Digital Transformation and Well-Being

Introduction

The radical changes in the past have irreversibly affected human life and managed to call the period when it took place a revolution. These periods of change, known as industrial revolutions, have brought a new world order by differentiating business life, lifestyles, and all habits. Nowadays, this rapid change in digitalization gains more momentum than before and forces people to adapt to concepts that were not in their nature before. Although all developments contribute to improving life, their effects on human psychology are more complex than expected. Psychological states, which are the combined effect of more than one factor, show an interactive and complex structure so that the individual can say I feel good (Cohen & Sherman, 2014). For this reason, it is not possible to easily understand the concepts of human psychology such as well-being, personality, and emotion. Complex systems with interrelationships help to understand how difficult some concepts are, otherwise they have the potential to cause chaos.

Technology is not expected to affect everyone at the same rate, but it is a known fact that it somehow takes place in everyone's life. In today's metaverse developments, it is crucial to study and understand human behavior concerning technology, as the lines between cyberspace and reality are increasingly blurred. And the greater the overlap between individuals and machines, the greater the need to develop such disciplines as cyberpsychology. It is thought that the Internet has an effect on mental health in various aspects such as shortening the attention span, multitasking, technology addiction, exposure to fake information, bullying, loneliness, depression, or cheating (Lam & Peng, 2010). As a result, emerging research fields such as cyberpsychology aim to empower people to make the internet a safer and better place. Thus, there is a need for studies that bring together the internet and people in terms of controlled growth, and prevention of mental and physical harm (Lam & Peng, 2010). For this reason, the need for research, action plans, and strategies that connect people to the internet to prevent mental and physical harm by growing in a controlled way is increasing day by day. Guidance is invaluable at an early age when habits begin to develop and when school life is new.

For digital transformation to take place healthily, multidisciplinary perspectives examining the interaction between humans with technology and efforts to provide psychological well-being should be taken into account by decision-makers and global companies that have the power to shape society. Because the developments experienced produce serious outputs in both directions, positive and negative, it is necessary to ensure controlled progress in terms of human and social psychology (Korunovska & Spiekermann, 2019). Digital well-being concerns individuals’ subjective well-being in a social environment where digital media are omnipresent. A general framework is developed to integrate empirical research toward a cumulative science of the impacts of digital media use on well-being. It describes the nature of and connections between three pivotal constructs: digital practices, harms or benefits, and well-being (Büchi, 2021). Focusing on the complex relationships with digital applications, their harms and benefits, and dimensions of well-being, the concept explains the nature of the situation and the consequences of interaction.

By prioritizing descriptive validity and formal theory development, digital wellbeing studies have the potential to mediate positive increases in individual well-being outcomes with a certain regularity. While the structural rules of the digitalized society are shaped by public and private governance mechanisms such as competition policy (Just, 2018). Dominant digital intermediaries such as social media platforms also manage daily individual practices. Digitalization and interconnected technological innovations together determine the conditions under which social, political, and economic relations are carried out. In this respect, the subject also attracts the attention of institutions and organizations that conduct extensive research, such as the OECD, due to its power to influence the future (Van-Zanden et al., 2014). Aiming to challenge how policymakers and society as a whole think about progress, the institution notes that the results are still uncertain as it explores dimensions that are key to a better life. Depending on the steps to be taken, there are both risks and opportunities in areas such as work-life balance, social connections, governance, and civic engagement.