I began my journey into a PhD program unsure about a particular direction for my research. I knew that I loved the ideas swirling around the future of mass communication, like AI, the Metaverse, virtual and augmented realities. I also knew that I love learning, exploring ideas and thinking critically about the way that dreams of the future and narratives of the past converge to make the present moment we're living in. Staying ahead of the curve is a skillset. You have to actively work to be an early adopter, which means being plugged into the special place where ideas become a reality. For me the process of earning a PhD is a recipe for making yourself a thought leader on a precise and nuanced topic. I began the program in 2020 with an openness to explore.

Embarking on the final stages of my scholarly journey I now have a pinpoint, the size of a speck, on an otherwise large canvas. Following a curiosity for psychology, I took classes in developmental psychology and psychopathology. You can't just take a few classes in psych and call yourself Freud. I knew that, but what I wanted and what I gained was a lexicon of terms that explain deep concepts of the human condition. In my development studies I learned about Ecological Systems Theory, and later that same theory would lead me to an overlap with media: The techno-subsystem of Ecological Systems. Eurika! A bridge between two works, one of media and one of psychology.

Later, in a course about kinetic art, I realized that the way people create and incorporate art into their lives is highly personal. Without art, the technology we interface with daily would be miserable. Steve Jobs knew that. The intersection of what a company like Apple does with technology, making it pretty, absolutely impacts the relationship with have with machines. Those machines are getting smarter, and starting to look and act more like humans. I thought about examples from scholarship about kids, media devices and how those relationships shape identity, personality, and value systems. 

Once I could see the intersectionality of these fields I realized I had found my area of study, my dissertation topic, and road forward. I leaned into media literacy and Joined the American Psychological Association's Division 46 on media, psychology and technology. I joined the Institute for Kids and Technology, and I leaned forward into digital media and it's future. 

After completing a focused study on Media Literacy, I found Media Psychology. Another familiar scholarly face immersed: Uses and Gratifications Theory. That took me farther into the literature to a whole field of study on digital media psychology where I found overlaps with mixed reality applications for acceptance and commitment therapy. Finally, and most recently I reached the farthest foci of my journey, the realm of cyberpsychology. This is the latest area of exploration for the topics that interest me most. This is also a newer field, with publications starting in the late 20th century, and most importantly, it's still being defined. The future of cyberpsychology lends itself to hypotheses in online identity formation, ethical and moral considerations for technology development, virtual and mixed realities, and the intersection of human-machine interaction.