A U.K.-based psychologist warns that an increasing number of people report that their “primary source of arousal are through interacting with their tech,” describing it as “a different kind of epidemic” to the coronavirus.
Psychotherapist Lucy Beresford wrote in the Telegraph that “technosexuals,” as she calls them, find that “their tech fulfils them by mobilising the reward system in the brain and releasing dopamine — the ‘happiness hormone,'” and this “is like a sexual turn on. This ‘dopamine hit’ happens in all of us but, in technosexuals, something else is at play. For them, the modern digital world influences all their libidinous activity. It dictates who they fancy, and how they present and value themselves.”
Beresford notes that “In all my years of practising, technosexuals are perhaps the most troubling cohort of mental health sufferers I have seen, because the source of their distress appears, on the face of it, to be so innocuous. Where most of us just use tech when we need it — and, as Zoom-fatigue has shown, can get quickly turned off by it — the technosexual is hit by the double whammy of intensified use, which arises from (and is subsequently inflamed by) an existing fear of closeness to other human beings.”
She concludes, “If we’re not careful, mindful even, tech has the power to tempt all of us to invest too much time in a ‘virtual’ life at the expense of our real one. Only by living in the present, is a person free to let go of unhealthy technosexual behaviour — and to continue using tech healthily, instead of it dominating and warping their lives.”
