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I attended the ACP conference in June 2024 in the final months of my child psychotherapy training. I rarely had time for additional lectures or conferences, let alone a whole weekend. However, the conference on the impact of digital technologies on child development was an exception, as I believe this topic is not only vital to my child psychotherapy practice but also to the future of humanity. The conference discussions were heavy, evoking fear and despair, yet I found myself leaning towards a more optimistic perspective. It could very well be that the conference felt too threatening and therefore evoked a need to deny the awfulness of it all. It could also be a defence, since I am a Millennial and a social media user. My age places me in a unique position, bridging generations with differing relationships to technology, which might shape my ability to both empathise with younger clients and critically reflect on the digital landscape. Yet I am not a digital native and grew up knocking on my friends’ doors to go play outside. Nevertheless, as an individual, I am often drawn to think existentially and about how ‘the collective unconscious’- a concept introduced by Carl Jung (1936), referring to a deeper layer of the unconscious which is not individual but universal among all people- shapes the day-to-day thoughts, feelings and behaviours of my young patients and vice versa. It is through this lens that I write this response piece. I will first highlight the key insights from the conference regarding child development and then explore how the use of digital technology, though arguably regressive, may be part of a ‘cultural complex’- a post-Jungian concept as discussed by Singer (2010), which I will elaborate on later- paving the way for a transcendence of the collective psyche.
Professor Lemma’s compelling paper (Lemma, 2021), which explored the impact of widespread use of online pornography, opened the conference, and a door to the digital world. Research findings pr