Abstract
Disconnection studies tend to put agency at the center. The possibility of opting out tends to be framed as a strategic form of individual agency, associated with self-regulatory practices and acts of self-choice. This essay aims to question this well-established perspective in disconnection literature while contributing to the debate about disconnection fostered by Crosscurrents. The essay explores the role others play in the experience of individual media non-use. Even if indirectly, individual pursuits are not achieved alone or without the involvement of others. Still, the cultural narrative of the West tends to put the self at the center of his narrative, reinforcing the individualized dimension of the self in detriment of the social aspect of it. Framed as such, this led to another level of elaboration by linking the topic of disconnection to the field of disconnection studies itself. As in any scientific discipline, disconnection research is mediated by culture, and thus it tells something about the current moment. Problematizing the limits of connection involves accessing social imaginaries that shape the scope of the field that will offer another layer of arguments to our debate about the place of the other in disconnection studies.
The individual in a never-ending negotiation with the digital
This essay claims that others are essential enablers of individual disconnection. It contends that individual disconnection is integrated with social connections and while to disconnect may be a personal choice, and it is also a collaborative work. By doing it, the essay aims to contribute to the emerging debate about the inescapability of others – that is, techno-social limits and boundaries of disconnection (Bucher, 2020; Treré et al., 2020) – undertaken at Crosscurrents.
In the digital age, connectivity is associated with paradoxical experiences of liberation and imprisonment. The co-existence of both feelings demands constant negotiation and redefinition of rules and boundaries from the individual with oneself and others. This includes navigating onlife (Floridi, 2015) and managing strategies to limit it or, in a more radical stance, to avoid it.
The cultural shifts brought by the digital revolution contributed to change social structures, contexts, and roles. What once was a given set of rules, demarcated spaces and prescribed roles became an object of constant negotiation. The digital age reinforced the functional dependence on various technological systems and infrastructures, and increased ambiguous feelings among individuals who live in such hyper-connected societies. The perceived social advantages of digital self-empowerment, freedom, and liberation often co-exist with social costs and feelings of anxiety about being always on. This relates to the fact that due to processes of context collapse (Pagh, 2020), the transitions between activities and spheres of life are increasingly shrinking or even disappearing. The abolition of both external and internal demarcated spaces is well illustrated in the de-compartmentalized structure of work, which can be ever-present and can be performed anywhere and anytime, namely while one is transitioning from office to home or from professional to family roles. The pandemic has dramatically accelerated and reinforced these conditions.
Notwithstanding, a movement of people from media-saturated contexts to media disengagement can be observed, even if only temporarily, for those who overuse technology became synonymous with technology fatigue. This involves active work of limiting, avoiding, resisting, or disrupting use. These are demanding forms of non-use because connection seems to be the default mode in the digital era. In this sense, disconnection is not the opposite of connection, but a way of establishing boundaries for connectivity in digital life. It is a form of dynamic interaction between both shapes usage and non-usage. It happens even if as Lomborg observes, ‘individual disconnection is futile’ (Lomborg, 2020: 304). It is envisioned as an aspiration, even when making life logistically more, rather than less, difficult.
In the new millennium, the ‘disconnection momentum’ (Natale and Treré, 2020: 627) gained the attention of the field of media and communication. The growing interest in practices, attitudes, and discourses around the option of media non-use gave place to disconnection studies, a field interested in researching experiences and meanings given to disconnection in the context of the hyper-connected society.
An increasing body of work focus on disconnection at the collective level – that is, mainly as a critique to platform power, commercial and state surveillance, and claims for data privacy and algorithm transparency (e.g. Treré et al., 2020; Velkova and Kaun, 2019). In the digital age, no one can escape from a digital record. Personal information has become a product of collected, processed, stored, retrieved, bought and sold data as it is almost impossible to go online, walk in the street, take public transportation, pay with a credit card, or make a phone call without data being captured and thus surveilled (Manokha, 2018). Studies have highlighted what could be called invisible or new types of consequences produced by selective avoidance (John and Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015). Digital technologies in general train algorithms to automatically filter out unwanted dissonance and create tightly controlled content ecologies or filter capsules that may lead to further isolating worldviews from each other. To mobilize resistance against the platforms’ datafication and colonization of our lives as a collective critical endeavor is a claim expanding within disconnection studies.
Alongside this emerging approach, lies the more established perspective focusing on strategies and meanings given to media non-use at the individual level. In this case, strategies of non-use in daily life tend to be framed as a choice that might give a sense of more individual control over media and life. Identified as an individual option or a personal responsibility (Syvertsen, 2020), disconnection is primarily framed as a form of self-determination, self-regulation, and self-optimization. In this line of research, it is well established that the individual is at the center of the model of disconnection studies: media non-use as primarily individualistic labor set up in an individual framework.
This essay aims to further the questioning of this well-established perspective in the disconnection literature by exploring the role others play in the experience of individual media non-use. If disconnection is part of connection, we argue that individual disconnection takes place in the context of social connection. With this point of departure in mind, the paper contributes to the ongoing reflections that aim to move beyond the individualized individual (Bauman, 2001) and the self-regulatory society (Syvertsen, 2020) framework of the digital age recontextualizing individualism in social relationships. As Bucher (2020: 615) says: ‘The fact that we cannot escape others makes prioritizing the individual as the locus of voluntary disconnection seem naíve at best’. Even if indirectly, individuals’ pursuits are not achieved alone or without the involvement or help of others. Even if not acknowledged, no one truly acts alone, but the cultural narrative of the West tends to put the self at the center of his own narrative reinforcing the individualized individual dimension of the self in detriment of the social individual aspect of it. Framed as such, this led us to another level of elaboration in this essay by linking the topic of disconnection to the field of disconnection studies itself. As any scientific discipline, or human endeavor, disconnection research is mediated by culture and thus it tells us something about the current moment. Problematizing the limits of connection involves accessing social imaginaries and practices that shape the lenses and scope of the field that we consider will offer another layer of arguments to our debate about the place of the other in disconnection studies.
Looking for the other in the literature review
The ability to disconnect is what gives connections meaning. As Light (2014: 159) argues, ‘connection cannot exist without disconnection’. Practices of disconnection include avoiding digital devices (e.g. smartphones), limiting screen times or abstaining from using specific platforms (e.g. Facebook) or the choice of temporarily opting out, for instance in digital detox camps (Bucher, 2020).
Independently of the quantity, diversity, and intensity of disconnection practices one may adopt, and the subjective meanings associated to those practices, it is clear that the literature on disconnection and daily life tends to put agency at the center. The possibility of opting out, for whatever reasons, tends to be framed as an option controlled by the individual, that is, as a selective and strategic form of individual agency. Disconnection is associated with self-regulatory practices and acts of self-choice. That is, the locus of power is on the individual and on voluntary non-use.
As mentioned, we are interested in learning if and how the other is acknowledged and framed in disconnection studies, and specifically, if the empirical research signals the role of the other as an enabler of individual disconnection. This search was built upon an interpretative literature review (Eisenhart, 1998), a method that evolved from narrative analysis, considering that the researcher has an active and interpretative role when looking at different studies to elaborate a holistic picture on the topic (Hammersley, 2004). We used Hammersley’s (2004: 578) suggestions and considered this proposal to ‘stand-alone’ as an ‘interpretive review’, meaning that we aimed at reflecting upon what has been done about the role of others in disconnection practices. 1
By searching at the more established perspective of the literature focusing on strategies and meanings given to media non-use in daily life at the individual level, we explore the place and role of the other in disconnection studies by looking at research on two different dimensions of the self in daily life: public connection and private connection.
Disconnection as a political practice
Public and political engagement and news consumption have been theorized over time as civic practices that enact a sense of community and reinforce public connection (Heikkilä et al., 2010). Moreover, these internalized civic values (Martin, 2008) pursued by community-oriented individuals willing to deal with diverse perspectives on public issues, including those the individual was against, were seen as part of what meant being a good citizen.
This cultural framework is increasingly being disputed by a more individualistic and antagonistic citizen, less willing to compromise for a common ground or for perceived distant-seeming public matters with little connection with their own daily lives. In this context, the meaning of public connection and citizenship expanded to include closer and more personal concerns related to topics, spaces, and people (Palmer and Toff, 2020). Alongside a more individualized citizenship, there is one as an expression of negative bonds or a negative choice (Illouz, 2019). In times where consensus and compromise, as elements of a set of values reaffirming the importance of inclusion and community, are increasingly giving place to radicalization, inflexibility, and exclusion, disconnection is shaped by the will to exclude.
Research focusing on the use of social media, and the multiple continuous choices associated to it (what content to like, share and comment; with whom we aim to create online ties with and, on the contrary, do not want to interact anymore), illustrates well how the contours of connectivity are delimitated by what stays outside or by what one’s disconnects from.
In the cancel culture, John and Gal (2018: 2982) realize that political unfriending on Facebook is a way of ‘regulating the boundaries of the personal public sphere’. This call-out strategy aims to control who is inside one’s personal public sphere, contribute to political discussion, and who is kept outside. As a form of social exclusion, unfriending tells a story about how each individual manages the amount of political disagreement one is willing to or can tolerate through disconnection. It also serves as a tactic of both political repression and resistance (John and Gal, 2018; Natale and Treré, 2020).
In an age of growing political polarization, citizens increasingly and openly dislike their political opponents. People who are unable to deal with an opposed political perspective use the news to confirm and reinforce their existing beliefs and attitudes while blocking out new or challenging information or people (John and Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015; Stroud and Collier, 2018; Yang et al., 2017).
News avoidance has also been theorized as a practice of disinterest towards public matters, as an act of public disconnection, among individuals who feel less responsible for fulfilling the normative role of the good citizen. Woodstock (2014) explains news avoidance as a ‘cocooning strategy’ (p. 838) against discomfort produced by negative, depressing or sad news (Schrøder and Blach-Ørsten, 2016), or by political disenchantment with politics and journalism, as both are seen as part of a single, untrustworthy system. The crisis of media credibility is presented in the literature as a major explanatory factor of news avoidance, even if with a considerable variation on the country level (Newman et al., 2017: 40).
The role others play in an individual’s news avoidance practices is a research angle that tends to be absent from disconnection studies. Though not at the center of Palmer and Toff (2020) concern, the authors illustrate an exception found in the literature review by mentioning how others may play the role of assuring a news avoider a certain level of connection to politics and the media. When analyzing news habits, the authors came across the informational value of interpersonal sources. ‘They [interviewees] were confident that major events or particularly relevant news stories would “find them”’ (p. 1641) or ‘had a particular news consumer in their lives whom they trusted to inform them about current events’ (idem). Even if not acknowledged as such, these quotes show how the other plays a role of enabler for disconnecting, that is, how individual disconnection is embedded in social relationships. As said, this is rare material within disconnection studies. In fact, Palmer and Toff (2020: 1638) mention it: ‘The literature thus indicates that news consumption habits are profoundly shaped by social dynamics. The role that these social dynamics play (or do not play) in news avoiders’ relationships to news has not yet been empirically explored”.
Disconnection in the framing of wellbeing practices
According to the literature, interruption of technology use, such as a smartphone or social media, for a specific period is another, more private and individualistic, way of dealing with the costs of connectivity. High levels of stress and anxiety lead several people to want to slow down and switch off from the online world.
This particular way of disconnection offers an opportunity to access other social imaginaries in the digital age. In this sense, it may translate a wish to deal with time differently. The speeding up of communication related to technological innovation is one of the most measurable forms of acceleration – the temporal structure and the time regime of modern capitalist societies (Rosa, 2013) – associated to the deepening of mediatization (see, e.g. Figueiras, 2019; Jansson, 2018), which spawned a new temporality in the current high-speed society. In this context, disconnection is linked to the idea of both suspending time pressures and (re)gaining control over time.
Studies indicate that digital disconnection is a strategy followed when one aims to contemplating other forms of connection or reconnection to the physical world without technological mediations of any kind. Free from the pressure of digital technology, one can ‘experience a form of superior reconnection to a primordial state of nature’ (Natale and Treré, 2020: 628). If over-connectivity to digital technology is criticized for being toxic and intrusive, non-digital and offline media experiences in the digital era have acquired new meanings associated to more genuine, authentic forms of engagement and sociality, that is, increased interaction with others offline (Karlsen and Syvertsen, 2016; Light and Cassidy, 2014; Woodstock, 2014). Notwithstanding, Franks et al. (2018) found that disconnection can be beneficial to health while detrimental to social relationships, as they become increasingly bi-dimensional (online and offline at the same time).
Jorge (2019) pointed out that well-being is becoming more commodified as individuals stress the need and relevance of self-control concerning digital media use. In this sense, disconnection may be seen as an expression of a self-regulation society (Syvertsen et al., 2014) where collective responsibility was privatized under self-regulation practices, which need to be continuously negotiated by the individual. In addition, digital interruptions or sabbaticals, and specific tools provided by mobile media, such as smartphones or tablets, to measure time spent with technology, enhance the idea that users’ accountability is a private matter only, which exempts governments and tech companies from regulation.
Detox camps and apps can also be seen as examples of how disconnection, instead of a menace, became colonized by the neoliberal ideology. This helps to understand why Hesselberth (2018) argues that disconnection is not transformative but restorative of the informational capitalism that the culture of connectivity is part of (Figueiras, 2019; Couldry and Mejias, 2019). The sense of (self-)instability and vulnerability that over-connectivity leads one to serve the interests of capitalism.
In the context of private daily life, disconnection is mainly framed as a practice to manage individual anxiety and uncertainty related to a sense of powerlessness produced by media technology. Disconnection is framed as a coping mechanism (Kaun, 2021) to deal with what one cannot control. This is related to the idea of well-being and the self as a self-actualization, self-esteem, and self-care project. In this sense, the diverse modalities of disconnection at the individual’s disposable can be seen as playing a role in the self-work of the self. In turn, the role others play in disconnection practices in private daily life is a research angle that tends to be absent from empirical research. Disconnection studies revolve mainly around the individual and media non-use strategies are primarily constructed as an individualistic enterprise. As Kaun (2021: n/a) proposes, ‘Digital disconnection as distrust and partial non-use of social media reinforces this focus on individual choice and disconnection as a way to assert oneself in comparison to other individuals and social groups. It emerges not only as a coping strategy but also as a civic virtue. However, this virtue is merely based on individual responsibility that rarely fosters collective, community-based values’.
The burdens of the self in disconnection studies: final thoughts
This essay aimed at reinforcing the debate around the role others play in the experience of individual media non-use. With this point of departure in mind, the essay joins the questioning of the individualistic approach well established in the disconnection literature and offers a contribution to moving beyond the individual framework to recontextualizing individualism in social relationships.
The literature review used to illustrate our point indicated that the disconnection labor is primarily considered in isolation. Put it differently, the other tends to be absent from a narrative centered upon the individual or, when acknowledged, tend to take a backseat. In this case, it seems to be of secondary interest in the empirical research and constructed as a menace, a cause or a justification for disconnection. However, it is not researched as an enabler for disconnecting.
Independently of the quantity, diversity, and intensity of disconnection practices one may adopt, and the subjective meanings associated with those experiences, it is clear that the literature on disconnection and daily life tends to put agency at the center. The possibility of opting out, for whatever reasons, tends to be framed as a choice controlled by the individual, that is, as a selective and strategic form of individual agency. That is, the locus of power is on the individual and on voluntary non-use, which, in itself, is a matter for discussion as we also intended to introduce another level of elaboration in this essay by linking the topic of disconnection to the field of disconnection studies itself.
Disconnection studies as a narrative about the place of technology in individuals’ lives can be read as a portal to the core values of Western digital society, one that puts agency at the center and the locus of power on the individual. By acknowledging this, we look at disconnection studies as an expression of larger cultural shifts in Western societies beyond the digital frame.
Theorized as an individual voluntary non-use practice, the meaning of disconnection is a portal to a larger Western cultural narrative and social imaginaries. At the same time, this narrative reinforces what some authors, such as Treré (2021), call the reductionism of the universalism. This emphasis on the individual as the locus of voluntary disconnection tells a story about the more egalitarian and individualistic Western contexts, where individual agency is at the center of cultural narratives, and opting out is a choice led by the individual (Kaun, 2021; Kaun and Treré, 2018). In an age of entitlement, to disconnect is considered a right linked to individuality, personal fulfillment, self-actualization, and freedom.
If in the societies of the past (Bauman, 2001; Illouz, 2019), when certainty was a social structure and strong social and psychological knots linked individuals to each other, and the sense of community was strong and considered vital for anyone to face life, in contemporary individualistic societies social and psychological knots linking individuals have become increasingly loose. As Bauman (2001) argues, the social individual gave place to the individualized individual who is more self-oriented and self-driven. This sense of freedom grew together with the cultural legitimation of setting one’s needs and wants above anyone and anything else. This describes a sociological phenomenon where the non-formation of bonds emerges as a social practice (Illouz, 2019). In this context, economic and political models of bargaining, exchange, and equity have been increasingly defining the place of others in individuals’ lives, including close and intimate relationships. To this, Illouz (2007) calls the making of emotional capitalism.
Capitalist societies instigate the neoliberal ‘entrepreneurial-self’ (Bröckling, 2015), which requires the activation of the citizens by transferring some of the state and market responsibilities to individuals themselves. The ‘active citizen’ (Rosa et al., 2017: 7) resonates with the individualization process described by Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002). As risks and contradictions go on being socially produced, it is just the duty and the necessity to cope with them that are being individualized in a society where institutions are reconfiguring themselves and transferring some of their responsibilities to the citizens. Hence, collective responsibility was privatized under self-regulation practices, which need to be continuously negotiated by the individual.
In the digital age, with the erosion of certainty as a social structure (Illouz, 2019) and the consolidation of the individualized individual (Bauman, 2001), it seems that as the sense of uncertainty and unpredictability increases, the more cultural narratives of the West emerge which compensate the self by building a cultural narrative that revolves around a story of individual empowerment and control.
This helps to explain why the individual’s pursuit of self-realization is constructed mainly as achieved alone by disconnection studies, even if others who help achieving it are not acknowledged, or hidden behind a cultural narrative that puts agency at the center. In this sense, we contend that in order for one to disconnect, others need to be connected, and temporary measures must be negotiated with those who are guaranteeing and watching over what the disconnector has disconnected from. We content that individual disconnection is integrated in social connections and while to disconnect may be an individual choice, it is also a collaborative work.
This essay aimed to participate in the conversation fostered by Crosscurrents and contribute to bringing more nuance and complexity to disconnection studies. The essay contributes to the theoretical debate on the degree of agency that actors have in disconnecting by introducing a distinct facet about the inescapability of others (Bucher, 2020). By moving away from an individualistic agency approach, and as the other is still under-explored in disconnection studies, the essay also aimed to inspire new threads of research exploring the dynamics between individual choice and collaborative work. This reframing puts individual disconnection in a larger social context and asks for further research questions that shed more empirical light on the interpersonal dimension of individual disconnection. This suggests making the other more visible when researching disconnection practices by considering individual expression in social structures. Next to the narrative of disconnection as a self-awareness and self-control act, lies a different story that talks about the interplay between the individual and the community even in the hyper-individualized digital age.
