VIRTUALLY YOU by Elias Aboujaoude

A virulent danger lurks in our homes, in our offices and—very likely—in our pockets. It may rewire our brains and erect a barrier between us and our cultural heritage (says Nicholas Carr in The Shallows). It may play havoc with our personal relationships and our sense of identity (cautions Sherry Turkle in Alone Together).

It may even nudge us into full-fledged pathological behavior, either creating new disorders or bringing out abnormalities that already lie deep within us. So warns Elias Aboujaoude—a psychiatrist and the director of Stanford University's Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Clinic located in Silicon Valley, the world's technological heart—author of Virtually You, one of this year's most thought-provoking jeremiads.

The danger, according to a swelling chorus of authors, is the Inter­net, or the way we use the Internet, or the way we have stopped doing a lot of things we used to do before the Internet took over our lives. "While the Internet is a force for good in many arenas," writes Aboujaoude, "it also has the power to interfere with our home lives, our romantic relationships, our careers, our parenting abilities—and our very concept of who we are."

From the opening paragraphs of my review, newly published in "Christian Century" magazine and on its website. Read the rest of the review by clicking here.