We have no business writing this book.
Those were my (KH) exact words to Markie as we sat eating chips and salsa, and drinking margaritas in a Mexican restaurant in the McCarran International Airport. This followed a conversation we were having with our respective children—two kids who seemingly knew more about YouTube than we did. In part, this comment was in jest. As parents, we know that our children are more “hip” than we are and up-to-date on the latest trends that we as parents may not follow or even be aware of. This fact was plainly clear, as each of our kids discussed their top five YouTube stars and sites. They continued their conversation into types of games that each liked and tried to organize a playdate for “Five Nights at Freddy’s.” As the conversation waned and our respective partners (one a software engineer and the other a social media manager) chimed in about their knowledge of what the kids were discussing, we continued to wonder if we, two family therapists and academics in psychotherapy by training, knew enough about specific software, hardware, and lingo to be writing a book telling people how to navigate these technologies in their relationships.
But, as the conversation unfolded, we realized: the technology (what we knew about it or what we did not know about it) did not ultimately matter. We could swap out the specific technology or device—cellphone, texting, social media, YouTube, etc.—and the net result was the same. It is about time on a screen. It is about interacting with something on screen seemingly in favor of another individual who may share the same space. It is about how to parent in a world where children are adapting more quickly than their care providers. It is about finding ways to use what children know to connect with them more fully. It is about identifying the circumstances in our romantic relationships that compromise the intimacy, trust, and communication, and finding innovative and applicable ways to repair these.
Markie and I (KH) have both long said that technology has not changed relationships and family systems in their daily tasks; families still accomplish the same tasks as they have in previous generations. We still must find ways to balance autonomy in raising our children and having them respond to rules. We still have to balance work life and home life, feeling crunched by the demands of both, and look for ways to spend more time together. No matter what exactly a specific type of technology is designed to do, there are predictable ways in which it affects our relationships and how our relationships influence the development of new technologies. And we, as couple and family therapy scholars, knew we were the perfect people for doing this job.
The field of Couple and Family Technology (CFT) as identified by Katherine M. Hertlein (Hertlein, 2012; Hertlein & Blumer, 2013) addresses how technology affects couple and family life. The primary purpose of this book, The Internet Family, is to provide an updated look on how things have changed with technology for couples and families over time and provide a plan for readers to learn how to incorporate technology in their lives in thoughtful and helpful ways. In this book, we articulate the ways in which couples and families navigate their relationship with technology. This includes a discussion of the motivations of usage of specific technologies and social media, specific issues that emerge because of technology, and a presentation of risks relevant to ourselves and our relationships.
The audience for this book is practicing clinicians, instructors, and students. It is written to be a book that can be used by couple and family therapists as they work with relational systems; it is also written to be a book to which a clinician might refer an individual, couple, or family as part of a treatment process. A portion of this book is also devoted to the application of the CFT framework. Because it is multitheoretical, the introduction of the CFT framework does not imply that clinicians need to necessarily change their preferred clinical approach; instead, it serves as invitation to find ways to incorporate such a framework into current practice. We believe this is a more inclusive approach to working with couples and families, particularly around technology-related issues. Clinicians, students, and general readers will find information that will help them address the following kinds of common concerns:
Simply stated, our book is about the way that different technologies affect relationships in different ways and the way that relationships affect the use of different technologies. We present the state of the interdisciplinary research and scholarly thoughts on how new media is integrated into couple and family life. We also walk our readers through how to apply the CFT framework to their own lives, specifically assisting them in recognizing the scope of the Internet, the potential for risks and improvement in relationships via technology, and how to develop a plan to thoughtfully integrate technology into relationships.
This book is divided into two sections. In Section One, we orient the reader to the issues and relevant topics of technology today. In Chapter 1, we review technology’s penetration in our lives. We provide up-to-date information describing the devices people are using, what researchers tell us about how many messages and texts are being sent, how devices are being used, and how social media is used in couple and family life. In Chapter 2, we compare what the differences are between online and face-to-face communication. We also review personality characteristics and motivations of those engaging in electronically based communication, as well as review different types of online relationships.
The focus of Chapter 3 is on how couples and technology evolve together over the lifespan. Some specific areas of attention include how romantic relationships are initiated by electronic means, the use of technology in a couple’s life as they raise children, and discussion of relationship termination in a digital age. In Chapter 4, we highlight key issues related to technology that may emerge in families/relational systems— namely, youth as digital natives, surveillance and tracking of children, age appropriate phone and technology usage, etc. This includes a discussion of education, parental monitoring, work life, and other critical issues.
Key issues related to technology that may emerge in couple treatment are highlighted in Chapter 5 —namely, online infidelity, out-of-control technology-related behaviors, and online video gaming. We also address some of the larger areas, which may be secondary concerns related to these key areas such as accountability, shared time and interests, gender and power, and suspicion and jealousy. In Chapter 6, we review cyber-bullying, cyberstalking, and technology-facilitated violence in couple relationships. We also discuss cyberbullying, adolescent usage of these technologies that lead to these things, and the role of the family in cyber-bullying protection and awareness.
Rather than focusing on the problems, we then move to solutions in Section Two—how can myriad technologies be harnessed for our advantage? In Chapter 7, we detail how the qualities germane to the Internet affect a couple’s satisfaction, structure, and processes. In Chapter 8, we review how the structure of relationships, as well as technology, affects relational functioning and the impact to relationship structure. We discuss roles by examining how aspects of technology described earlier affect couple and family roles, rules, and boundaries. The way technology influences processes, including relationship initiation, maintenance, and termination, is reviewed in Chapter 9. We provide detail on how parenting practices are affected by technologies, how children respond to these changes, and how adult children navigate relationships in a digital age.
In Chapter 10, we explore the presentation and management of advanced Internet issues such as the concept of out-of-control technology-related behaviors and video gaming. In Chapter 11, and highlighted specifically in the online Appendices, we present commonly used assessments and strategies to determine whether one is experiencing an Internet-related problem. In this chapter we also expand upon the technology-based focused genogram, as originally detailed in our last technology-related book (Hertlein & Blumer, 2013) and in one of our chapters (Blumer & Hertlein, 2015) in an edited work by one of our colleagues. We provide a series of questions to accompany this genogram contained within the Appendices provided on Taylor & Francis’s website, www.routledge.com/9781138478053. Finally, in Chapter 12, we walk readers through how to create their own Technology Integration Plan (TIP) that outlines how to use technology well in one’s relationships.
Throughout the course of this text, we will be using the terms “technology” and “new media.” For our purposes, technology is defined as the application of innovations specifically within the fields of communication and electronics. New media is a term encompassing a broad range of technologies that enable electronic communication. These include objects such as smartphones and tablets, websites such as Facebook and other social media, and forms of art and entertainment such as video games and electronic art.
We also acknowledge that this book, as timely as it may be to the field now, may contain statistics and figures regarding technology usage that will be quickly outdated. Therefore, we want to assert that while the statistics may be flexible, the concepts related to the CFT framework and information about family and couple dynamics affected by technology will remain quite stable. We provide examples describing how common experiences (e.g., online dating, cyberbullying, parental monitoring, relationship maintenance, etc.) operate in couple relationships in the context of technology. Also explored in this book are the unique challenges that technology introduces into couple and family lives, as well as strategies for managing such issues. Our book is primarily aimed at assisting mental healthcare professionals working with relational systems, though we believe people interested in enhancing their relationships in an ever-growing digital age will find benefit in its pages as well.
We sincerely hope that couple and family therapists, academics, and students alike will find this book descriptive enough to be useful to apply in their own training, as well as to serve as a reference and a resource for couples and families they encounter in the therapy room. As technology and new media continue to evolve, we anticipate and embrace further exchange of ideas about this book and these topics for years to come.
Katherine M. Hertlein
Markie L. C. Twist