Technology should help us, not to enslave us.

Technology should help us to solve our problems, not to replace life.

Bigger parts of our lives are taken by technology.

On one side it is good because our possibilities for education, work, and entertainment
exponentially broaden. Just using our smartphones, we have access to all human knowledge under our fingers. Many of our problems can be solved faster and cheaper. Social media algorithms help everyone to find their niche of like-minded people.
Like with any technological revolution, computers and the internet made the world smaller and gave us more time to do more. Like steam, the revolution freed many people from manual work at factories, automation and connectivity are making us freer and our work more valuable. But freedom comes with responsibility. If you do not use it wisely, it can also be toxic.

The bad impact of technology on our daily lives is that we risk being overstimulated by shallow experiences, too much content to process, a declining attention span, and a decline in social skills. Every skill needs practice, so no wonder, that people who are glued to a screen for most of the day may have difficulties talking to a real human. Engineers are developing better tools for virtual reality, so that maybe in the future we can embed ourselves in a virtual world.

What could be the consequence on our mental health?

Social isolation, digital overstimulation with light, and information, and lack of downtime are challenging for us. All these may be quite overwhelming. We evolved in nature, among people with days limited to the timeframe of sunrise and sunset.

What do we do then if we have a mental health problem?

Many people in the Western world go to a psychotherapist. We do not solve our problems quickly but dive into long psychotherapy, self-pity, and analysis. Why is that? I think many people do it because they lack real good connections with people in their lives. We are so busy with our digital tools that we lose the skills to develop and maintain good friendships with people. Of course, to be a good friend of someone else, you need first to be a good friend of yourself.

As it is easier to buy than to do things ourselves, we also outsource friendship to professional providers. We go to a psychotherapist, so there is someone who will listen to us. Everyone wants to be heard. But to be heard in real life you need to work on yourself and your relations with other people so that you can become a person with whom someone wants to spend time. So we go to psychotherapists, talk with them, and come back to live in our digital world.

Why not reverse it?

At Psync, we believe that technology should serve us to solve our problems so that we can enjoy real, non-digital life. It should not replace life. People who are not happy should be given tools to make themselves stronger and able to develop interesting life by themselves, not to become a full-time consumer of technological advances, such as games and social media.

All state-of-the-art knowledge of contemporary psychology is available on the internet. Want to know how to develop better habits? Want to know how to deal with toxic people? Want to know how to manage your anger? This all has been discussed very widely. Not only psychology but also neuroscience research provides more and more recommendations for supplementation and lifestyle, which can help us to avoid mistakes with a negative impact on our well-being (for example, if you have problems with sleeping – maybe you should limit your exposure to blue light? If you feel very weak – maybe you need to reconsider your diet).

The recipe for a happy life (also confirmed with hard scientific data) is not very complicated and requires good:

• Rest
• Nutrition
• Good balance between sedentary & active time
• Something interesting to do, objectives aligned with who you are.
• People who have a positive impact on you

A big role in achieving this is our ability to:

• Introspect,
• Set goals,
• Develop good habits,
• Eliminate bad habits.

This is why we believe that virtual psychologists are designed to facilitate introspection, goal-setting settings and a change of perspective to more productive is a great alternative to many hours of psychotherapy.

We believe that psychology should help us to strive in real life. Psychologists in a Pocket can help you develop a great habit of journaling, tracking your goals, and changing negative thinking patterns. It is not a magic pill, because real changes cannot be made without your strong effort. However, we believe this is an incredible opportunity for our society to use technology to spread the message of how we can use psychology to live a happier life and to help people with this journey with a smartphone app. In the end, if we use our smartphones, it should only be to help us with real-life goals and aspirations, it should never be a goal by itself.