Disconnect to Reconnect? Pathways Towards a Healthier Relationship with
Digital Technology

Abstract:

Digital technologies such as smartphones, laptops and smart watches enable an ever-present connectivity. This connectivity both empowers us and threatens our autonomy. On the one hand, digital technologies help us manage our everyday life and reach our personal goals. On the other hand, they divert our attention away from our primary activities, and exert pressure to be permanently online and permanently connected. This paradox creates an urgent challenge to balance connectivity and ‘disconnection’. Through her research, prof. dr. Mariek Vanden Abeele (imec-mict-UGent, Ghent University, Belgium) seeks for answers to this conundrum. How do individuals understand and practice digital well-being? Which constellations of person-, device- and context-specific factors contribute to digital well-being? How effective are interventions such as digital detoxes and screen monitoring apps? In this talk, Mariek explores the extant evidence to address what we can do to make our relationship with technology happier and healthier.

To receive the link to the event, please register by latest 16 November 2021 9:00am CET here:

Speaker

Mariek Vanden Abeele

Ghent University

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Mariek Vanden Abeele is Associate Professor in Digital Culture at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of Ghent University. She combines media psychological and media sociological perspectives to better understand the role that digital media use play in everyday life and society. Her research focuses on mobile media use, mobile communication and social relationships, problematic smartphone use and digital well-being, mobile media and childhood, and the social implications of health and fitness wearable use. Mariek is a recipient of an 2020 ERC Starting Grant on Digital Well-being and has received various awards for both her teaching and her research output. Her work has been published in leading journals in the field of Communication Sciences, such as Communication Theory, Mobile Media & Communication, New Media & Society and Media Psychology.