In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the potential role that digital technologies can play in promoting well-being. Smartphones, wearable devices, virtual/augmented reality, social media, and the internet provide a wealth of useful tools and resources to support psychological interventions that facilitate positive emotions, resilience, personal growth, creativity, and social connectedness.
Understanding the full extent of this potential, however, requires an interdisciplinary approach that integrates the scientific principles of well-being into the design of e-experiences that foster positive change. Positive Technology is an emergent field within human-computer interaction that seeks to understand how interactive technologies can be used in evidence-based well-being interventions. It’s focus of analysis is two-fold: at the theoretical level, Positive Technology aims to develop conceptual frameworks and models for understanding how computers can be effectively used to help individuals achieve greater well-being.
At the methodological and applied level, Positive Technology is concerned with the design, development, and validation of digital experiences that promote positive change through pleasure, flow, meaning, competence, and positive relationships.
This Research Topic aims to explore the potential of interactive technology for well-being applications by focusing on the following issues:
- methodological issues in designing and evaluating positive technologies;
- technology-based strategies for promoting positive emotions and fostering eudaimonic and self-actualizing experiences;
- computer-based applications in stress prevention, monitoring, and management;
- online positive interventions;
- interactive technologies and positive change;
- digital tools & strategies for enhancing individual and team creativity;
- videogames and serious games for mental health prevention and promotion;
- technology and spirituality;
- positive technologies for healthy ageing;
- technology-based interventions to promote life skills and social connectedness;
- self-help applications to learn affective regulation strategies (at their multiple levels: e.g., interpersonal, intrapersonal; automatic, explicit; covert, overt).
Keywords: human-media interaction, positive psychology interventions, cyberpsychology, mental health
