Catherine Knibbs
Catherine Knibbs is a pioneering psychotherapist, researcher, and author specialising in cybertrauma—the psychological effects of online experiences on children and young people. W...
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Who are you?
So I'm Catherine Nibs. I am a mom and I'm a human behaviour technologist and ethicist. I'm a psychotherapist and I work with children and adults. I am a functional health practitioner. I'm a researcher and an author, and I believe a micro influencer on social media.
What is your background?
So I have a background in the military, so I'm a trained engineer. I am a mechanical, electrical, and electronic engineer by trade. I have worked in and around the IT industry, which means computing, data protection, cybersecurity, and I've done that since 1998. And I am a psychotherapist working with children, mainly with trauma. And I'm a researcher looking at how children interact with technology. And I've been doing that since 2010 and I have been writing books for the last five years.
What is “cyber trauma,” and how does it differ from traditional trauma?
So cyber trauma comes from a place of personal experience where my children were exposed to some content on a flip phone around 2010, and I started to look into what kinds of things occur through an internet ready device. So cyber trauma itself is in short any trauma that can occur with through or mediated by an internet ready device. And that can be perpetuated by or created by a human being or now artificial intelligence programmes. And it differs to real trauma in the very fact that it occurs online and in the digital space. And that means that we can revisit it, we can reread it, and it can occur again in the future through what might be downloading and uploading some of the content.