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Digital disconnection has emerged as a response to constant connectivity and the perceived harms to well-being that technology overuse may cause in a digital society. Despite the apparent conflict with expectations of constant availability, there has been limited research on the role of social norms in individuals' regulation of their digital media use. The present study applied a nuanced conceptualization of social norms—by differentiating referent groups (i.e., family, friends, and everyday contacts) as well as injunctive and descriptive norms—and examined the associations of disconnection and availability norms with disconnection behavior across two generations of digital media users. Drawing on an online survey based on a stratified population sample ( N = 1163), we found perceptions of injunctive disconnection norms to differ across generations, with younger digital media users perceiving digital disconnection but also availability to be more important to their social environment. This conflict of contradictory norms was also reflected in an interactional effect on own disconnection behavior in this group, where positive correlations between disconnections norms and behavior were countered by availability norms. Overall, our findings demonstrate the social complexity of the individual decision to (dis)connect and, on the societal level, that social norms of disconnection are in transition with disconnection behavior becoming and being perceived as more and more important.

Drawing from a cross-sectional survey ( N = 1000), this study examines (1) the extent to which Belgian adults experience digital well-being (i.e. perceive agency over and functional support from the use of digital media), (2) which digital disconnection strategies they use to limit connectivity, (3) how their use of these strategies relates to their digital well-being, and (4) whether different user groups can be identified in terms of digital well-being experiences. We find evidence for ambivalence in the relationship towards digital media. Popular disconnection strategies involve access restrictions. Those reporting less agency generally disconnect more. Lastly, a typology based on respondents' digital well-being scores reveals four clusters of indifferent, enthusiastic, ambivalent, and sceptical digital media users that differ in demographic, personality and media use/ownership characteristics. Collectively, this study gives insight into how digital well-being and digital disconnection are distributed, lifting the veil over who might be more susceptible to struggling with constant connectivity.

With the permeation of digital media into all spheres of life, individual-level efforts to manage information abundance and constant availability have become more common. To date, information on the prevalence of the motivations and strategies for such disconnection practices and how different sociodemographic groups experience digital disconnection is scarce. We surveyed a national sample of 1163 Swiss Internet users in November 2020. Thematic coding of open-text responses demonstrated people's understandings of "balanced digital media use" as primarily concerned with subjectively appropriate amounts of use, purposeful use, social connections, non-addiction, and time for "real life." Through principal components analysis, we provide a classification of the types of motivations people have for disconnecting and strategies people use to disconnect. Persistent age differences suggest that life-span approaches to studying digital disconnection are imperative. We formulate implications for disconnection research in the context of digital inequality and provide an outlook for evolving digital habits in future digital societies.

Although the ubiquitous connectivity afforded by mobile media brings benefits to people's work, social, and leisure lives, these benefits are sometimes overshadowed by the burdens of 24/7 connectivity, which challenge the well-being of individuals and society. Digital well-being is an emerging concept that refers to how people experience these benefits and burdens. This Special Issue brings together five articles that push the boundaries of digital well-being research by shedding light on the opportunities and challenges that people experience in relation to mobile connectivity, exploring the role of digital disconnection for digital well-being, and theorizing the conceptual underpinnings of digital well-being. In this editorial, we first give a definitional overview of the digital well-being concept and situate it in the field of mobile media and communication scholarship. Next, we identify two key issues that emerge from the Special Issue, and explain how the individual articles further our understanding of them. These issues are: (a) the strong conceptual link between digital well-being and digital disconnection; and (b) the conceptual difference between digital well-being as a psychological condition and as a socio-cultural artefact. To end, we present a future research agenda on digital well-being by first identifying current knowledge gaps, and next highlighting several themes that we anticipate as crucial in the forthcoming decade of digital well-being research in an age of mobile connectivity.

Theoretical and empirical work on digital media use and social connectedness has often considered face-to-face communication to be an available option. But how do various digital media uses relate to social connectedness when face-to-face communication is not, or much less, possible? Drawing on survey data from 2925 US adults during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we find that different digital communication methods display different relationships with social connectedness under stay-at-home circumstances with limited in-person interactions outside the home. Overall, digital communication relates to lower social connectedness. In line with notions from social presence theory, especially digital media lower in social presence (e.g. email, social media, and online games, and to some extent text messaging) relate negatively to social connectedness, while this is not the case for higher social presence media (e.g. voice and video calls). Our study has implications for theorizing about digital media use and social connectedness in times when face-to-face communication is less available.

Governments and public health institutions across the globe have set social distancing and stay-at-home guidelines to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. With reduced opportunities to spend time together in person come new challenges to remain socially connected. This essay addresses how the pandemic has changed people's use of digital communication methods, and how inequalities in the use of these methods may arise. We draw on data collected from 1,374 American adults between 4 and 8 April 2020, about two weeks after lockdown measures were introduced in various parts of the United States. We first address whether people changed their digital media use to reach out to friends and family, looking into voice calls, video calls, text messaging, social media, and online games. Then, we show how age, gender, living alone, concerns about Internet access, and Internet skills relate to changes in social contact during the pandemic. We discuss how the use of digital media for social connection during a global public health crisis may be unequally distributed among citizens and may continue to shape inequalities even after the pandemic is over. Such insights are important considering the possible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people's social wellbeing. We also discuss how changes in digital media use might outlast the pandemic, and what this means for future communication and media research.

Media and communication have become ubiquitous in today's societies and affect all aspects of life. On an individual level, they impact how we learn about the world, how we entertain ourselves, and how we interact with others. On an organisational level, the interactions between media and organisations, such as political parties, NGOs, businesses and brands, shape organisations' reputation, legitimacy, trust and (financial) performance, as well as individuals' consumer, political, social and health behaviours. At the societal level, media and communication are crucial for shaping public opinion on current issues such as climate change, sustainability, diversity, and well-being. Media challenges are widespread and include mis- and disinformation, the negative impact of algorithms on our information diets, challenges to our privacy, cyberbullying, media addiction, and unwanted persuasion, among many others. All this makes the study of media and communication crucial. This book provides a broad overview of the ways in which people create, use, and experience their media environment, and the role of media and communication for individuals, organisations, and society. The chapters in the book were written by researchers from the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. ASCoR is today the largest research institute of its kind in Europe and has developed over the past 25 years into one of the best communications research institutes in the world