The backlash against digital media usage has manifested in everyday practices of digital disconnection, or deliberate non-use of media. This chapter provides an overview of the last decade of empirical disconnection research, tracing both its overarching tendencies and its boundaries. This is done through an analysis of 346 empirical studies on digital disconnection. For the purposes of this chapter, digital disconnection research is defined by a research ethos which does not consider the act of media non-use or restricted media use as something to be remedied. In review, the typical interest of the research has been in studying the disconnection of relatively young and individualised agents from social media, a disconnection which is often temporary or partial. Therefore, in the discussion portion of the chapter, I consider the opportunity for the openness of digital disconnection studies to extend even further, with particular emphasis on structures and contexts where disconnection may not only be problematised by the imperatives of “always on” communication, specifically in working life and other organised contexts.
This research is part of the project “Personalizing the Professional: Changing genres at the work/life intersection”, which is funded by the Independent Research Council of Denmark, (grant no. 8018-00113B).