Media and Technology in Counseling: Emerging Practices and Ethical Considerations in Response to COVID-19

COVID-19 has ushered in a new chapter of counseling in the United States and throughout the world. Counselors’ responses to the pandemic have been fundamentally reshaped by universal elements of the information age, including high-speed internet, smartphones, and computerbased technologies such as synchronous meeting software and collaboration tools. Now, clinicians can use technology to ally with clients, deliver psychoeducational media, and open new categories of intervention and engagement that alter the size, shape, and availability of the “counseling room” by extending it into a virtual space. The immediate investment in information technology demanded by the pandemic highlights an increasing need to deepen clinicians’ awareness of the psychology of cyberspace, the clinical applications of technological capabilities, and the use of synchronous online video counseling, all of which can directly increase quality of care, strengthen the therapeutic bond, and improve clinical outcomes. This manuscript explores the pairing of technology and counseling, outlining an open, integrative approach to counseling with updated practice and ethical competence. Properly conceived and combined, technical innovation and advanced counseling strategies developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic will lead to updated practices of technology-assisted counseling that offer a new modality of care as fundamental and as potentially impactful as talk therapy was over a century ago