Relational self-care: reconceptualizing the role of digital well-being through pandemic screen time self-tracking
Topics: Digital Geographies
, Feminist Geographies
, Media and Communication
Keywords: self-care, digital well-being, politics of care, relationality, attention
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 61
Authors:
Jacob Saindon, University of Kentucky
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Abstract
This paper engages with feminist digital and political geographies as well as speculative and radical theories of care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017; Hobart & Kneese 2020) to examine how normative practices of digital well-being and screen time self-tracking entrench non-relational modes of self-care.
I draw upon interviews with 18 Kentuckians, aged 18-34, regarding their experiences in pandemic lockdown with their digital devices. In particular, I examine how participants extrapolated prescriptions for self-care from their experiences with their self-tracking metrics and engagements with news and social media platforms during the pandemic and George Floyd protests.
The paper argues that screen time metrics, through their simultaneous claims to objectivity and truthfulness and limited visualizations and functionality, limit users and their horizons of possibility (Amoore 2013). This circumscription of possibility, I argue, compounds participants’ senses of reduced spatio-temporal immobility, with direct consequences for notions and practices of digital wellness. In this respect, I position participants’ relationships with pandemic screen time self-tracking as cruelly optimistic (Berlant 2011), and an obstacle to the development of more transformative, situated, and relational modes of care.
I conclude by connecting the constrained relationality and spatio-temporalities of users’ pandemic experiences to the development of a reconceptualized digital well-being, one which can implement attentional self-care as part of a multi-scalar politics of care.
Relational self-care: reconceptualizing the role of digital well-being through pandemic screen time self-tracking
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
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