Do you pay for your drive-through latte with your iPhone app while streaming Spotify through your Bluetooth speakers and double-checking your GPS for traffic notifications? Or are you the stalwart who prefers to park and go inside to order your coffee because drive-throughs seem so impersonal and face-to-face communication is an endangered art? Whether you’re the early adopter who embraces technology usage in every aspect of your life or the skeptical laggard who argues that we would all be better off if we were less plugged in, you can’t escape the question of whether (or how) to integrate technology into your life and work.

For those of us who are counselors, our technology habits in our personal lives likely influence how we use technology in our professional lives, including in our relationships with colleagues and clients. Yet it can be difficult to remain self-aware about our habits and choices surrounding technology use. Constant advances in new technologies ensure that as soon as we have a solid grasp on current technology, a new innovation bursts onto the market and changes everything. This is lifelong learning to the extreme.

Why does it matter which technologies we use and how? If technology is a means to an end — be it increased efficiency, convenience, communication, transparency or organization — then it matters whether those ends are achieved. Email enables us to communicate from the convenience of our smartphones, but not when the messages pile up too fast for us to read and reply to them. Cell phones make us accessible 24/7 from any location, but only until our signal gets dropped. PowerPoint helps us stay on track in meetings, but not when the presenter falls back on reading slide after slide of black bullet point text from a plain white background. When technology fails — when it does not get us to the desired end — we can end up feeling lost, frustrated or even betrayed.

The downsides of technology can arise from our own abuse of technology or be inherent in the technology itself. We see the human tendency to abuse technology every time a co-worker consistently replies to all when they think they are replying to one. Or when we sit in a meeting that is filled with the incessant tapping of keyboard keys as colleagues refuse to unplug long enough to attend a one-hour meeting. Or, perhaps worst of all, when we sit silently while a lunch companion stares at a screen rather than paying attention to the human being seated directly across from them. At times, we may catch ourselves being less present in the company of others, distracted by social media, email or notifications. Some of the ways people use software may even be categorized as addictive or criminal.

In addition to these human failings, other pitfalls are inherent to the technologies themselves. Important emails wind up in spam folders, text messages never make it to their intended audience, and software crashes a moment before we hit save, just as we are entering the final case note of the day. Just as we all benefit from technology, we also struggle to navigate its challenges.

As counselors, our choices around technology use are laden with our professional responsibilities. Federal laws dictate what we can do and say in online and digital formats. Our social media must be monitored carefully to avoid the creation of dual relationships or unintentional self-disclosure to clients. Our behaviors must be models of healthy boundaries in front of those we serve. Ethical standards exist to help guide our professional behaviors, but as counselors, we are confronted with an ever-changing technology landscape that affects our personal and professional lives and the lives of our clients.

In this shifting landscape, how do counselors make decisions about which products to use and which to avoid? How can we leverage technology to make us more efficient and effective without allowing technology to steal the spotlight away from the real work we are doing with clients? We must keep returning to the question: “What is the end goal, and how can technology help us get there?”

Each column in this new monthly series for CT Online will explore this question in the context of a different type of mobile and online software technology that counselors use.

Future column topics will include:

• Email
• Productivity software
• Communication software
• Site blocking software
• Record-keeping software
• Online counseling platforms
• Chat and texting
• Mobile devices

 

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Adria S. Dunbar is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy and Human Development at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. She has more than 15 years of experience with both efficient and inefficient technology in school settings, private practice and counselor education. Contact her at adria.dunbar@ncsu.edu.

 

Beth A. Vincent is an assistant professor at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina, in counselor education. She is a counselor educator, licensed school counselor and former career counselor who is driven to learn everything there is to know about innovative productivity software to help counselors be their most present selves. Contact her at evincent@campbell.edu.

 

Our Instagram is @techncounselor.

 

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.