Book ReviewReviews.

Larry D. Rosen, Nancy A. Cheever and L. Mark Carrier (Eds.) The Wiley Handbook of Psychology, Technology, and Society John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Chichester, UK, 2015, 1st ed., 592 pp. Hardback ISBN: 978-1-118-77202-7.

Let me tell you what exactly happens with me on an average day in the 21st century. When I wake up, I turn off the alarm of my smartphone. With a gentle push on my oven’s digital panel, I can heat up my coffee machine. Before I go to work, I check the weather forecast on the Internet. En route to my workplace, I listen to an audiobook on my phone.

In my office, I can download the latest version of this review from the cloud to finish it. After that I can upload it and also be able to work on it at home. Meanwhile I am writing down these sentences, I fix an appointment with my friend on Facebook when we start playing in the evening together with an online video game. As you can see, technology is all around us.

It has benefits and drawbacks. In The Wiley Handbook of Psychology, Technology, and Society, the editors collected the latest and most relevant works on how technology has an impact on different fields of our lives.

Larry D. Rosen, PhD, one of the editors of The Wiley Handbook of Psychology, Technology, and Society, is a Professor and a past Chair of the Psychology Department at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). He is a research psychologist and recognized as an international expert in the field of “psychology of technology”; with his colleagues, he examined reactions to technology among more than 50,000 people in the USA and in 22 other countries. His current research topics are generational differences in technology use and multitasking; the impact of the technology on health and sleep; the impact of social networking sites on adolescents and parents; online empathy; the distracted mind from the dual perspectives of psychology and neuroscience; the impact of task switching during studying and in the classroom; and the impact of texting language on English literacy.

Nancy A. Cheever, PhD, an editor of this Handbook, is a Professor and a past Chair of Communications at CSUDH. She is also a research psychologist, a writer, a teacher, and a consultant who specializes in media psychology. Dr. Cheever is a founding member of the George Marsh Applied Cognition Laboratory. Her research interests include emerging and existing media technologies and their content and how they influence people’s thoughts, attitudes, opinions, and behaviors. She teaches communications research methods, news writing and reporting, media psychology, and capstone courses.

L. Mark Carrier, PhD, another editor of this Handbook, has been a Professor of Psychology at CSUDH, for more than 15 years. He is a co-founder of the George Marsh Applied Cognition Laboratory and the Brain Imaging Laboratory at CSUDH. Dr. Carrier’s research interests include psychology of technology, especially the human multitasking. Also, he served as the Co-Team Leader for the American Psychological Association/National Institute of General Medical Science Project to increase the number of underrepresented students on the biomedical fields.

The Handbook has five great parts that introduce various research from the psychology of technology.

Part 1: Psychology of Technology starts with the move to encompass broad field of psychological research. The authors of this part highlight the impact of the technology on brain, which has both positive and negative outcomes. Furthermore, the generation similarities and differences in the use of Internet are also introduced. What does it mean to the generation gap, digital natives, and digital immigrants? Also in Part 1, we can read how gender and age can influence the use of technology and the examined values, beliefs, and attitudes. In Part 1, there is also a huge part about Internet credibility and information literacy.

Moreover, bringing psychological research into online milieu draws attention to the ethical issues and concerns how we can use the Internet as a new tool on the psychological research field.

In Part 2: Children, Teens, and Technology, we can read various works about how technology has an impact on youth and how it may or may not lead to risky online behaviors. This could not be surprising considering that 71% of the 13- to 17-year-old adolescents in the USA use more than one social networking sites (Facebook is one of the most popular) and 24% of them are “almost constantly” online due to the popularity of mobile phones (Lenhart et al., 2015). In Part 2, we can read not only about the problematic mobile phone use, but also can learn more about safeguarding the youth’s Internet usage as parents, sexual communications among adolescents and their risk factors, motivations, and consequences; moreover, cyberbullying, one of the most important topics, appears in this part. The authors not only define cyberbullying, but also explore the psychological characteristics through cross-national and cross-cultural aspects. Furthermore, we can learn more about text messaging, how the language is rapidly forming, changing according to the technological development, and also users with autism spectrum disorder can enhance their communications while participating in online communities (e.g., emotion expression and emphatic interactions).

Part 3: Social Media examines various perspectives of social media use and its impact on one’s life. There is an emerging trend in the usage of different social media platforms that may or may not lead to negative outcomes. Previous works indicated that social media use is associated with lower levels of self-esteem and may lead to depression (Pantic et al., 2012; Malik & Khan, 2015).

Following the Part 2, the risky behavior of youth (e.g., alcohol, sex activity, and depression) due to social media is a highlighted issue. In addition, the authors draw attention to maximize the privacy of online profiles and accounts. Unfortunately, the need of self-presentation and impression management on the Internet and the need of privacy are the two opposite poles of the same issue. Moreover, the authors introduce the interesting connection between narcissism and emerging media.

In Part 4: Multitasking, we finally get the answer to our question: is multitasking really good, or really bad? According to the authors of Part 4, multitasking can be both. For instance, extensive use of technological devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets) leads to multitasking as well, but this may interrupt our flow experience. On the other hand, the authors show the case in an empirical research that more multitasking among youth leads to improved multitasking skills, but it can be different among generations. The impact of multitasking on academic performance, student learning process, and attention skills is also highlighted. Furthermore, we can learn more about the differences between on-task and off-task multitasking, interruption, multitasking, task switching, and distraction. Moreover, how intense multitasking environments can influence the long-term learning in classrooms.

In Part 5: The Media’s Impact on Audience, the authors highlight, how media, technology use, and the content of them affect people. According to the cultivation theory, highlighted in this section, the long exposure of the televised images and narratives can cultivate attitudes about real word. To be exposed, media content that leads to the next topic of Part 5, where we can learn more about Internet addiction and its classification, history, definition, and measurements. Additionally, violent video game effect – both theoretical and empirical fields – is highlighted in this final section. Research draw attention to violent video game play that is associated with negative effects. However, the authors emphasize that video games generally are not problematic, and they have prosocial and positive outcomes. In addition, we can learn more about the future clinical considerations of video game and Internet addiction which too will be added into farther DSM as a clinically valid disorder. And last but not the least, exploring the technology use in education is also an important topic. This is effective showing how educators can use online modalities, flipped classrooms, social media, or smart devices in learning areas to enhance the learning processes.

To conclude, “The Wiley Handbook of Psychology, Technology, and Society” covers all the important topics that we should know and research about technological influence on one’s life. The five parts of the Handbook are written by experts in the respective fields and mention important factors of technology, social media, Internet, and video games, which need more attention. The Handbook is well organized, readable, and offers meaningful information not only to researchers but also to students with the interest of learning more about the psychology of technology.