Social media and smartphones are criticised for being addictive, destroying personal relationships, undermining productivity, and invading privacy. In this book, Trine Syvertsen explores the phenomenon of digital detox: users taking a break from digital media or adopting measures to limit smartphone and social media use. Based on studies, documents, media texts and interviews with media users, Syvertsen discusses how media industries intensify the quest for attention, how companies and governments team up to get everybody online, and how the main responsibility for managing online risks and problems are placed on the users' shoulders. She provides a rich account of how users reduce their online engagement through time-limitations, restrictions on smartphone use, productivity apps, and use of analogue media. Syvertsen shows how digital detoxing has much in common with other forms of self-help such as mindfulness, decluttering and simple living and places digital detox within a culture of self-optimisation. But digital detox is also about sustaining face-to-face conversations, better work-life-balance, a deeper connection with nature and more meaningful interpersonal relationships. With a wealth of examples, analyses and stories, Digital Detox is a valuable guide to why digital detox and disconnection has become
a topic, how it is practised, what it says about the state of media industries
and how people express resistance in the 21st century.

Trine Syvertsen; Laurel Lefkow

Syvertsen, Trine, author

Bingley: Emerald Publishing

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

SocietyNow, Unabridged, 2020

Bingley, UK, 2020

2, 20200330

1, 2020

Obscured text on back cover due to sticker attached.

1 online resource (x, 153 pages)
Against a backdrop of increasingly intrusive technologies, Trine Syvertsen explores the digital detox phenomenon and the politics of disconnection from invasive media. With a wealth of examples, the book demonstrates how self-regulation online is practiced and delves into how it has also become an expression of resistance in the 21st century
Contains bibliographical references (pages 125-148) and index
Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on April 06, 2020)
Introduction: Do we have a problem? -- What is the problem? Intensifying the quest for attention -- You are the problem! Everybody online and self-regulation -- Managing the problem: disconnection and detox -- The problem is personal, and social: making sense of digital detox

2023-10-09