My contribution aims to provide a psychological and clinical perspective on digital identity theft.
To understand the clinical implications of digital identity theft, it’s first necessary to address how mass digitalization has radically changed our sociocultural context and, consequently, our mind, with reference to Bateson’s thinking (1972). Digital technology, in fact, cannot simply be conceived as a tool for human use, but as a habitat in which we are continuously immersed. Already in 1991, Mark Weiser, one of the pioneers of computing, promoted the concept of ubiquitous computing according to which “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it“. If we accept this premise, as clinical psychologists, we should not investigate the digital phenomenon by isolating it into precise diagnostic categories like digital addiction (Billieux et al., 2019), but rather conceive digital as an inseparable part of the processes of subjectivation and the genesis of forms of psychological distress (Scognamiglio, 2021). For example, we now have to contend with patients who complain of anxiety states or panic attacks caused by FoMO (Fear of Missing Out), ghosting, orbiting, or their Instagram profile being blocked.
Consequently, digital identity theft should be conceived, from a clinical perspective, based on how our identity changes in the virtual world. With the advent of Web 2.0, which we still navigate, the ideal of universal brotherhood that early internet users in the 1990s believed in has shattered. The result is an Internet “torn to pieces,” taken from users and largely reduced to commercial content (Bertola & Quintarelli, 2023). This fragmentation process does not only concern the Web but involves a continuous molding of our identities, our Self, and our ways of being, increasingly “played out” in social network avatars and by the logic of the algorithm. The recent explosion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) fits into this groove where it is the machine that tells us who we are and, therefore, what we suffer from.
From a psychological point of view, we face a paradox: what if our identity is already subjected to a “theft” in the digital realm?
This “theft” is equivalent to a process of reduction of the Self which, in its impact with the digital, transforms into You, the You of YouTube and YouPorn, an object that reacts to the Web and is no longer a subject capable of acting on the Web (Scognamiglio & Russo, 2018; Scognamiglio, Russo & Fumagalli, 2024).
We increasingly encounter patients who ask AI how to find answers to their suffering. The critical thought should not be so much on the fact that the person talks to the digital machine as if it were human, but that AI has accustomed our minds to expect answers in every field of life, including psychological suffering. Digital seems to give us certainties. This conviction can lead to the ideological drift of conceiving human functioning as similar to that of a machine (Benasayag & Pennisi, 2023). On the contrary, exposing oneself to the human factor means exposing oneself to uncertainty, dialectics, silence, but above all to the shared construction of meaning.
Just as identity changes, our desires also change. The link between digital, identity, and desire clearly emerges in cases of romance scam. People involved in these scams generally suffer from a double trauma:
- The first trauma concerns being deceived.
- But the true trauma is the impact of the realization that they have chased illusions that the Web can construct before our eyes. These illusions involve the search for perfect love, the love we have always desired, and along with love, the possibility of easily obtaining money.
Many questions arise from these examples, and the answers are not immediate.
Probably, the central question is: what happens to our identity when digital takes over reality?
Matteo Fumagalli, psychologist and psychotherapist of the Istituto di Psicosomatica Integrata (psicosomaticaintegrata.it) and expert member of the Associazione Nazionale Dipendenze Tecnologiche, G.A.P. e Cyberbullismo (dipendenze.com).
Bibliography
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