Societal rhetoric tends to imply that technology simply happens to us and that we have no agency in determining the effects it has on our lives. This is often referred to as technological determinism; a largely reductionist theory about the role of technology within society. Some examples of this include the proposition that we will simply imitate risky behaviour we see online, or that using social media will be a linear cause of harm to well-being. Technological determinism essentially diminishes the role and responsibility of humans who are otherwise considered to be self-directed agents. Whilst there might indeed be some correlates between our engagement with certain types of technology with certain psychological states or behaviours, I would argue that we tend to overlook and in many cases underestimate, the agency we have as humans in our digital engagements.
There are various theoretical principles which would outline human agency in this regard. One is Basic Psychological Needs Theory as a mini-theory of Self-determination Theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000). This outlines human behaviour as being driven in order to fulfil three key psychological needs; autonomy, relatedness and competence. Alternatively, another theoretical perspective is Uses and Gratifications Theory (Katz et al., 1973). This posits that our use of media is driven by need gratification for things like information-seeking, socialisation etc. Whilst the theoretical principles of this might not have been extensively studied in respect of all types of digital engagements and online behaviours, the general principle that user agency serves a selective engagement process has significant relevance to this discussion.
Indeed, technology doesn’t just happen to us; we are goal-directed beings, who actively select and respond to our digital environments, in the way we would do in our physical worlds. Perhaps a key difference within our digital worlds is that they can be more easily tailored to be more personalised (which of course, occurs through our own previous selective engagements), and therefore we might find ourselves more likely to engage in those preferred environments. This doesn’t mean that we lack agency. Indeed, quite the opposite. Even when we engage in “passive” social media use, these behaviours have been found to be somewhat selective and targeted (Kaye et al., 2024) which raises the question about whether “passive” is indeed the most representative term to use when referring to observational behaviour on social media.
The diminishment of human agency is very apparent in many public debates about technology and online use including:
· Technology “addiction” (e.g., social media “addiction”)
· Social media harms
· Online disinhibition effects
· Online risk taking
· Media effects/game transfer effects
All of these, to some extent or other, raise concern that harms may become a resulting consequence, based on the assumption that we, as humans, will have no active or intervening role to determine otherwise. This presents a rather simplistic and may I suggest, “convenient” explanation for human behaviour. Making a case that “the technology did it to me” is much easier than accounting for the wide range of complex and inter-related life factors that co-exist isn’t it? Certainly it is much easier to explain than the complex predictors of behaviour which might be a combination of level of motivation, self-efficacy, retrieval of relevant knowledge, effect of context and so on.
As psychologists, we know that human behaviour is extremely complex. Even though much of our early understanding of human behaviour was founded in rather simplistic terms thanks to the behaviourist movement, I think we can all agree that, as a discipline we now have much more sophisticated perspectives of human behaviour. So much so, I find it rather disappointing to see fellow psychologists continue to adopt such simplistic views to these debates. I don’t wish to speculate too much on why this might be. Perhaps it is simply that they want to articulate an easy explanation with a view of being sympathetic to the public need for simple answers. Either way, I do speculate on what impact this has to the reputation of psychologists and psychology as a discipline. If we indeed adopt the perspective of technological determinism and imply the absence of human agency, then one could question why we need psychologists to contribute here at all? Surely, our role as psychologists is to explore the predictors, patterns and idiosyncrasies of human behaviour? In the context of technological determination, this might imply that human behaviour is predictable, linear and uniform which quite frankly feels like it doesn’t really require the insight of a psychologist at all. Maybe I’m just labouring the point because I want to stay in a job (!!) but there is a more pertinent point to this about what purpose psychology will continue to have if this becomes the mainstream perspective of human behaviour in the digital age.
There are interesting paradoxes I observe. There are huge domains which focus on user experiences (UX) and user-centred design (UCD), yet the “user” seems somewhat omitted from vocal psychological debates about the role of technology in society. Maybe part of the problem is that we don’t yet perceive ourselves as citizens in our digital worlds, and instead situate ourselves in parallel to these. Indeed, this is represented in the language we use which describes ourselves as “on” rather than “in” digital spaces (e.g., “I’m on Facebook”). I’d also argue that the term “user” also doesn’t create a strong sense of citizenship within digital worlds either. So perhaps part of the issue is that on a human level, are aren’t yet fully embodying ourselves as citizens in digital spaces, which might be part of the reason why there is a tendency for mainstream debates to adopt technological deterministic perspectives.
But we shouldn’t be satisfied with this. Irrespective of what your position is about the opportunities or threats of technology in society, we surely should all agree that as humans, have the capacity to shape our own decisions and behaviours. For those in disagreement, then I would have very serious concerns about your understanding of what it is to be human.
References
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “What” and “Why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01
Katz, E., Blumler, J. G., & Gurevitch, M. (1973). Uses and Gratifications Research. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 37(4), 509–523. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2747854
Kaye, L. K., Egan, I. M., Rowe, B., & Taylor, J. (2024). A qualitative study exploring behaviours which underpin different types of social media use. Psychology of Popular Media. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000533
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