Once celebrated for connecting people and circulating ideas, social media are facing mounting criticisms about their anticompetitive reach, addictive design, and toxicity to democracy. Known cumulatively as the "techlash," journalists, users, and politicians are asking social media platforms to account for being too big, too engaging, and too unruly. In the age of the techlash, strategies to regulate how platforms operate technically, economically, and legally, are often stacked against individual tactics to manage the effects of social media by disconnecting from them. These disconnection practices-from restricting screen time and detoxing from device use to deleting apps and accounts-often reinforce rather than confront the ways social media organize attention, everyday life, and society. Reckoning with Social Media challenges the prevailing critique of social media that pits small gestures against big changes, that either celebrates personal transformation or champions structural reformation. This edited volume reframes evaluative claims about disconnection practices as either restorative or reformative of current social media systems by beginning where other studies conclude: the ambivalence, commodification, and complicity of separating from social media.
Aleena Chia is lecturer of media, communications, and cultural studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her previous appointments include assistant professor at the School of Communication in Simon Fraser University. She researches cultures of creativity in digital game production, social media disconnection, and Silicon Valley spiritual subcultures. Her work has been published in the Internet Policy Review, Journal of Fandom Studies, Television and New Media, and American Behavioral Scientist. Ana Jorge is a research coordinator at CICANT and associate professor at Lusofona University. Ana is a Media and Cultural Studies scholar and researches children, youth and media, audiences, celebrity culture, and digital culture. Her scholarship appears in journals such as Celebrity Studies, Social Media and Society, Journal of Children and Media, and European Journal of Cultural Studies. Tero Karppi is associate professor at the University of Toronto. He teaches at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology and the Faculty of Information. He is the author of Disconnect: Facebook's Affective Bonds (University of Minnesota Press 2018) and his research has been published in journals such as Theory, Culture & Society, Social Media + Society, and New Media & Society.
Introduction: Reckoning with Social Media in the Pandemic Denouement Aleena Chia, Ana Jorge, and Tero Karppi Defining Disconnection Why Disconnecting Matters? Towards a Critical Research Agenda on Online Disconnection Magdalena Kania-Lundholm The Ontological Insecurity of Disconnecting: A Theory of Echolocation and the Self Annette N. Markham Desiring Disconnection 'Hey! I'm back after a 24h #DigitalDetox!': Influencers posing disconnection Ana Jorge and Marco Pedroni Privacy, energy, time and moments stolen: Social media experiences pushing towards disconnection Trine Syvertsen and Brita Ytre-Arne Quitting Digital Culture: Rethinking Agency in a Beyond-Choice Ontology Zeena Feldman Designing Disconnection Ethics and Experimentation in The Light Phone and Google Digital Wellbeing Aleena Chia and Alex Beattie From digital detox to 24/365 disconnection: between dependency tactics and resistance strategies in Brazil Marianna Ferreira Jorge and Julia Salgado Delaying Disconnection Overcoming Forced Disconnection: Disentangling the Professional and the Personal in Pandemic Times Christoffer Bagger and Stine Lomborg Disconnecting on Two Wheels: Bike touring, leisure and reimagining networks Pedro Ferreira and Airi Lampinen Analogue Nostalgia: Examining Critiques of Social Media Clara Wieghorst
