Zoomed out: digital media use and depersonalization experiences during the COVID-19 lockdown

Abstract

Depersonalisation is a common dissociative experience characterised by distressing feelings of being detached or ‘estranged’ from one’s self and body and/or the world. The COVID-19 pandemic forcing millions of people to socially distance themselves from others and to change their lifestyle habits. We have conducted an online study of 622 participants worldwide to investigate the relationship between digital media-based activities, distal social interactions and peoples’ sense of self during the lockdown as contrasted with before the pandemic. We found that increased use of digital media-based activities and online social e-meetings correlated with higher feelings of depersonalisation. We also found that the participants reporting higher experiences of depersonalisation, also reported enhanced vividness of negative emotions (as opposed to positive emotions). Finally, participants who reported that lockdown influenced their life to a greater extent had higher occurrences of depersonalisation experiences. Our findings may help to address key questions regarding well-being during a lockdown, in the general population. Our study points to potential risks related to overly sedentary, and hyper-digitalised lifestyle habits that may induce feelings of living in one’s ‘head’ (mind), disconnected from one’s body, self and the world.

I overthink—Therefore I am not: An active inference account of altered sense of self and agency in depersonalisation disorder

“…By contrast, more basic and ‘humble’, body- and movement-based abilities (e.g., manual workings, physical exercise, etc.) will be positively correlated with low levels of depersonalisation ( Ciaunica et al, 2022b ). Again, experimental tests of these ideas will have to be carefully assessed in order to exclude potential confounding effects of demand characteristics ( Lush, Botan, & Scott, 2020 ).…”

Emotional Contagion: Research on the Influencing Factors of Social Media Users' Negative Emotional Communication During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Higher deindividualization experiences lead to increased negative emotional interactions. Overly sedentary, digital lifestyle habits may induce an individual's sense of disconnection from the body, self, and world (Ciaunica et al, 2022). Consequently, this study suggests that the communication of negative emotions may be influenced by the variability of individuals' self-presentation on social media and multiple elements of group relationships, social events, and emotional characteristics.…”

Felling like a Robot: Depersonalisation and Social Attitudes Towards Artificial Bodies

“…Recent studies suggest a distribution of such experiences also in the general population with varying degrees (Yang et al 2022) and transient DP has been reported for 34 -70% in the general population (Hunter et al 2017). People with DP report experiencing a blurring of self-other-boundaries, difficulties in relating to others, and altered somatosensory perceptions (Salami et al 2022;Ciaunica et al 2022).…”

“…Humans are highly social beings, constantly interacting with others from early life (Rochat 2004, Hamilton 2020Ciaunica et al 2022). In recent years, technological advances made possible novel types of interactions between humans and artificial embodied systems, such as robots, opening new challenges on our current understanding of what human sociality is ( Hortensius & Cross, 2018;van de Poel et al, 2023).…”

“…This hypothesis is drawn from a developmental account of social psychology, suggesting that the ability to perceive similarities between oneself and others is fundamental to social cognition, and that humans have naturally evolved to identify self-other resemblances in those around them (Meltzoff, 2007). Crucially, the "like-me" hypothesis aligns with relational notions of the self, and it suggests that various processes involved in human-robot interactions, including attitudes towards robots, might be affected by the human's sense of self (Andersen & Chen, 2002;Ciaunica et al, 2021). These observations highlight the involvement of exposure to robot-related stimuli in shaping peoples' attitudes towards robots.…”