bergdall, Belous, & Maier, 2017).
Finally, because youth and teens use technology differently than adults, we have to adapt our privacy management strategies in ways that are developmentally appropriate and consistent with their usage. For example, Jack and Jill, a, heterosexual, British American, middle-class couple, brought their 14-year-old daughter, Michelle, to therapy as a way to address her slipping grades and increasing isolation in her room away from the family. Part of her pattern of isolation was to be in her room, door locked, posting on Instagram. When her parents would ask her to come out of her room, she would come out of her room only wearing a bra. This evidence led her parents to believe photos of her in her bra alone were what she was posting on Instagram or sending in messages to others. To address the issue of her using her phone and engaging in risky behavior online, the parents elected to invoke a privacy management plan that limited her ability to use her phone. Her parents also began monitoring her Instagram account and were able to set limits on the types of posts that she could make.
Collective privacy management relates to the way in which people make decisions about and guard their privacy within a group. In individual settings, people are able to evaluate what they want to do in terms of putting their personal information out into the web. Individuals have to make careful decisions between having an online presence and the benefits from that while weighing what part of their privacy they have to give up to be able to participate (Wessels, 2015). While half of the people who have recently quit Facebook cite privacy concerns as the rationale for their quitting, the truth is the privacy concerns really have not made a dent in the type of Internet traffic that Facebook has experienced. In family and couple settings, the way in which the rules around privacy management are established requires that a negotiation occur and often is re-visited. In couples, there may be some negotiation around the types of pictures and the types of posts made. For families, awareness around policies dictates what is appropriate to put online and what is not. For example, there are a host of websites that set a minimum age such as 12 or 13 for one to be able to have an account. Families have to also make decisions about whether they are going to share photographs of their children that could be stolen or compromised. Be mindful that it is not just the individual parents whose privacy is compromised—it is also the youth. The compromises in privacy have to be considered because it is nearly impossible to withdraw totally from having your information online. Using the Internet and having online accounts are practices that are becoming unavoidable in today’s world (Baruh & Popescu, 2017). Some have tried to manage online privacy concerns by closing social media accounts (Stieger, Burger, & Bohn, 2013).
It is not within the scope of this text to outline all of the intricacies in the online dating world and the process of online dating. There are many books and articles written by fantastic scholars about this dynamic in couples. What we wish to accentuate here is that in initiating relationships, one quick tip is to understand the gatekeeping mechanism employed (often unconsciously) by online daters. Part of meeting online that interferes with interaction are the filters and limitations applied to dating. For example, those who are more sensitive to rejection are also those who indicate they use online dating more frequently so that they can feel free to be their authentic selves in such an environment (Hance, Black-hart, & Dew, 2018). This is in part due to the perception that online dating environments, because users can be selective, introduce more choice and convince the user they have greater control, autonomy, privacy, and confidentiality (Rochadiat, Tong, & Novak, 2018). First, the individual engaging in online dating has a chance to self-select what they present to others on the site in an effort to look more attractive (Toma, Hancock, & Ellison, 2008). Warranting is the process of producing information that may seem difficult to manipulate (Wotipka & High, 2016). This means that people who are viewing that individual’s profile can feel confident that the information the poster presents is verifiable and accurate, thus generating a feeling of trust (Wotipka & High, 2016). This is a critically important process, as people who are looking to find mates online are not necessarily privy to accurate information—only the information that someone wishes to portray (Troyer et al., 2011).
As mentioned in the previous chapter, the use of the ecological elements from the CFT framework can assist one in managing and interpreting online interactions. These ecological elements (the eight As) include: anonymity, acceptability, affordability, accessibility, approximation, accommodation, ambiguity, and accountability. While we will not review the elements in their entirety here, we will make a few points as they relate to online initiation. The anonymity present in online interactions leads to an increase in the likelihood that one can engage in anti-normative practices. In other words, we may say things that we might not say in person, but can get away with it under the cloak of anonymity. We can also fake it until we make it—that is, deny any emotional reactions, downplay feelings, and simply not communicate them, thus hiding our feelings and limiting our vulnerability. Those who initiate relationships should consider that a text message is one small slice of one’s experience, and there may be an undercurrent of thoughts and emotions of which the party is unaware, thus causing the anonymity to persist.
Another way to integrate technology in relationships is to use an electronic fantasy date. Integrating technology in this way allows for another way to be able to connect with one another instead of just through daily texts in short bursts of conversations. As the research shows, couples that use technology often talk more frequently during the day, but those conversations are shorter and have less depth. Electronic fantasy dates offer another way to keep the frequency of the communication going, but it is different as the conversation is throughout the entire day as an experiential activity that a couple can do together while they are separate (Hertlein, 2016). The electronic fantasy date relies on the CFT framework principles of accessibility and affordability to forge a stronger relationship via a greater sense of connectedness (Bargh & McKenna, 2004; Hertlein, 2016). In this activity, one partner begins by providing a thick, rich description of the date and an approximation of the date setting and accommodating one’s desires with ambiguity, allowing the recipient room to use their imagination. There may also be a positive end of anticipation built up in the expectation of a message being received, providing a more positive feeling about one another throughout the day.
Ocker and Yaverbaum (1999) outline strategies for how to increase the satisfaction and sense of collaboration in computer-mediated communication. Among these are (1) educating those using the services on the benefits of each type of communication, (2) providing education on how to use the programs correctly, and (3) increasing exposure to these types of communication. In their application to couples, the activities a therapist may present include some of these strategies. For example, therapists can describe the differences between synchronous and asynchronous communication among couples to help them to make an informed decision around how they want to design the use of technology in their relationship.
Another part of the conversation has to be the practicality of when to use which strategy. Take the example of Debbie and Jerusha, who were a similar-gender, middle-class, mixed sexual orientation couple of mixed racial/ethnic identities and backgrounds. Debbie, a 28-year-old writer, and Jerusha, a 39-year-old advertising executive, came to therapy. Debbie indicated she often felt ignored by Jerusha during the workday, which resulted in her calling Jerusha repeatedly during the day in order to get the time and attention she felt she deserved. Yet according to Jerusha, the demands of her position did not leave her available to take Debbie’s calls, and if she was able to take them, she was not generally present in a physical location to be able to conduct the kind of conversation that was desired by Debbie. As Jerusha put it, “she keeps smothering me. I do not understand where it’s coming from because I’ve never given her any reason to doubt me, but it seems like that’s all she does all day long. She doesn’t see the damage it’s doing between us, and I’m afraid at one point I’m just going to snap and leave.” Debbie’s history was just as complicated. She had been cheated on by her most recent previous partner, Barry, who had then left her for his affair partner, Shayna, moved out, and subsequently moved on and got married to Shayna shortly afterwards. She had a history of substance abuse and feeling insecure. She also had a history of being sexually abused, for which she had never received treatment, and all of these individual issues were also complicating her ability to trust her partner.
Part of therapy was to help the couple to have appropriate expectations around when Jerusha would be able to talk, but also to heighten Jerusha’s awareness of Debbie’s need for communication throughout the day. Part of what was helpful in this example was bringing awareness to the circumstances when asynchronous communication would serve the relationship better than synchronous communication, and vice-versa. For instance, in times when Debbie desired social support and connection, Jerusha needed to be aware of this need, and identify instances in which the need could be met through synchronous (not asynchronous) communication.
Another way that couples can use technology is with regard to pregnancy and parenting. Research has found that parents feel that they experience more support from their partner if their partner is in more frequent communication via text or phone during a pregnancy. It also enables long-distance relationships be able to flourish in ways that were not possible ten or 15 years ago. The electronic fantasy dates (discussed earlier in this chapter) offer the same possibilities for couples to demonstrate a level of commitment and a connection to one another without necessarily spending a dime, paying for a plane ticket, or taking off work. In addition, using mobile phones as a tool to communicate with one another is associated with higher relationship satisfaction—in part due to calling and texting features—which establishes a set of relationship expectations (Hall & Baym, 2011).
Online friends are great, but what seems to be protective of people’s mental health is whether offline bonds are also allowed to form and be cultivated. In many ways, online relationships are protective of depression symptoms for younger people. For example, Shensa and colleagues (2018) conducted a study examining the depressive symptoms and the number of friends on social media—and whether the friendships existed in person or online only. They found every 10% increase in the number of online-only friends was accompanied by a 9% increase in depression symptoms. Conversely, every 10% increase in offline friends who were also friends on social media was accompanied by a 10% decrease in depression symptoms. This research suggests that we have a sense of who among our social media accounts may be the type of friend that we can count on for support as opposed to those who may be friends in number only. In fact, it is the social support that we gain from online friends that is highly important to warding off depressive symptoms for adolescents and young adults (Frison, Bastin, Bijttebier, & Eggermont, 2018).
Such a finding also means that we can teach our children and peers to make sure to make connections in person before adding them to one’s social networking site simply as a way to gain psychological support and to stave off depression symptoms. The net effect may yield fewer connections online, but in the case of depression, that may be a good thing. Another alternative may be to have two separate accounts—one for work and networking, and another that is purely social, which only contains the friends that someone has already befriended in an offline environment.
Online infidelity is incredibly pervasive in the age of the Internet. As discussed earlier in the book, a few characteristics of the Internet lend themselves to connections with others (both physical and emotional) to the exclusion of the primary partners. Unfortunately, there is also a sense of secrecy and suspicion that can contribute to infidelity recovery. One of the key issues that starts with couples in trying to rebuild after an affair is the crazy-making nature of the Internet. As posed by many people who are recovering from the betrayal of infidelity, there is a sense that the betrayed individual would not be able to trust whether their partner actually stopped the affair because there would be no evidence of it since it is so easy to delete and discard messages. In other words, the absence of the evidence is not evidence of absence (Hertlein, Dulley, Chang, Cloud, & Leon, 2017).
Just as much as technology may be the problem in the case of recovery, it also offers unique solutions. For example, it becomes very easy to share passwords as a way to share access with (and be open to) your partner so that they can check online to see one’s usage. This solution, however, comes with a few caveats. While such access may provide security and manage the crisis of the discovery, it is not a long-term solution. In a situation where one person has the other person’s passwords constantly, it would establish an unhealthy power imbalance in the relationship. Another solution some couples have employed includes taking photographs of where they are as a way to verify location when their partner makes a request. Again, like the password solution, the idea is to use such solutions temporarily until such a time that the couple is ready to move toward developing trust.
Another key piece to the recovery process is to come to an agreement about the breach that occurred. In many cases, one partner might consider their partner’s usage of pornography to constitute cheating. In other relationships, it is physical affection with someone other than their partner. In other relationships, an emotional connection to someone outside of the relationship constitutes infidelity. Couples can also be misled about what constitutes infidelity when it involves a computer—there is a difference, for example, between sex “addiction,” Internet “addiction,” and infidelity. Couples need to think about the different criteria that would separate infidelity from another problem—whether that be the presence of an identifiable third person, time spent online, the presence of tolerance and withdrawal, etc. (Fincham & May, 2017; Jones & Hertlein, 2012).
A number of factors contribute to how parents make decisions to surveil their children and their technology use. To some degree, this has to do with the parents’ own ability to interpret and utilize technology, their parenting style as to whether they tend to be more permissive or authoritarian, and, to a certain extent, their demographic background (Nikken & Schols, 2015). For example, parents who find themselves with lower socioeconomic status and lower levels of education have more difficulty surveilling their children’s online behavior, perhaps because of a function of work schedules when their children are home. There are three primary methods of parental mediation. One of them is restrictive monitoring, where the parent places restrictions but is passive about the enforcement of such restrictions. Active monitoring involves a parent’s continual engagement in reviewing what sites are visited and establishing rules around the sites, without allowing the children to develop age appropriate strategies or strategies around the increase or the usage (Collier et al., 2016; Padilla-Walker, Coyne, Kroff, & Memmott-Elison, 2018). Another key piece to managing surveillance is to recover from a privacy breach when it happens. One study showed that when there is a privacy breach between two people online, the person whose information was breached often blames the confidant rather than take responsibility for themselves. This occurs despite the evidence that these victims were not overtly taking measures to manage their information in a more secure way (Steuber & Mclaren, 2015).
The quality of the Internet that allows termination without confrontation is the anonymity provided. Ghosting in relationships refers to blocking someone via electronic media subsequent to a period of routine interaction. Accessibility of communication via cellphones, anonymity, and accommodation facilitate ghosting. Further, ghosting can happen in the context of any relationship—romantic, peer-to-peer, or even professional, and can be painful to the recipient in any setting. While there is little research on this phenomenon, anecdotal evidence suggests that being the recipient of ghosting can contribute to feeling disoriented in a relationship, lowered levels of self-esteem, rumination on the events leading up to the perceived distancing, and withdrawal.
While it may be tempting to terminate a relationship without the consequences of having further communication, there may be other ways to end relationships in non-destructive, boundary-preserving ways. One of the reasons that people use technology and engage in ghosting is that it is easier to put up physical boundaries than psychological ones—and the physical boundaries serve as the boundary until they are not necessary. In the case of technology, however, once you establish physical boundaries through blocking or deleting, you may not even get to a place to address the psychological boundaries, thus inhibiting one’s growth.
Outside of ghosting, there are other ways that the Internet and cellphones can provide ways to terminate relationships. One key way is to be able to say “no” without feeling guilty and to use technology to do so (Tom Tong & Walther, 2011). As mentioned in the CFT framework, one of the things that makes it easier to initiate relationships is the ability to be anonymous. We can edit, delete, and have our facial expressions hidden from those on the other side of the electronic interaction. This anonymity might provide protection from watching another person’s reaction to rejection without having to resort to ghosting. Another opportunity is to use an approach that relies on the middle ground—in other words, rather than ghosting, sending a contact to voicemail when they call, muting their text message, etc. This would put the receiver of the messages in a position to retain control of the response.
As therapists, one of the most frequently asked questions we get is at what age should we start integrating technology in our children’s lives. One specific example of this is at what age should children have their own cellphones? The answer to this question is, “It depends.” It depends, because it is so complex. It requires a parent’s attention to different areas of their child’s life. At the same time, it is an important question, as the adults are still the gatekeepers of children’s access to technology (Chiong & Shuler, 2010). Following are some of the main components of decision-making on this question.
Developmental age is different from chronological age. When we talk about chronological age, we are talking about the biological age of the child, that is, how many years since their date of birth. As we know, however, children develop at various trajectories. A number of elements can affect a child’s developmental age, and they include parenting, temperament, learning styles, developmental delays or disorders, and the presence of trauma, just to name a few. There are a number of studies exploring the appropriateness of when a child begins school based on their developmental age rather than their chronological age (Hale, 1988; Nicholas, 1985). This as a factor in awarding a cellphone should be no different. Like a classroom, cellphone ownership requires that the user be in a developmental place where physically they can navigate the phone, mentally they can handle the complexity that goes into responding to incoming calls appropriately (both wanted and unwanted), and they have the ability to manage interference from phones if they are executing another task. In addition, as compared to non-delayed children, those with developmental delays tend to have more behavior problems as well as being more likely to develop a diagnosable psychological condition (Caplan, Neece, & Baker, 2015). More behavior problems in an offline world may also mean more behavior problems in their phone use. Parents should carefully consider where their child is in terms of developmental age and make a decision with this in mind.
While there is not specifically a developmental age that would require or prohibit cellphone usage, it is one of the things that factor into one’s emotional maturity. The higher the developmental age, the more maturity that your child may experience or demonstrate. Physical maturity is probably the least important determinant from a health and safety perspective in deciding whether your child should have a cellphone. Physical maturity relates to a child’s motor skills—for example, the extent to which a child can write legibly, their coordination with getting dressed, appropriate muscle development, being coordinated enough to ride a bike, etc. In the case of cellphones, it is important that children have the physical maturity to be able to handle a phone. Cellphones are becoming larger (Barredo, 2014), and for people with little hands, this might prove challenging to hold in one hand. If you decide to purchase your child a cellphone, you may wish to bring the child to try on different sizes of phones and see what feels like a good fit physically.
Another consideration has to be the child’s ability to remain safe while using their phone. For example, a series of studies point out the consistent executive functioning impairments when people use their phone and walk simultaneously—leading to unsafe practices (Haga et al., 2015; Lamberg & Muratori, 2012; Neider et al., 2011). Children with cell-phones need to demonstrate some maturity around physically being able to manage the devices and engage in responsible behaviors to avoid unsafe circumstances. An assessment of physical maturity leads to identification of one’s intellectual maturity. Questions parents can ask themselves in this regard include how well a child follows directions, how well they do in school, their ability to understand cause and effect, and their ability to understand differences between an offline and online life (a concept that may even be difficult for adults to comprehend). Children have to be able to understand, for example, the concept of physical safety when using their cellphones and be able to execute a parent’s directive to limit cellphone use in certain conditions—such as in school, crossing streets, etc. Intellectually, children have to be able to separate the cellphone as a tool to accomplish tasks from an extension of whom they are as a person.
Emotional maturity is another type of maturity to be considered by parents evaluating their child’s fit for a phone. Emotional maturity is characterized by a child’s ability to exhibit patience, manage frustration, control their anger and express it in appropriate ways, and manage disappointment. Because of the accessibility of phones and anonymity, a child who becomes frustrated may respond by sending a quick emotional message without considering the impact of their words. Intersecting with one’s emotional maturity is their social maturity. Social maturity means one’s willingness to share with friends or peers, their ability to interact and play appropriately with others, their ability to be cooperative, and how well they get along with others. Emotional maturity has to be at a level high enough to interact effectively with one’s peers.
The last area of maturity is the child’s ethical and moral maturity. This type of maturity means a child’s general level of kindness, their sense of helpfulness with others, their understanding of empathy with others, their ability to take accountability and responsibility for their actions, and their tendency toward honesty. Certainly, children who are unable to empathize, are mean toward others, and do not take accountability (which is easy to do in an online world where posts can be anonymous) are not the type for whom a cellphone would be appropriate, as the risk of engaging in cyberbullying may be likely.
There are also some circumstances that would require a cellphone for a child in today’s day and age. For example, a parent may need access to their child when their child is away from them. If the relationship with their ex-partners is rather contentious, it may behoove the parent to get their child a cellphone as a way to communicate. Another perceived need may be a child’s schedule. For example, if there is involvement in extracurricular activities where they need to call a parent for a ride home, a cellphone might be a logical idea.
In some circumstances, parents may wish to safeguard their children from harmful information online. In other times, they may feel like the child might be able to regulate their own access. The extent to which one is able to provide safeguards for their children is also going to dictate whether they can get their child a phone. For example, if you feel reasonably confident that your child would be able to get around and remain safe, without a phone, you may wish to withhold a phone until necessary. This may be true for children who experience difficulty with boundaries set by parents regarding phone use. In that case, the best answer might be a flip phone rather than a smartphone to be able to protect them from that. The challenge of this, of course, is that many companies are no longer making flip phones. While this seems like a useful decision in terms of marketing, it makes it more challenging for parents to be able to provide a phone to their children because a smartphone is incredibly expensive, and is not able to protect them in the way that they wish.
Parents are motivated in when and how they use technology in their couple and family life. In some cases, that use of technology may be as it is for many of us: a way to entertain ourselves when bored, or for those who use the Internet pathologically, a way to dissociate from feeling and processing events and emotions. There are also other situations where parents use technology as a pacifier for their children. For example, I (KH) was at a local store yesterday and a small girl (no more than 3 years old) was walking around the store with a tablet in her hand. The tablet was playing a cartoon, and the girl was walking through the store near her mother, watching the screen and interrupting the viewing by glancing up to grab and examine whatever toys were at her eye level. Once she examined a toy, she would zone out again in front of her screen while her mother walked in the vicinity around her. This also is not the first, second, or third time I have seen this behavior and decision-making from parents. Restaurants are another common place for implementing the electronic pacifier. Parents may decide that they wish to have a “quiet” night away from the kids, so they bring the family to a restaurant and place a screen in front of them, allowing the child to zone out while the parents talk. My view has been that this motivation from the parents’ end results in children not being able to sit patiently in a restaurant, to learn appropriate behavior in a restaurant, and to process any emotions and adversity. In other words, rather than engage in parenting and administer discipline, parents may find it easier to put their children in front of a screen. Finally, it is important to be aware that a parent’s own problematic mobile phone involvement will predict their child’s usage (Hefner, Knop, Schmitt, & Vorderer, 2018). Parents need to be able to reflect on their own behavior and their own motivations and patterns with regard to mobile phone involvement.
There are also parents, however, who have appropriate and well-intentioned motivations. It may be to teach their children certain tasks with cellphones, apps, and technology. In such cases, the motivation that a parent brings to providing their child a cellphone is to prepare them to use one responsibly and to help children adjust to the changes to technology over time. This type of motivation is characterized by time spent with a child teaching them about cellphone safety and cellphone usage, and the phone is often introduced to the child in a progressive manner. In other words, the child is given a short time with the phone, and over time, as their skills develop and with more comfort, the child’s access to the phone and apps slowly increases. In another study, parents acknowledged giving children a touchscreen as a way to provide rest for the child (Nikken & Schols, 2015).
Tonight over dinner, my friend Laura and I (KH) were talking about this very topic—at what point should our boys get cellphones? Her son, 10 years old, has a cellphone. My son of the same age does not, nor am I interested in getting him one. She asked about how I came to the determination of when kids should get cellphones. I began to walk through with her the five aforementioned dimensions, and she and I talked about the differences between our children. For example, in the First Dimension, developmental age, it seems that her son is a little bit older developmentally than my son. Their birthdays are only a few months apart and her son is a little bit older, which may make a bit of a difference in their presentations. In the Second Dimension, maturity, her son also has a bit more advancement. We discussed how in his case, growing up with an older sister may have made him a little bit more mature earlier on, whereas my son, an only child, did not have those pushes toward maturity. With regard to the Third Dimension, perceived need, in her case, her son rides a bus to a school 40 minutes from their home. She and her husband, both busy professionals, have to arrange to meet him at the bus stop or also be alerted if he is going to be late. There are also times when her son has to let himself into the house or be by himself for short periods while she and her husband are trying to come home from work. On the other hand, my son goes to school close to our house—about a mile away. My husband also works from home, so we do not have the challenges Laura has with trying to coordinate schedules and making sure that somebody is at a bus stop or making sure that somebody is coordinating a schedule to get home. Therefore, there is some level of perceived need in Laura’s house that is different than mine. In the Fourth Dimension, presence of safeguards, the boys are about the same. In some ways, my son might even be ahead in this category. My husband happens to be a software developer, so he is intimately aware of various ways to protect and monitor online behavior as a way to introduce safeguards. On the other hand, my friend Laura’s son lives in a home with very intelligent parents and a cellphone-savvy sister, who would be able to provide the same safeguards to him. On the cellphone that he owns, he can only do limited things with that phone. Finally, the Fifth Dimension, motivation of the parents: in this area, it is probably a tie as well. In this regard, neither my husband, myself, nor my friend and her partner are interested in giving our kids a phone so we can do something else with our lives and with our time. We are interested in making sure that the kids use the phone in ways that are helpful and adaptive and not as a babysitter.
Cyberbullying is a pervasive problem in today’s technological culture. Cyberbullying is defined as “aggression that is intentionally and repeatedly carried out in an electronic context (e.g., e-mail, blogs, instant messages, text messages, social networks, chat rooms, online games, or websites) against a person who cannot easily defend” (Lee, 2017, p. 58; Kowalski, Giumetti, Schroeder, & Lattanner, 2014). It is driven by the vulnerabilities we described in depth in earlier chapters in this book. Accessibility, for example, is a primary driver in engaging in cyberbullying. Cyberbul-lying can take many forms including harassment, forwarding one’s texts, instant messages, or emails to others inappropriately, outing someone (disclosing details about one person to others), and masquerading (pretending to be someone else and attacking someone online).
Certain factors described by the CFT framework lend themselves to the development of cyberbullying—specifically, that the technologies that facilitate cyberbullying are affordable and accessible to young people, who may be more likely to take more risks or assault others in online formats. Further, most of these activities can be conducted under the cloak of anonymity, making it difficult if not impossible to track down the perpetrator, and tough for parents to figure out whether their children are at-risk as messages can be (and often are) frequently deleted (Hertlein, 2017).
Parents and children can develop strategies to manage the ecological elements and restructure family roles to improve processes. For example, in what circumstances is the accessibility creating more difficulties for teens and kids? Are there changes the family can make to minimize these difficulties? For some families the solution may be limiting accessibility. Another family member may identify the solution as increasing accessibility for all family members. This might include a shared email address, a shared Facebook account, or shared smartphones for several members of the family. In this way, cyberbullying would be attenuated since the interactions would be with the whole family.
Strategies that address cognitions are also critically important. Once bullied, the victim may feel ashamed, disempowered, anxious, and afraid to respond for fear of retribution. Such feelings can affect the ways in which the victim interacts with family members, which may result in changes to structure. While education about cyberbullying can help normalize and reduce shame around the victim’s response, it can also help the victim to avoid internalizing messages that would contribute to an impaired self-esteem. Cognitive approaches also assist the family in supporting the victim with self-care strategies to manage depression, anxiety, and with the development of assertiveness skills for use in the management of cyberbullying.
Another strategy for both those being bullied and their families is implementing appropriate coping skills. Depressive, emotionally focused, and avoidant coping skills are more likely to promote depression and future symptoms than other, empowerment-based strategies (with emotionally focused strategies to be more likely to be employed by the victim) (Völlink, Bolman, Dehue, & Jacobs, 2013). Implementing positive coping skills may help to reestablish closer relationships in the family and assist in maintaining boundaries helpful to healing and the reestablishment of safety.
We closed this book with a plan—the Technology Integration Plan (TIP)— for how to thoughtfully integrate technology into one’s individual, couple, and family/relational systems. In applying the TIP, we recommended that technology users address these considerations first: (1) consider the audience, (2) maximize the benefits, and (3) consider the motivations. We then recommended ideas for integrating technology into the structure of relationships, as well as into the lives of children.
Our goal in this text, which we stated in Chapter 1, was to address the ways that technology shapes our individual and relational processes, and the advantages and challenges it poses in doing so. While we believe we have accomplished this goal, we also understand that our relationship with technology, as humans, remains complicated. Our hope, then, is that our readers find the information gleaned within the pages of this text helpful for making their relationship with technology at least less complicated, and at most the kind of relationship that offers them greater ease, clarity, and benefit in their lives.
Bargh, J. A., & McKenna, K. A. (2004). The Internet and social life. Annual Review of Psychology, 55 (1), 573–590. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.141922
Barredo, A. (2014). Retrieved from https://medium.com/@somospostpc/a-comprehensive-look-at-smartphone-screen-size-statistics-and-trends-e61d77001ebe
Baruh, L., & Popescu, M. (2017). Big data analytics and the limits of privacy self-management. New Media & Society, 19 (4), 579–596. doi:10.1177/14614448 15614001
Caplan, B., Neece, C., & Baker, B. (2015). Developmental level and psychopathology: Comparing children with developmental delays to chronological and mental age matched controls. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 37, 143–151.
Child, J. T., & Starcher, S. C. (2016). Fuzzy Facebook privacy boundaries: Exploring mediated lurking, vague-booking, and Facebook privacy management. Computers in Human Behavior, 54, 483–490. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2015.08.035
Chiong, C., & Shuler, C. (2010). Learning: Is there an app for that? Investigations of young children’s usage and learning with mobile devices and apps. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.
Collier, K., Coyne, S., Rasmussen, E., Hawkins, A., Padilla-Walker, L., Erickson, S.,… Eric, F. (2016). Does parental mediation of media influence child outcomes? A meta-analysis on media time, aggression, substance use, and sexual behavior. Developmental Psychology, 52 (5), 798–812. doi:10.1037/dev0000108
De Wolf, R., Willaert, K., & Pierson, J. (2014). Managing privacy boundaries together: Exploring individual and group privacy management strategies in Facebook. Computers in Human Behavior, 35 (C), 444–454.
Fincham, F. D., & May, R. W. (2017). Infidelity in romantic relationships. Current Opinion in Psychology, 13 (C), 70–74.
Frison, E., Bastin, M., Bijttebier, P., & Eggermont, S. (2018). Helpful or harmful? The different relationships between private Facebook interactions and adolescents’ depressive symptoms. Media Psychology, 1–29. doi:10.1080/15213269. 2018.1429933
Haga, S., Sano, A., Sekine, Y., Sato, H., Yamaguchi, S., & Masuda, K. (2015). Effects of using a Smart Phone on pedestrians’ attention and walking. Procedia Manufacturing, 3, 2574–2580. doi:10.1016/j.promfg.2015.07.564
Hale, L. (1988). The effects of developmental versus chronological age placement on students’ self concept, class achievement, and school adjustment. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.
Hall, J. A., & Baym, N. K. (2011). Calling and texting (too much): Mobile maintenance expectations, (over)dependence, entrapment, and friendship satisfaction. New Media & Society, 14 (2), 316–331. doi:10.1177/1461444811415047
Hance, M., Blackhart, G., & Dew, M. (2018). Free to be me: The relationship between the true self, rejection sensitivity, and use of online dating sites. The Journal of Social Psychology, 158 (4), 421–429. doi:10.1080/00224545.2017. 1389684
Hefner, D., Knop, K., Schmitt, S., & Vorderer, P. (2018). Rules? role model? relationship? The impact of parents on their children’s problematic mobile phone involvement. Media Psychology, 1–27. doi:10.1080/15213269.2018.1433544
Hertlein, K. M. (2016). “Your cyberplace or mine?”: Electronic fantasy dates. In G. R. Weeks, S. T. Fife, & C. M. Peterson’s (Eds.), Techniques for the couple therapist: Essential interventions from the experts (pp. 182–185). New York, NY: Routledge.
Hertlein, K. M. (2017). Clinical practice in families of cyberbullying. In S. W. Browning & B. van Eeden-Moorefield’s (Eds.), Contemporary families at the nexus of research and practice (pp. 255–265). New York, NY: Routledge.
Hertlein, K. M., & Blumer, M. L. C. (2013). The couple and family technology framework: Intimate relationships in a digital age. New York, NY: Routledge.
Hertlein, K. M., Dulley, C., Chang, J., Cloud, R., & Leon, D. (2017). Does absence of evidence mean evidence of absence? Managing the issue of partner surveillance in infidelity treatment. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 32 (3–4), 323–333.
Jones, K., & Hertlein, K. M. (2012). Four key dimensions in distinguishing Internet infidelity from Internet and sex addiction: Concepts and clinical application. American Journal of Family Therapy, 40 (2), 115–125.
Kowalski, R. M., Giumetti, G. W., Schroeder, A. N., & Lattanner, M. R. (2014). Bullying in the digital age: A critical review and meta-analysis of cyberbullying research among youth. Psychological Bulletin, 140, 1073–1137. doi:10.1037/a0035618
Lamberg, E. M., & Muratori, L. M. (2012). Cellphones change the way we walk.
Gait & Posture, 35 (4), 688–690. doi:0.1016/j.gaitpost.2011.12.005
Lee, E. (2017). Cyberbullying: Prevalence and predictors among African American young adults. Journal of Black Studies, 48 (1), 57–73.
Mullen, C., & Hamilton, N. (2016). Adolescents’ response to parental Facebook friend requests: The comparative influence of privacy management, parent-child relational quality, attitude and peer influence. Computers in Human Behavior, 60, 165–172.
Neider, M., Gaspar, J., McCarley, J., Crowell, J., Kaczmarski, H., & Kramer, A. (2011). Walking and talking: Dual-task effects on street crossing behavior in older adults. Psychology and Aging, 26 (2), 260–268. doi:10.1037/a0021566
Nicholas, R. (1985). Developmental versus chronological placement: Comparative effects on self-concept, school achievement, and school attitude (gesell, transitional class). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.
Nikken, P., & Schols, M. (2015). How and why parents guide the media use of young children. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24 (11), 3423–3435. doi:10.1007/s10826-015-0144-4.
Ocker, R. J., & Yaverbaum, G. J. (1999). Asynchronous computer-mediated communication versus face-to-face collaboration: Results on student learning, quality and satisfaction. Group Decision and Negotiation, 8 (5), 427–440. doi:10.1023/A:1008621827601
O’Keeffe, G. S., & Clarke-Pearson, K. (2011). Clinical report: The impact of social media on children, adolescents, and families. Pediatrics, 127, 800–804. doi:10.1542/peds.2011–0054
Padilla-Walker, L., Coyne, M., Kroff, S., & Memmott-Elison, S. (2018). The protective role of parental media monitoring style from early to late adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 47 (2), 445–459.
Petronio, S. (2002). Boundaries of privacy: Dialectics of disclosure. SUNY Series in Communication Studies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Piszczek, M. (2017). Boundary control and controlled boundaries: Organizational expectations for technology use at the work–family interface. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38 (4), 592–611.
Primack, B., Bisbey, M., Shensa, A., Bowman, N., Karim, S., Knight, J., & Sidani, J. (2018). The association between valence of social media experiences and depressive symptoms. Depression and Anxiety, 35 (8), 784–794. doi: 10.1002/da.22779
Rochadiat, A., Tong, S., & Novak, J. (2018). Online dating and courtship among Muslim American women: Negotiating technology, religious identity, and culture. New Media & Society, 20 (4), 1618–1639.
Shensa, A., Sidani, J., Escobar-Viera, C., Chu, K., Bowman, N., Knight, J., & Primack, B. (2018). Real-life closeness of social media contacts and depressive symptoms among university students. Journal of American College Health, 1–8.
Steuber, K., & Mclaren, R. (2015). Privacy recalibration in personal relationships: Rule usage before and after an incident of privacy turbulence. Communication Quarterly, 63 (3), 345–364.
Stieger, S., Burger, C., & Bohn, M. (2013). Who commits virtual identity suicide? Differences in privacy concerns, Internet addiction, and personality between Facebook users and quitters. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, 16 (9), 629–634.
Tom Tong, S., & Walther, J. (2011). Just say “no thanks”: Romantic rejection in computer-mediated communication. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 28 (4), 488–506.
Toma, C. L., Hancock, J. T., & Ellison, N. B. (2008). Separating fact from fiction: An examination of deceptive self-presentation in online dating profiles. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1023–1036. doi:10.1177/0146167208318067
Toyer, R., Kilker, J., Bates, S., Sahlstein, E., & Traudt, P. (2011). Factors of adoption: Initiating relationships using online dating sites. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.
Twist, M. L. C., Bergdall, M. K., Belous, C. K., & Maier, C. A. (2017). Electronic visibility management of lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities and relationships. Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy: Innovations in Clinical Educational Interventions, 16 (4), 271–285.
Völlink, T., Bolman, C. A. W., Dehue, F., & Jacobs, N. C. L. (2013). Coping with cyberbullying: Differences between victims, bully-victims and children not involved in bullying. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 23 (1), 7–24. doi:10.1002/casp.2142
Wessels, B. (2015). Authentication, status, and power in a digitally organized society. International Journal of Communication, 9, 2801–2818.
Wotipka, C., & High, A. (2016). An idealized self or the real me? Predicting attraction to online dating profiles using selective self-presentation and warranting. Communication Monographs, 83 (3), 281–302.