The Psychological Effects of Screens on the Young Psyche
This issue was addressed in a recent zoom presentation given at the New York C.G. Jung Foundation by San Francisco Jungian psychologist, Robert Tyminski. He traces the psychological effects of video games to research conducted in the mid 1950’s. He suggested that technology was the perfect vehicle to convey and display repressed, unconscious feelings. In his words: “Technology tends to repress all irrational psychic factors.” Video games are an ideal electronic landscape that attracts twice as many boys than girls. The speaker notes that 50% of girls have never played a video game or a “collaborator” game. The same trends regarding daily and weekly playing of computer games also hold, with boys spending two more hours a week than girls on games.
These numbers and ratios are not surprising. Nor is the primary psychological pull of video games. The speaker quotes various authorities regarding the psychological attraction of the games, including that games are an invitation to magical thinking. They offer a universe obedient to itself, a host of tantalizing rituals, an illusion of companionship, intermittent reinforcement, and opportunities for role-playing. Psychologically, heavy “gaming,” that can seem magical with a numinous effect, can also contribute to “digital melancholy” that can play a compensatory role in a world that seems to have an abundance of digital melancholy.
The instructor suggests that this is another, more recent example of the media being the message where attention is commodity to a much greater degree that Marshall McLuhan imagined in the 1960s. Dr. Tyminski suggests that contemporary video games interrupt parenting, distort a person’s self-image and can even change a person’s psyche. And he suggests that the disruption of Covid will likely make the psychological effects more severe. As it is, we know excessive playing of video games can stunt growth, increase impulsive behaviors such as bullying and stealing. Extra time on the screen seems to lead to extra distress.
Pew has conducted research that shows teens are, not surprisingly, online now more than they were seven years ago. Of course, You Tube, Instagram, mobile phones and video games provide, in the instructor’s words, an ongoing current of images that can serve as a prompt, bringing up elements from the unconscious. Tyminski refers to this torrent of images as an “archetypal activation” and influence such behaviors as eating disorders in teen girls. And archetypal imagery can drive social trends. The central psychological issue is that individual players suffer a psychic imbalance with the screen. And screens are also a spectator sport. Worldwide, 200 million people apparently are “watching,” not playing video games, perhaps another sign of addictive behavior.
By definition video games involve narratives that are usually “chasing extraordinary heroes,” including Tricksters. This is a far cry from the modest, archetypal figures of Harry Potter and Huck Finn. Worldwide, one hundred million play the point and shoot game “League of Legends” each month, drawn by the violent and brutal commentary and high kill ratio.
All this violence can occur while pop-up game ads entice players to earn money by participating in marketing schemes. According to reports in the NYT Magazine, some players have earned as much as $100K a year. In 2020 the video game industry generated three times the revenue of the music industry and four times that of films. It is a business and potentially dangerous to the young psyche.
The central psychological problem that especially young video gamers face is the leaching of magical thinking into the real world. The American Academy of Pediatrics has suggested there be no screens at meal time and no smart phones in bedrooms. The American Psychiatric Association has, according to our instructor, found no observable benefit from playing video games that tend to decrease empathy and increase aggression.
As early as 1954 Carl Jung recognized that technology tended to repress all irrational psychic factors. Other researchers with access to multiple screens have gone farther, suggesting video games can negatively affect intimacy and offer an illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Other researchers have found that video games can produce a “digital melancholy” in the user and an array of disassociations.
Gamers can feel locked out, as if from a house, with a longing to get inside but lacking a key. Players are often anxious and boys can have a feeling of emasculation, homosexuality or being cut off from aspects of the feminine in their psyche.
That media can dominate the individual and upend the psyche was captured by Marshall McLuhan in the 1960’s when he said “The medium is the message,” understanding that attention is commodity. In the half a century or so since McLuhan’s remarks, screens have become ubiquitous enough to have a profound psychological effect.
The instructor referred to research on Covid that suggested the psychological effects of this disease will over time have greater psychological impact than purely medical because the screen time during this enforced home detention was substantially magnified. The hours at the screen were greatly increased as were stress levels among those studied. The evidence suggests that such screen uses, particularly with gaming, can cause more impulsive behavior, stunt growth, and lead to conduct disorders such as bullying, stealing and the like. In teen girls this disruption is often marked by eating disorders. Research notes that four hours of screen time per day can lead to psychological issues.
Dr. Tyminski goes to some length to explore the psychological hold these games have on players and suggests the themes, character, as well as movement, flow and denouement of the games are so compelling to impressionable players, not just because the games are fast, colorful, and often deadly, but because they have an archetypal well-spring that feeds the collective unconscious.
According to the instructor it is no accident that globally so many people, especially the young, are attracted to, and become addicted to, video games, where technology extends and disrupts the senses and where the auditory is secondary to the visual. This is a kind of mass experiment in digital technology that, according to Tyminski, is carried out with the support of neuroscientists. It is no accident that video games, especially the “point and shoot games,” deftly explore the shadow side of consciousness and are apocalyptic in tone and energy. And this is the plan. Video games occupy the archetypal zone that feeds possession and manipulation with the image of the Trickster frequently on display. In short, the unconscious is feeding the game industry. Is it also feeding an archetypal panic?
The instructor noted there was an upsurge in apocalyptic imagery in painting and sculpture in the 1500s and on. He discussed Albrecht Durer’s “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” (1498), Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgement” (1541), Pieter Bruegel’s “The Triumph of Death (1562) and other painting full of archetypal energy, suggesting destruction and chaos, and a civilization being overrun. This is the world of the Grim Reaper that is associated with Durer’s Four Horsemen that also can suggests a passage to another life for those who escape death. This archetype has been memorialized in the ancient and modern art of the tattoo.
The teacher was not suggesting this archetypal energy shows up in its raw, unfettered and ancient form. On the contrary, video games tend to degrade symbols while widening the field of magical thinking. As noted, games narrow an appreciation of the “other,” reinforce “splitting,” and increase risks, particularly for boys and men, who get caught up in this unrestrictive field. Moreover, games are likely to spread restrictive definitions of the masculine and feminine at a time these issues are fraught, often due to the political overlay.
The heart of most video games is apocalyptic imagery: fire, survival, the numinous, war, and mayhem. It might mean crossing the River Styx, passing through Hades, and witnessing a world on fire. Then perhaps an explosion and a manipulation of light. A video game will oblige and replicate the archetypal, opening the gateway to what Jung called the “collective unconscious.”
The class made clear that, while video games can provide an impassioned zone of play and theater, there are important psychological issues at work. The evidence is very clear that the games in question are designed with teen psychology in mind and can have harmful effects. Tyminski, citing the American Medical Association and other sources, notes that teen suicides have increased since games have become entrenched in society. Research from October 2019 suggests that between 2007–2017 suicides of youth 10–24 years old increased 56%. This number has been trending higher since 2013. Obviously, this doesn’t prove a one-to-one correspondence between video games and the suicides; but it is a red flag. And the danger is clear. Video games exist and thrive in that psychological zone of primarily the young who are developing and most impressionable.
Playing in a psychic underground has its costs.
(Robert Tyminski’s “Male Alienation at the Crossroads of Identity, Culture and Cyberspace,” provides a fuller discussion of these and related issues (Routledge).
