Jocelyn Brewer
Part time Cyberpsychologist, full time Human
Profile
Jocelyn is a Sydney-based registered psychologist with a special interest in the psychology of technology and staying human in a digital age. She has been studying digital wellbeing for over a decade.
Jocelyn has a warm, humorous, and engaging presentation style, and the ability to translate scientific research into practical perspectives. She is regularly called upon to comment in the media on a range of issues and presents across Australia to various audiences about the impacts of technology and improving digital wellbeing.
Current work:
Jocelyn is a member of Sydney University’s Cyberpsychology Research group where she is completing her Masters of Applied Science (Cyberpsychology) exploring the role of self-control and mindfulness in the prevention of Problematic Smartphone Use.
Jocelyn is a member of the Australian Psychological Society and is an expert listed with their media referral service. She is regularly called up to provide commentary on a range of modern psychological, socio-cultural, and relationship issues. Jocelyn also has a solid volume of her own writing which has appeared in Quartz, Medium, Daily Life, and Junkee.
Jocelyn is the creator and founder of Digital Nutrition™, an award-winning, fear-free framework for considering how we might create a healthy, sustainable relationship with technology and become more conscious consumers of online information.
Jocelyn runs a small private psychology practice in Sydney – where she sees adolescents, families, and adults for a variety of psychological conditions, including problematic uses of social media and video games. Jocelyn is trained in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and uses a range of creative, practical, and dynamic techniques to inspire positive change
Previous experience:
Jocelyn is a qualified teacher and registered psychologist – she spent 16 years working in NSW state schools across Sydney as both a high school teacher and school counselor.
As well as presenting, Jocelyn’s communication skills are enlisted by brands for expert commentary and media spokesperson duties. She has represented Old El Paso, HCF, SocietyOne, McAfee, Lenovo, and Microsoft and worked with agencies including Thinkerbell, three monkeys Zeno (London), Map & Page, and ZiNG Communications.
Her 2009 psychology thesis explored the impacts of increasing access to Internet-enabled laptops on a cohort of grade 10 boys and the emerging area of Problematic Internet Use (PIU), colloquially known as ‘Internet Addiction’.
Digital Nutrition was awarded the NSW Premier’s Teacher Scholarship for Health Education in 2014, and Jocelyn traveled to the USA to further explore the issues relating to healthy technology habits and digital citizenship.
Jocelyn delivered a TEDx talk in 2015 on Digital Nutrition and the quest to uncover digital ‘superfoods’ and has steadily increased her profile as a thought leader in the digital wellbeing space.
In 2019 Jocelyn gave keynote addresses at EduTechAU, Happiness and It’s Causes, Future Schools and Mental Health In Schools events, as well as appearing on ABC TV’s QandA panel.
Media
Feedback
The presentations surpassed my expectations and I liked how Jocelyn linked and understanding of the brain, an individualised, more complex overview of how young people use technology and ideas for how young people can make good decisions about their technology use and parents can also support and model these.
Jocelyn was well informed of external contributing factors that impact upon teenagers in our modern society such as smartphones and apps and I was pleased to hear about this. I liked the Emotions Coaching tools used to plan ahead for the challenges teenagers come across as well. The workshop was engaging and useful. I was glad to attend.
