Disconnect2Reconnect · Disconnect2Reconnect? Understanding Well-Being in an Increasingly Digital Society
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-01-01 → 2023-08-07
- EU contribution
- €203,149
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Disconnect2Reconnect? Understanding Well-Being in an Increasingly Digital Society
Surrounded by the constant presence of digital technology, citizens of today are increasingly facing challenges in using digital media in a personally balanced way. How can people manage digital media use effectively with the continuous information flow over digital devices, where information is not only abundant but also complex? As ideas of controlled digital media use, such as ‘digital detoxes’, are increasingly being advertised in mainstream media and gaining public popularity, there is an urgent need for scholars to understand whether and how people’s management of their digital media use may enhance their well-being. The EU-funded Disconnect2Reconnect project develops a theory-driven model to study the mechanisms of digital media use, strategies of disconnecting from digital media, and consequences for well-being among digital media users. It contributes to developing recommendations, tailored guidelines and educational interventions, and gives insight into how digital media can be used in a way that enhances well-being. The Disconnect2Reconnect project examines the short-term and long-term relationships between people’s digital media uses, disconnection behaviors, and well-being. The project also considers questions around digital inequality, and examines how digital skills shape people’s use of disconnection strategies, and how this relates to the benefits they derive from such disconnection. The project uses a multi-method approach and combines mobile experience sampling methods with panel surveys.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Mobile devices, and the ‘always on’ connectivity they enable via numerous social media services, are increasingly blamed for a decline in well-being among young people. In today’s ‘poly-social-media’ landscape where people often make use of multiple platforms for different purposes, the increasing pressure to check updates combined with an overload of information available can lead to increased emotional exhaustion and declines in physical health (e.g., sleep disturbance). Consequently, there is a growing trend of users desiring to disconnect from or to use social media more mindfully, but many struggle to do so effectively. While the idea of ‘digital detoxes’ is increasingly adverted in mainstream media and gaining public popularity, academic research is still in its infancy. This is problematic, as ‘social media fatigue’ – a state whereby people suffer from mental exhaustion after experiencing technological, informative and communicative overloads through their participation different social media platforms – might become a serious mental health issue due to the ubiquitous nature of mobile and social media. Fostering citizen’s digital competences and skills to effectively navigate digital society highly fits with the aims and scope of the European Commission’s 21st century ‘Digital Competence Framework’. Using a multi-method approach, combining mobile experience sampling methods and panel surveys, this action develops and tests a theory-driven model to explain the antecedents of social media fatigue, the strategies people use to disconnect from social media, and the short-term and long-term consequences for subjective well-being among young adults. The resulting Disconnect2Reconnect model advances theory and methods, offers actionable recommendations to practitioners on mindful media use in an increasingly digital society, and is fundamental for developing tailored guidelines and educational interventions to promote healthy media use and digital well-being.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITAT ZURICH · ZurichCoordinatorSwitzerland
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/891281
- https://communication.dsi.uzh.ch/project/disconnect2reconnect-understanding-well-being-in-an-increasingly-digital-society/
Data: CORDIS, © European Union