The Cyber Effect

I
am sitting on a hard, cold bench. My back is against a concrete wall in a police briefing room somewhere in South Los Angelesâin a neighborhood known for gangs, crime, poverty, urban decay, and, twenty years ago, brutal race riots. It is 4:45 in the morning. I haven't eaten anything for hours. Not a wise move. My stomach is churning, a combination of hunger, jet lag, and apprehension.

LAPD lieutenant Andrea Grossman begins the police briefingâand explains how, in an hour or so, a special task force will be arresting the biggest human trafficker in the United States and one of California's “Most Wanted.” About forty law-enforcement officers will be involved in the operation, a team of experienced professionals pulled from the FBI, Homeland Security, Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC), the California State Police, and the LAPD. And then there's me, the one person at the briefing without a gun. Only sworn officers are allowed to carry them.

Back in Ireland, where I'm from, it is rainy. The spring drags on, gray and wet. I think about my cozy office in Dublin, my library, my desktop computer, and my quiet academic life. Except my life is not so quiet lately. Over the past decade, while establishing myself as a forensic cyberpsychologist, I have traveled the world to meet with other experts
in my field, conducted research, worked with law enforcement, attended conferences, and given hundreds of talks, seminars, workshops, and presentations. The field of cyberpsychology is new and still emerging, and each year it draws more interest. The sense of urgency is escalating. I think most of us who work on the front lines can feel it, along with a profound sense of loss of control. Our lives are changing, and human behavior is evolving. As a cyberbehavioral scientist, I believe this is because people behave differently when they are interacting with technology than they do in the face-to-face real world.

Some changes have occurred so quickly that it has become difficult to tell the difference between passing trends, still evolving behavior, and something that's already become an acceptable social norm. In this book, to make things simpler, I will be referring to face-to-face reality as “real life” or the “real world” to set it apart from cyberspace, although I am fully aware that what happens there can be as real as anything. New norms created online can migrate to real life. So what happens in the virtual world affects the real world, and vice versa.

Whenever I am asked to talk about my work, I start off with the formal definition. Cyberpsychology is “the study of the impact of emerging technology on human behavior.” It's not just a case of being online or offline;
cyber
refers to anything digital, anything techâfrom Bluetooth to driverless cars. That means I study human interactions with technology and digital media, mobile and networked devices, gaming, virtual reality, artificial intelligence (A.I.), intelligence amplification (I.A.)âanything from cellphones to cyborgs. But mostly I concentrate on Internet psychology. If something qualifies as “technology” and has the potential to impact or change human behavior, I want to look at howâand consider why.

Time is not on my side. My work is always in a race with technology. This presents a major challenge to how academics normally study a phenomenon. As scientists, how can we possibly keep pace with the tech changes we are seeing in our lives, in our behavior, and in our society? A good longitudinal study, which looks at human behavior over time and allows a researcher to make conclusive scientific statements, can take anywhere from a couple of years to a few decades. That's several lifetimes in tech-terms. And given what I've seen already, particularly
the new norms that are rapidly being created due to an accelerated form of socialization that I call
cyber-socialization
, I don't think we should sit around waiting for answers.

The good news: Some aspects of Internet psychology have been studied since the 1990s and are well known and documented. The effect of anonymity onlineâor perceived anonymityâis one example. It's the modern-day equivalent of that superhero power invisibility. The subject of some fascinating studies across many disciplines, anonymity has an impact that cannot be underestimated. It also fuels
online disinhibition
, another important contributor to other effects. I have been involved in a dozen different research silos, and have studied everything from organized cybercrime to cyberchondria, health-anxiety facilitated and amplified by doing online medical searches, and the one thing I have observed over and over again is that human behavior is often amplified and accelerated online by what I believe to be an almost predictable mathematical multiplier, the
cyber effect
, the E = mc
²of this century.

Altruism, for example, is amplified onlineâwhich means that people can be more generous and giving in cyberspace than they are face-to-face. We see this phenomenon in the extraordinary growth of nonprofit crowdfunding online. Another known effect of cyberspace is that people can be more trusting of others they encounter online, and can disclose information more quickly. This leads to faster friendships and quicker intimacy, but it also means that people tend to feel safe when they aren't. Due to
online disinhibition effect
(ODE), individuals can be bolder, less inhibited, and judgment-impaired. Almost as if they were drunk. And in this less-inhibited state, like-minded people can find one another instantly and easily, under a cloak of anonymity, which results in another effect:
online syndication
. I will explain these cyber constructs and “effects” in detail in this book, and they are described in a glossary of terms, but ultimately they will be fully understood and evaluated only by empirical scienceâby undertaking intensive experimental studies, manipulating variables, and identifying cause and effect. But cyber isn't a lab with white mice and levers. We are talking about a complex matrix of human data that is manifested in a virtual context. It involves painstaking digital forensic and cyberbehavioral detail.

There is an expression, “
God is in the details,” that resonates with my work.
Forensic science
is the study of the physical evidence at a crime sceneâfibers or bodily fluids or fingerprints. In TV terms, think
CSI. Forensic psychology
is the study of the behavioral evidence left behind at the crime scene, what we like to call “the blood spatter of the mind.” Then there's my area,
forensic cyberpsychology
, which focuses on the cyberbehavioral evidence of a crime scene, or, as I like to think of it, the
cyber footprint
. It was the great forensics pioneer Edmond Locard, sometimes called “the Sherlock Holmes of France,” whose exchange principle put forth the basic premise of forensic science: “Every contact leaves a trace.” (Your fingerprints are now all over this book.) This is just as true in cyberspace. Almost everything we do online generates digital exhaust, digital dust, and digital prints. This digital evidence can help law enforcement investigate criminal behavior, whether the crimes take place in cyberspace, across the world, or down the street.

It was the pursuit of that kind of data that led me to Los Angeles. I was conducting a study with the Specialists Group at INTERPOL, the world's largest international police organization, about youth risk-taking online and, hoping to accumulate data, I got in touch with Lt. Grossman at the LAPD. We had met previously at a conference at the INTERPOL headquarters in Lyon, France. I'd been impressed by Lt. Grossman and her work in the field of cybercrime. When she agreed to see me and discuss the INTERPOL project, I flew to California to meet her team.

Police can be very skeptical about academics descending from their ivory tower who are hungry for data but have very little understanding of the nitty-gritty nature of frontline law enforcement. So I was pleased that Lt. Grossman asked if I'd be interested in getting some work experience with the LAPD.

“Of course,” I replied, assuming that she was talking about a type of internship at her police precinct, where I would sit in on meetings, but she had something a little more proactive in mind.

“How would you like to suit up and come on an operation?” she asked, going on to explain that the identity and location of a trafficker of child abuse images, videos, and other materials had been determined
by using cyber-forensics. Lt. Grossman thought this would interest me, as an academic observer.

“Uhâ¦yes,” I stammered. “You mean, suit up, like S.W.A.T.? When?”

“Tonight.”

My work involves the scientific investigation of behavior onlineâfrom the prediction of developing behavior, such as
cyber juvenile delinquency
(hacking), to profiling typologies for evolutions of criminal behavior (cyberstalking). I explore machine intelligence solutions to big-data problems (such as technology-facilitated human trafficking) and
intelligence amplification
(I.A.) solutions to child-related online sex offending. This is all demanding work that I have been trained to do and have learned to handle. But real-world frontline police work? S.W.A.T. takedowns? I have very little experience of that.

In my hotel room, later that evening, I dressed in blackâthe forgettable, blend-into-the-woodwork uniform of forensic experts worldwide. (Why hemorrhage data at fifty paces by wearing a pale-pink blouse to demonstrate that you're feeling vulnerable, a splash of yellow for optimism, or a pattern to make you appear interesting?) Then, at 3:30 a.m., I grabbed a bottle of water, went downstairs to the lobby, and told the reception desk that a group of LAPD officers would be coming soon to pick me up.

The concierge looked at me skeptically.

“I've done nothing wrong,” I assured him. “I've been asked to observe a mission. That's all.”

That's how I wound up here, before dawn, in an LAPD briefing room. The weather in L.A. is always agreeable, so they tell me, but it is unexpectedly chilly this morning. Fortunately I have a bulletproof vest and a steel ballistic helmet to keep me warm.

“Resistance is always expected,” the briefing officer says. “If an officer goes down, step over them. Just keep moving forward. If you go down, stay down.”

I glance at the briefing book in my lap. It includes directions to the nearest hospital.
If you go down, stay downâ¦.

Faced with uncertaintyâand potential dangerâI adopt an attitude that has served me well in life: Hope for the best, expect the worst. And
that turns out to be a pretty good motto for almost any endeavor, whether you are living in the real world or online. Each time we join a new social network, download an app, pay a bill online, buy our children a new digital device, or meet someone on a cyber-dating site, we are faced with a steep cyber learning curve and can quickly encounter new challenges and risks. Hiking up a sheer mountain trail to enjoy a breathtaking view is one thing. Jumping off the summit to paraglide down is another. Some risks are worth taking. Others are just unnecessary. Which is which? That is what this book is about.

“Let's roll!” Lt. Grossman calls out. Twenty chairs slide back at once. Boots stomp. Guns clank. I reach for my helmet and pause for a second and think, not for the first time that morning,
How on earth did I get here?

Where Am I?

We are living through a unique period of human history, an intense period of flux, change, and disruption that may never be repeated. A seismic shift in living and thinking is taking place due to the rapid and pervasive introduction of new technologies to daily life, which has changed the way we communicate, work, shop, socialize, and do almost everything else. This moment in time is not unlike the Enlightenment (1650â1800), when there were also great shifts in awareness, knowledge, and technology, accompanied by great societal changes.

Enlightenment delivers new freedoms. And the new freedoms allowed online are heady, thrilling, and enticing to billions of people. The concept of absolute freedom is central to the ideology of the Internet. But can this freedom corrupt? And can absolute freedom corrupt absolutely? More freedom for the individual means less control for society.

Some changes have been seductive and incrementalâand have caused psychological norms to creep into new places. You barely noticed until, one day, suddenly you see a baby in a stroller being handed an expensive smartphone to play with or you see a toddler expertly swipe a touchscreen with a chubby finger. Or maybe you walk into a shopping mall and notice a group of kids huddled together solemnly looking at their devicesâand not one another. So near and yet so far!

Or something might have hit you closer to home, like an increasingly distant and uncomfortable feeling in your relationship or marriage because your partner is spending hours alone with his or her computerâchatting and cyber-flirting with new friends worldwide, bingeing on Netflix, consumed by online shopping, or obsessed by the plethora of pornography sites so readily available now online.

The Internet is omnipresent, always delivering rich, stimulating contentâall day, all night, always on. Between the years 2000 and 2015,
the number of people with access to the Internet increased almost sevenfoldâfrom 6.5 percent to 43 percent of the global population. At the Davos Summit in January 2016, it was announced that more than 3.2 billion people are now online. In less than ten years the number of cellphone subscriptions has grown from a little more than 2 billion in 2005 to more than 7 billion in 2015.
The number of hours people spend on mobile phones is escalating rapidly each year, jumping an average of 65 percent in a two-year period. The same study found that mobile phone users
checked their devices more than fifteen hundred times a week, and
there are several apps that will count that for you, if you need a little help managing your habit.

The number of minutes per day that you spend checking your phone and scrolling through social media posts is not insignificant. To a researcher like me, who studies human behavior at the minute-by-minute levelâin digital dust and footprintsâthese minutes indicate how a person is livingâwhat they do and don't do. This is called
pattern of life analysis
, or how people live online. In the home, these minutes are not spent doing other thingsâreading a book to a child, playing with a toddler on the floor, chatting with your family at the dinner table, talking with your partner before bed. When you are checking your phone or spending time surfing websites, you are effectively in a different environment. You have gone somewhere else. You are not present in real-world terms.

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