Counselling and Social Media: Opportunities and Risks
When Marshall McLuhan stated that “the medium is the message” (1964), he probably didn’t realise how prophetic his words would become a half-century later. Yet the exponential growth in online technology shapes ever more firmly how individuals learn, interact, and entertain themselves. Mental health professionals have offered treatment via communication technologies since the 1990s (Smith & Reynolds, 2002), and cyber technology has permeated with increasing depth the ways in which both adults and youth seek support for an ever-wider range of services (Mishna, Bogo, Root, Sawyer, & Khoury-Kassabri, 2012). How can you, as a therapist, ethically navigate through the alien landscape of counselling’s Digital Age? In this article, we identify both possibilities and risks for the therapeutic rela... »
