In this entertaining and insightful talk, TEDx speaker, Huffington Post blogger, and author of Homo Distractus, Dr Anastasia Dedyukhina explores how the internet is changing our brain. Drawing on the latest neuroscience research, she explains why our devices are so irresistible, how digital distractions are preventing us from good decision making and innovative thinking and will give practical tips on how to coach your brain to stay focused in the age of digital distractions.

Does it happen to you to go check your email or social media just for a second, and then two hours later find yourself mindlessly clicking on yet another cat video? How about reading something online, and then immediately forgetting what it was about? You are not alone.

Our brain is undergoing a massive transformation as a result of internet penetration. We outsource our memory to our devices and are less and less able to concentrate on something for a long time (when was the last time you could read a book without being distracted?). The real cost of allowing your gadgets to dictate your agenda and behaviour is your depleted ability to make decisions, stay focused, think clearly and creatively, sleep well, and ultimately, manage your own free time and choices. In this talk, you will learn how to take back control of your time and attention without getting rid of your tech.

Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment, and share. Some people might even go as far as using a service like Growthoid in order to get followers. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience.

This talk will provide an unflinching view into the calamities of digital life: the circus of online trolling, flourishing alt-right subcultures, pervasive corporate surveillance, and the virtual data mines of Facebook and Google where we spend considerable portions of our free time. You’ll learn about the political and psychological effects of our changing relationship with social media, what’s really behind our addiction, and how to set yourself free.

Online social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter can be seen as a virtual extension of our psychological and emotional selves. They also happen to be an essential technology that mediates our relationships in contemporary society. The architecture of different online social networking sites enable certain aspects of self-expression while inhibiting others. The consequence is that self-expression and online relationships are necessarily altered by what different online social networking sites can or cannot do.

Drawing on insights from his book The Psychodynamics of Social Networking: connected-up instantaneous culture and the self, Dr. Balick will be exploring how online social networking mediates self-expression and interpersonal relationships today. This seminar is an application of contemporary relational psychoanalysis and other related disciplines to modern technology. In this model, online social networking is seen as a product and deployment, however, faulty, of the basic human unconscious motivation to relate to others. The way in which this motivation is mediated through these platforms has important consequences for individuals, relationships to others, and society as a whole.