Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-personality - Hardcover

Elias Aboujaoude

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393070646 ISBN 13: 9780393070644

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co., 2011

Synopsis

Whether sharing photos or following financial markets, we spend a shocking amount of time online. Virtually You offers a penetrating examination of the insidious effects of the Internet on our personalities-online and off. The Internet can enhance well-being but Elias Aboujaoude has spent years treating patients whose lives have been profoundly disturbed by it. Part of the danger lies in how the Internet allows us to act with exaggerated confidence, sexiness and charisma. This self, which Aboujaoude dubs our "e-personality", manifests itself in every curt e-mail we send, Facebook "friend" we make and "buy now" button we click. Too potent to be confined online, e-personality traits seep offline, making us impatient, unfocused and urge-driven. The first scrutiny of the virtual world's transformative power on our psychology, Virtually You shows how life is being reconfigured in the image of a chat room and how our identity increasingly resembles that of our avatar.

About this title

Review:

Penetrating examination of the insidious effects of the internet on our personalities. --The Bookseller

About the Author:

Elias Aboujaoude, a Stanford University psychiatrist, earned an MD from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Author blog: www.psychologytoday.com/blog/compulsive-acts

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0393070646
• ISBN 13: 9780393070644
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 349