Nowhere to hide: Internet renders boundaries porous for psychologists and clients

Social media Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace have complicated the lives of psychologists, psychology professors and graduate students, as the personal becomes public—sometimes unintentionally, according to a symposium Friday at APA’s Annual Convention.

Psychological practitioners are finding that an increasing number of clients are Googling them to find out not only whether they are licensed but where they live, what their personal interests are and anything else that makes its way onto the Internet.

“It really raises the issue of if we’re allowed to have a personal life, and of course, the answer is yes,” said Jeffrey E. Barnett, PsyD, an independent practitioner in Maryland. However, he warned that “everything you put on the Web can be accessed....You can’t take it back, and that’s a big issue.”

Keren Lehavot, MA, presented findings from an exploratory survey to determine the online activity of graduate students in psychology. On the one hand, she said, these students find social media provide “relatively effortless socializing, both personally and professionally.” But on the other hand, these sites raise the possibility of personal information leaking unintentionally into psychologists’ professional lives. “The Internet has redefined the process of self-disclosure,” she said.

Lehavot found in her survey large percentages of psychology grad students maintain pages on Facebook and MySpace, and that many of these students do not restrict access to their pages. She also found many student psychotherapists have done Internet searches on their clients for such reasons as:

• Curiosity;
• To establish the “truth” of some information revealed during treatment;
• To gather information for clinical reasons.

Conversely, she noted that clients might also look up therapists:

• Out of curiosity;
• To establish their psychological credentials;
• Due to trust issues.

More information

July/August Monitor on Psychology
In narrowing the gap between our personal and professional lives, the Internet raises challenging ethical questions

March 2007 gradPSYCH
Cautiously post content to your personal Web site or blog

January 2008 gradPSYCH
Prizewinner explores the ethics of posting personal information on the Web