Digital culture and art therapy

This essay outlines the relevance of digital culture to art therapy, including native skills and activities that art therapists must grasp to become culturally competent with increasing numbers of clients. Because digital media use has expanded into daily life, the effects can be seen in routine communication and behaviors as well as influences in our language and thought processes. Children, youth, and adults are affected as 'computer commons' affiliation has increased for the general population of American society. Art therapists use digital media, both as tools of professional practice such as email, archiving, research, personal creativity, networking, and advertising practices, and as clinical tools including photography, animation, video, digital tablets, and augmented-reality software for therapeutic processes and outcomes. The author draws attention to digital divides previously identified in art therapy that illustrate ambivalence toward this media, including perceptions of traditional versus synthetic materials use, affordability and access issues, and a paucity of graduate education opportunities for adaptation and skill-building. Multicultural lenses of generational evolution, reactionary bias against technology, perils of colonized economy divides, and extreme responses including blind resistance or gullible adaptation to new media all provide arguments for art therapists to build ongoing competencies in and comprehension of computer technologies. Research and education can evolve to support art therapists' informed and developmental learning with digital media in order to remain contemporary and to participate in ever-expanding creative palettes and conscious human-technology interfaces.