Unraveling the science behind digital well-being and digital disconnection
Digital connectivity greatly benefits our autonomy: Digital media enable us to connect to and interact with persons, contents and services independent of time and place constraints. Paradoxically, however, these benefits of ubiquitous connectivity come with inescapable drawbacks: We feel they spend too much time online, have difficulty focusing under the many digital distractions, and suffer from being ‘always on’. Digital Well-being has emerged as a novel concept that captures this paradox. It refers to the delicate balance that individuals seek between these benefits and drawbacks, in a culture of ubiquitous connectivity.
DISCONNECT is a research project funded by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (grant agreement nr. 950635) that aims to unravel the science behind digital well-being, so that society can better support individuals on their quest towards a healthier relationship with digital media.
What is digital well-being and why does it matter?
Digital well-being as a concept refers to the subjective experience of having found an optimal balance between the benefits and drawbacks of digital connectivity in your everyday life. Unfortunately, people often experience a (temporary) disbalance: They feel they waste time scrolling on social media, struggle with the pressure to be ‘always on’ and are frustrated by the many digital distractions that make them lose focus. Research increasingly indicates that these digital well-being experiences should not be overlooked, as they may negatively affect human cognitions, feelings and behaviors. To date, however, the evidence base is limited. DISCONNECT responds to the urgent societal need for research on these and other experiences, to unravel the specific pathways that dynamically link digital media use, subjective media experiences and well-being outcomes. For instance, findings from the DISCONNECT project show that feeling ‘always-on’ has a fatiguing effect on individuals that lasts for over 6-8 hours, which indicates that the 24/7 lifestyle might contribute to the development of more severe mental health conditions such as burnout. Similarly, we found that mindlessly scrolling on social media, an activity that many individuals consider a waste of time, elicits guilt in individuals, which affects how well people feel at the end of their day.
Why is digital well-being so difficult to achieve?
At first glance, it may seem easy to achieve digital well-being. But our project shows there are many different obstacles that people encounter. Some of these obstacles are individual. For example, people want to spend less time online, but find that they lack self-control and therefore give into temptation. Other obstacles are technological: Technologies are designed to lure our attention, reduce our self-control and make their use enjoyable. And then there are all the social and contextual obstacles: People may feel pressured by their environment to be online, or a workplace might demand that workers use a smartphone. Every individual encounters a unique set of individual, technological and social-contextual obstacles (and strengths!) on their quest towards digital well-being. The DISCONNECT project sheds light on how these take form on the ground, and are themselves situated against broader social inequalities and constraints. Our ethnography, for example, shows how individuals with caregiving responsibilities – more often women and parents – carry a larger burden when it comes to ‘digital household management’. By examining how digital well-being unfolds in the everyday life of individuals, project DISCONNECT hopes to better understand what makes achieving a healthy digital diet so difficult.
What about digital disconnection?
Society witnesses a growing trend of ‘digital disconnection’, with individuals increasingly setting limits to their digital connectivity with the aim of achieving a healthier balance between the benefits and drawbacks of ubiquitous connectivity. The industry has both responded and contributed to this trend through the development of a wide variety of digital disconnection products and services, ranging from apps that set limits to screen time over digital detox interventions to the re-commercialization of ‘dumb’ phones. To date, however, the effectiveness of these interventions is ill-understood. Moreover, research problematizes digital disconnection for emphasizing a neoliberal discourse of individualized responsibility and celebrating a productivity logic, without questioning how it may reproduce existing inequalities in society. DISCONNECT seeks to critically examine digital disconnection, and what it can mean for the (digital) well-being of individuals.
What are DISCONNECT’s research objectives?
The overall aim of DISCONNECT is to understand the science behind digital well-being by examining how the culture of ubiquitous connectivity impacts individual lives and society. The project aims to answer three research questions:
- How do individuals understand and practice digital wellbeing, and how are they influenced by discourse on digital well-being and disconnection?
- How do psychological, technological and social-contextual factors shape momentary experiences of digital wellbeing, and how do these in turn affect health and well-being?
- What are the implications of digital disconnection for individuals and society?