The Digital Backlash and the Paradoxes of Disconnection

Abstract

“The digital backlash” covers a range of social and cultural practices of digital disconnection, as well as critiques of the impact of digital technologies and platforms in the world today. Through calls for more restrictive, or more “mindful”, uses of digital technologies, “mobile-free” schools, work regulations along the lines of a “right to disconnect” framework, the rise of new entrepreneurs in the growing “digital detox” industry, as well as critiques of the role of Big Tech – society is deliberating on the stakes of the digital for the human condition. The digital backlash can best be described as a kind of zeitgeist: a moment in history in which the norms about digital behaviour, consumption, and habits are being questioned, and where the early hype of the digital era beginning in the 1990s is being challenged. This edited volume offers a collection of empirical and theoretical analyses of the digital backlash as it manifests across national, institutional, and everyday contexts. The contributions span analyses of discourses and public debates around disconnection and the so-called techlash, the ambiguities and tensions of digital connectivity for work, labour, and productivity, the reordering of family and school life along with the perceived negative consequences of digital connectivity for the well-being of children and young people, as well as the playful and sometimes subversive recreational practices that people reinvent in search of authenticity as a response to all things digital. A distinct focus is placed on social practices and dilemmas related to new ways that people adapt to, appropriate, and push back against digital technologies in everyday life.