Digital Detox: The Politics of Disconnecting

by Trine Syvertsen

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.

Contents:
Chapter 1. Introduction: Do we have a problem?
Chapter 2. What is the problem? Intensifying the quest for attention
Chapter 3. You are the problem! Everybody online and self-regulation
Chapter 4. Managing the problem. Disconnection and detox
Chapter 5. The problem is personal - and social: Making sense of digital detox

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

168 pages, Paperback

Published March 30, 2020

About the author

Trine Syvertsen is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Oslo. She has published extensively on topics of online media, television, media policy and media history in international journals. Syvertsen is author of several books including Media Resistance: Dislike, Protest, Abstention (Palgrave, 2017) and co-author of The Media Welfare State (University of Michigan Press, 2014). She is currently chairing a four year research project on invasive media and digital detox (Digitox 2019–2023). Trine Syvertsen has held a range of academic leadership positions, serves on editorial boards, contributes to public debates and is an experienced public speaker.

Reviews

[Hiko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Çox yeni olmasa da, indiyədək elədiyim bəzi şeylərin düzgün olduğunu bir daha təsdiqlədi mənim üçün.

Digital minimalism > Digital detox.

Motivation for detox: 3 Ps: Presence, productivity, privacy.

Offline communication is more authentic and online media can distract people from genuine presence. But online can also help for offline socializing.

Netlix's CEO: largest competitor is not other video providers, but sleep.

Net is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. It is cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking and superficial learning.

Detoxer family: We read books (hard copy). Time seems slower, more coherent and focused.

[Vivi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I expected more but still it was a different perspective from what I usually experience and made me reconsider my views which always gets me to overhype a book.
Im convinced if the title was more clear of what the book is about like(dumb example) “unromanticising digital detox” because digital detox just sounds generally like pro digital detox and this book is so much more then that. I’d say it’s a critique of how we engage in tech and it can be quite liberating to take some of the anxiety away from it.
I’m still not sure what I believe, I’m not sure what the author would incline more on either but it made me consider in alternative.
At times it sounds like the stuff older parents say “it’s not that serious”, “stop overthinking it” and I’m in a mental state where I’m on their side lol.
Only thing I was waiting for is to consider the links between mental health because (projecting) I want answers for my own questions and my issue with the tech is when I’m in a depressive episode and it makes it worse. I have a feeling the author would say it’s not the tech that’s the problem and that’s only the symptom, similar to what my mom would say 😅. On the comments of most people reporting issues with media because they don’t interact with loved ones as much and saying people who live alone are less impacted I had the exact opposite experience but I agree that in most cases of ignoring each other over tech is not that big of an issue and I never found it hard to avoid phones when others are present.

Also it mentioned the book “Amusing ourselves to death” by Neil Postman and it critiques it as tech doomerisim (don’t remember the exact wording they used) and found it funny I also rated that book 5 starts. I stand by it, I love in depth critiques but yeah reading it after this one I would have been much more critical of the one sided argument.

Pretty Norway focused on examples because the author is a lecturer of media studies in Norway

[Tadici · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty good and concise read on the Digital Detox phenomenon of the last decade or two. It’s effectively situated within the ever popular movement of self-improvement and self-help which fits nicely into the modern neoliberal philosophy of extreme individualism and self-reliance. We have yet to really politicize the intrusive and often negative influences modern technology and media forces into our lives. And therefore we’re stuck in a limbo of blaming the individual for not taking care of themselves or their elderly parents or children while simultaneously just accepting new tech taking up space in every inch of our lives for purposes of profit and data accumulation as the expected price of “technological innovation”?

[Abeer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved how it delved into the background of things. I believe the ending had a lot more potential, and the author could've provided more solid steps to now pursue a digital detox. Regardless, it was a good read.

[M.R.K M.R.K · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I read this book, I was already doing most of the instructions towards SNS and Digital detoxing. I am very grateful to reaffirming some concepts with this book. It made me realize some new concepts that I did not thought of before. It is an easy read and great way to start your Online Detoxing trip!