This week’s session asked us to reflect on our daily habits and think about how new media has been the cause of society’s ‘digital addiction’ (Syvertsen, Enli, 2020).  

Thursday’s practical session required us to take ten minutes to do ‘absolutely nothing’; this was incredibly insightful for discovering where my subconscious wandered to. Specifically, throughout this exercise I counted 4-6 times in which my mind felt a compulsion to ‘check my phone’ to figure out / or plan for something in the future. Thus, resonating with how “media technologies are not mere instrumental tools for communication” as they impact the way we are “sensing, being present in, and making sense of the world” (Paasonen, 2020). 

In contrast, part two of Thursday’s session forced us to be creative with old forms of media, such as paper, stickers, plasticine etc. Generally, Arts and crafts always make me feel nostalgic, as it reminds me of my childhood; reiterating the bittersweetness of ‘pining for a lost time’ (Routledge, 2015).Hence I felt gravitated towards creating a paper ‘chatterbox’, like the ones I used to make as a kid’. I found it reassuring that when given a task, I was still able to concentrate without distraction, particularly from my mobile phone; thus, it made me critically analyse and reflect on this week’s reading “Digital Detox: Media resistance and the promise of authenticity”. The reading discusses the large amount of fear associated with the digital world, and how it has led to “states of terminal and chronic distraction” (Anderson, 2009; Hassan, 2012) and “digital dementia‟ (Syvertsen, Enli, 2020). 

 

Paasonen, S. (2020) Distracted Present, Golden Past? 2nd edn. Finland. Available at: https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/117/102.

Routledge, Clay. (2015) Nostalgia : A Psychological Resource. London: Taylor & Francis Group.

Syvertsen, T. & Enli, G. (2020) Digital detox: Media resistance and the promise of authenticity. Convergence (London, England). 26 (5-6), 1269–1283. doi:10.1177/1354856519847325.