Social media is....

Can we talk about the psychodynamic approach to technology and the influence on behaviour.

How the missing narrative from these conversations is the use of tech by parents, partners, adults in general from 1996/1998/2000+ and how this most likely has affected attachment patterns writ large (there’s been no robust research in this area and I spend my time theorising and writing about it because I can’t lean on research).
Corporeal influences about our understanding of what children engage in because the adults are hyper focused ON the screen, the device and the “demon”.

Those corporeal aspects are omitted from this dialogue here on these podcasts (and others) and in society overall, with minimal research touching upon vulnerability, but not the primary drivers of a mammalian social species (and as a clin psych Dr Peterson I’m sure you know how important this is in those seeking behaviours Panksepp beautifully talks about, that also overlap into the play domain).

I’ve been in this technology space for 30+ years and written about the psychodynamic influence back and forth, studied and written extensively about children’s use of this tech as a child psychotherapist both interested in and using technology in my practice.

The depth of play taking place online (and via a screen) includes those “risky” behaviours needed for cognitive, social and psychological maturity, and the broken legs so often talked about as sign of this risky behaviour in action happen virtually.

Which could be perceived as “safer” to the body proper.

Children seek both synchronous and asynchronous dialogue, connection and manage this in differing ways on different platforms and in digital spaces. They differ in mode and medium and cannot be seen to be homogeneous. We need to understand modus operandi, intentionality, purpose and outcomes for each of the spaces.

Moreover we need an approach that is not panic stricken and brings to the forefront data and direct experience of those environments. Which includes understanding porn viewing in children and gaming and what/when/how this happens, what new spaces are already inhabited and how we are engaging in and through them (such as the MX/AR/VR, haptic hardware and incoming infusions of AI into these).

I write about the harms children (and adults) face and encounter online so this is not me banging a drum of calling BS on this approach of “it’s destroying humanity” (or. Childhood), it’s so much deeper, complicated and nuanced than the chicken little perspectives on display currently.

Often seen by many professionals epistemically trespassing, or who do not work or research in digital spaces or how children develop around technology, but use buzzwords that make them sound like professors akin to Turing. Decoding the enigma of a machine they do not fully understand but can point to the dials and say it’s got an output!

We’ve forgotten, overlooked, missed and crap-ended the hype around music videos and hyper sexualisation of children which are still bubbling under the surface since the 90s..

We’ve forgotten the influence of social, emotional and age appropriate contagion in the school playground which is going to be so interesting to watch as the phones are ejected from this domain (and will still result in fads, trends and harms as has always been true),

We are not giving parents and teachers and other professionals working with children sound advice because there are too many egos, too much utter bull, too many gurus, too much of everything and no real direction for them and it’s scared the parents.

Blamed, shamed and terrified.

Furthermore, We’ve been told that AI will take our jobs, our life, our purpose. We are in a meaning crisis and how has this occurred?

It’s the adults driving panic, adults looking at one piece of the pie and a plethora of negativity bias gone awry (and to be honest the one I see most is a lack of critical thinking which we are now demanding is taught to children)

As children reach the age in which those adults fall from the pedestal of admiration they once had… it (probably) results in them thinking why the hell should I listen to you morons.

So direct from my work:

Welcome to 2025.

The kids I work with think you are morons as they see you engrossed in your screen, see you believing and chugging on conspiracy theories like a kid with a bag of crisps and bottle of pop.

They think “you don’t think”, they tell me that you haven’t even understood what they are doing “online” and see you making up or regurgitating BS about their life online and they feel unsafe. They have done so for a while.

They feel anxious because YOU are anxious.

That’s the real social contagion.

So can we take a breath, take a step back and look at this from the top down and bottom up, joined up and put our heads together in a meaningful way.

And that means we must say we don’t know what we don’t know. There’s not enough of this honesty because we are busy pointing fingers at parents who point back at technology companies, who point to governments. There is a chasm in the centre that children have fallen into and we created it.

I don’t know about you but I reckon our kids deserve better from us. A panicked parent does not hold and contain a child safely. We are letting them down because we have lost our heads.

They are in the chasm and we let them fall there.

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