Disconnect to Reconnect? The Science Behind Digital Well-being and Digital Disconnection

Disconnect to Reconnect? The Science Behind Digital Well-being and Digital Disconnection

Mobile media support our autonomy by connecting us to persons, contents, and services independently of time and place constraints. At the same time, however, they challenge our autonomy: We face new struggles, decisions, and pressure in relation to whether, when and where we connect and disconnect. Digital well-being is a new concept that refers to how we subjectively experience these benefits and drawbacks. In this talk, Mariek Vanden Abeele presents different theoretical perspectives on digital well-being, and addresses critical questions in relation to how and why we should digitally disconnect.

This seminar is organized within the ICS Challenge 2022-2023 "Youth, Relationships and Psychological Well-Being" from the Institute for Culture and Society of the University of Navarra.

Speaker: Mariek M. P. Vanden Abeele (University of Ghent. PhD, U of Leuven) is Associate Professor in Digital Culture at imec-mict, Ghent University (Belgium). Mariek combines media psychological and media sociological perspectives to understand the role that digital media use play in everyday life and society. She currently works on a 2020 European Research Council Starting Grant project that aims at revealing the science behind digital wellbeing.