Disciplining the Akratic user: Constructing digital (un) wellness

Abstract

Contemporary discourse around digital well-being tends to focus on self-control when it comes to “addicting” social media apps and digital devices. By acting on behalf of users, designers and engineers promote various self-regulating products and services in order for users to “fix” the distractible brains of typical users. This paper explores the role of the history of psychology on user-experience thinking and engineering and provides a critical genealogy of digital well-being discourse and persuasive technology. In particular, I expand on the role of dual-process models in human–computer interaction and health behavior change from the 1980s to today. By exploring the social construction of the distracted, impulsive, “primitive” animal brain (system 1), I find that it is this part of the mind that the engineer wishes to “treat,” via app design. In order to tame this “primitive” brain, researchers and engineers have turned to behavioral science, hoping to better structure user options and encourage users to manage their own time and normalize screen habits. I argue that normality discourses like this are founded upon ideas of time management and delay of gratification, whereas abnormality is tied to ideas of immediate gratification and time wasting. This dichotomy is not simply to enforce social norms around time wasting, but reinforces social and econoimc inequities. Therefore, unlike some other approaches to digital well-being, I urge future scholarship on the subject to examine the taken-for-granted social-cultural context, which will lead not only to a more politically nuanced understanding of the subject but may also lead to further discussions over how digital well-being could be conceived otherwise.

Digital well-being in an age of mobile connectivity: An introduction to the Special Issue

“…Understanding the potential harms of mobile connectivity as such social constructions resonates with the third article in this Special Issue, by Valasek (2022), who presents a critical, socio-cultural analysis of digital (un)wellness. This analysis illustrates how contemporary conceptions of what is normal-and therefore desirable-in terms of our relationship with digital technologies such as smartphones is heavily influenced by behaviorist thinking.…”

“…It also resonates with critical approaches to digital disconnection, although these approaches reveal that mindful use is not a miracle solution to problems of "overconnection," such as Baym et al's (2020) study on mindful scrolling. Valasek's (2022) analysis also reminds us to be attentive to moral-evaluative judgments here, which digital ethnographies reveal to be prevalent. For instance, Rosenberg and Vogelman-Natan's (2022) research reveals a (nostalgic) desire for a more mindful way of living, that individuals perceive to be jeopardized by the attention economy and therefore inspires them to "resist" by giving up mobile connectivity altogether.…”

“…It is likely that digital well-being has different connotations for different people of various backgrounds. As Valasek (2022) notes, we should be mindful of how digital well-being is constructed for those who are at a structural social and economic disadvantage. Second, how can people then attain digital wellbeing?…”

“…Second, how can people then attain digital wellbeing? While current literature often thinks of self-regulated disconnection as a remedy to the consequences of excessive and uncontrolled mobile media use, for socioeconomically and digitally disadvantaged populations other interventions may be more important for attaining digital well-being (Karsay & Vandenbosch, 2021;Valasek, 2022). Relatedly, motivated by digital inequality scholarship, research could focus on the digital skills that become ever more important to navigate and manage the increasingly complex digital information environment, and that can help prevent perceptions of overuse and overload (Gui et al, 2017;Hargittai & Micheli, 2019;Nguyen, 2021), thereby fostering digital well-being.…”

“…Digital well-being interventions such as digital detox apps, then, are legitimized as they become necessary tools that make up or compensate for our human deficiencies. However, Valasek (2022) argues, such a behaviorist, medicalized perspective on digital well-being can obscure its political dimensions, among others by obfuscating differences between (supposedly) "innate" deficiencies to control one's media use and persisting social and economic inequalities that explain losses of control, thereby reproducing the latter. As such, the author invites scholars to think beyond the mere idea of self-regulation as a solution to digital unwellness, and to consider the everyday structural purposes of technology that may act as social stratifiers and shape experiences of digital well-being.…”