Palgrave Studies in Cyberpsychology

The book introduces and critically reviews conceptual and empirical issues surrounding the topic of smartphone addiction. Smartphone addiction has been proposed as a candidate psychiatric disorder characterised by disordered, problematic, uncontrolled use of one’s phone or the content on it. There is now a literature of several thousand papers exploring the risks and consequences associated with smartphone addiction. This has led to calls for intervention in the media worldwide, including restrictions and bans on digital media. However, there are fundamental concerns about smartphone addiction and how it is defined, researched, and studied, which necessitates a pause for thought. This book explores several of these concerns: conceptualisation, measurement, methodology, and treatment, each requiring a comprehensive, integrated investigation. This multi-lens examination of the issues with smartphone addiction enables us to draw wide-reaching conclusions about the state of smartphone addiction and how these issues can be addressed. This is especially important in light of critical problems that are prevalent in behavioural sciences, such as concerns about the quality of measurement, the replication crisis, and the growing open science movement.

This book offers innovative and integrative psychological theorizing on the meaning of parasocial relationships, drawing on cutting-edge empirical insights and clinical observations. 

Uniquely, the book explores various digital spheres, ranging from online dating and social media to subscription platforms like OnlyFans and AI-driven chatbots, including ChatGPT, AI-companions, and therapy bots. It highlights their specific characteristics, overarching similarities, dynamic entanglements, potentials, and risks, and finally, their meaning for the social self. Through this lens, the book examines how individuals initiate and sustain relationships, how intimacy and sexuality are experienced online, and how these digital practices materialize in everyday life, impacting meaning-making and broader societal organizing.

Finally, the book offers conceptual ideas on media and AI literacy, as well as psychological implications, relevant to social work and education, counselling and psychotherapeutic contexts, policymakers, and everyone involved online.