3 :: NEW TECHNOLOGIES,
NEW MOBILITIES
resulted in an engulfing of herself, an engulfment that has left the self drained and
lifeless. Trapped in the isolation box of these new technologies, the emotional
connections Sandra was seeking to re-establish with others – namely, her children
and family – come to be eaten away from within. And this is even more the case when
those relations-at-a-distance involve different countries or continents, and the
families involved possess little network capital to enable relationship work and repair.Sandra is not alone in finding that mobile technologies can switch from containment
to engulfment. Research in psychology, for example, highlights the growing relations
between problematic internet use and depression or psychic isolation.^27 Other recent
research has focused on the psychological distress and connected pathological
symptoms stemming from the mal adaptive use of both mobile telephony and the
internet.^28 A Japanese study of web-based communities found that excessive use of
the internet increases depression and aggression, as well as the desire for further
virtual communication, but (in contrast to findings in the abovementioned research)
does not impact on loneliness.^29 Much of the research concerning pathologies of the
self arising in the context of mobile communications remains controversial, and there
appears to be little overall consensus in the social sciences as to the emotional
consequences of conducting much of one’s life on small screens.^30As Norman H. Nie et al. have pointed out, however, social critique needs to shift away
from general categorizations of whether mobile technologies are good or bad for
sociability, and focus on how specific technological deployments affect the self and
interpersonal relations.^31 In this connection, the psychoanalytic approach we have
detailed to the generation of experience, mediated through digital technologies, is of
considerable importance. It underscores the affective complexity of the self in its
deployment of new communications technologies. This approach sees the benefits of
new communications technologies, at the level of the self, as generating forms of
experience that often involve creative dreaming or reverie. What accounts for
disturbances in the self’s engagement with digital technologies stems from closures in
psychic life. When digital processes fail to function as emotional containers for
experience, the individual can become overwhelmed by communications technologies,
with disowned aspects of self-experience – ranging from paranoid anxiety to guilt,
despair and depression. What gives rise to failures in emotional containment in
conditions of complex mobile lives needs greater analytical attention than it has so far
received in the social sciences. Similarly, how different forms of mobile connectivity- from SMS texting to videoconferencing to online fast communications – facilitate or
constrain the autonomy of the self also demands further critical attention.
(^27) See Kimberly Young and Robert
Rodgers, ‘The relationship between
depression and Internet addiction’,
CyberPsychology and Behavior, 1998, 1(1):
pp. 25–8.
(^28) See M. Bernanuy, Ursula Oberst, Xavier
Carbonell and Chammaro, ‘Problematic
Internet and mobile phone use and clinical
symptoms in college students’, Computers
in Human Behavior, 2009, 25(5): pp. 1182–7.
(^29) Mielzo Takahira, Reiko Ando and Akira
Sakamoto ‘Effect of internet use on
depression, loneliness, aggression and
preference for internet communication’,
International Journal of Web Based
Communities, 2008, 4(3): pp. 302–18.
(^30) Sherry Turkle, Life on the screen
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1996).
(^31) Norman H. Nie, D. Sunshine Hillygus and
Lutz Erbing, ‘Internet use, interpersonal
relations and sociability’, in Barry Wellman
and Caroline Haythornthwaite (eds.) The
Internet in everyday life (Oxford: Blackwell,
2002), pp. 215–43.