Abstract
The first edition of this book appeared in 1999, and since then, the landscape of the Internet, and how it is inhabited, has changed vastly. The need for a new edition goes without saying, and accordingly, Patricia Wallace has comprehensively overhauled the book, dealing with new developments, such as Facebook and Twitter, and multiplayer online games and mobile apps while also adding three new chapters on growing up online, the psychology of online gaming and the ‘privacy paradox’, involving oscillation between ostensible care for online privacy and a contradictory disregard of it. She also takes up here the question of ‘big data’ and the ‘right to be forgotten’. Many new examples are woven into and used to illustrate this or that aspect of psychological behaviour in cyberspace. Wallace begins the book with the online persona and the psychology of impression formation, and the dynamics of group interaction online, showing how certain features of group psychology manifest themselves differently online. She then moves on to the psychology of online aggression, whether this is displayed in vituperative emails, flaming or cyberstalking, and then the opposites of this in uses of the net for kindling and sustaining friendships and romances and for acting altruistically, as, for instance, in fundraising, volunteering, campaigning or helping with personal problems. One interesting chapter examines the ways in which gender affects online activity, and it is here that Wallace discusses cybersex and Internet pornography. The penultimate chapter investigates the Internet as a time sink, given 24/7 connectedness and how this disrupts the work–life balance. It is here as well that she deals with the controversial topic of Internet addiction. In the final chapter, Wallace looks at the Internet as a work in progress, one that can be developed and modified for the better by its users as well as its designers, and offers certain conjectures and guesses as to how the Internet will evolve and change. The book is to be commended for its clarity of style and breadth of reference. It will be widely read and cited.