6: What Does It Mean to Be Human in a Digital Age?

Logged on today? Rolled out of bed and reached for the phone? Mustered a number of clicks of a mouse or trackpad? Ever felt psychologically pained by a lack of Wi-Fi? Concerned about your screen time? Trying to address your digital addictions? Anxious about the monopolisation, morals and ethics of Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and other Big Tech companies? Chasing the next digital hit? These are just some of the everyday queries we ask of ourselves and the digital culture that we inhabit. It is estimated that three billion people are now connected to the Internet. There are, undeniably, huge digital divides that still exist between rich and poor people. Having said that, digital participation has grown exponentially across the globe (Graham, Hjorth, & Lehdonvirta, 2017). And many of us hold a view that we already know the digital world. It envelops every aspect of our daily lives. We are rarely far away from the flickering demands of a screen or the beckoning notification of a smart device. There is always an Alexa or Siri listening in, a newsfeed anticipating our next online shop, a ping announcing the latest message on a thread or a social media bust up waiting to explode in the wings. We can feel the digital world, its part of us. Yet, we are lectured by politicians and therapists about the damaging effects of digital participation on our mental health. We worry about children and young people's digital usage, with the older ones of us predicting major negative fall out. But we all still fall in with our digital routines. Our online communities are populated by others who share our politics and choice of music, shopping and film genres. And the online world has taken on even greater significance during the global Covid-19 pandemic. The digital world divides us into different technological classes: those that are fully plugged in and those that are not. And yet we continue to tap away, download, upload, click, open, close and reopen. And like any dominant cultural practice – one that we think we know already – it is incumbent upon us to revisit our assumptions with a critical perspective.