Distributed for Intellect Ltd
Digital Exhaustion
Burnout, Fatigue and Overload in the Age of Constant Connectivity
Overflowing inboxes, relentless, back-to-back Zoom calls, and the constant buzz of meetings. Nonstop notifications. Daily life in digital culture can be exhausting. This timely and urgent edited collection introduces ‘digital exhaustion’ as a conceptual lens to critically examine the ever-expanding presence of digital technologies in our personal and professional lives. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives, this book explores how digital exhaustion is experienced, felt, and articulated in our hyper-connected culture through burnout, brain rot, binge-watching, data extraction, energy consumption, and social media compulsion. Digital exhaustion emerges as a key structure of feeling in an era of constant connectivity and algorithmic demands.
Accessible yet theoretically grounded, this collection is an essential resource for scholars in cultural and technology studies, while also speaking to broader debates in anthropology, psychology, digital geography, urban studies, and consumer research. Responsive to the urgent need to engage in sustained dialogue about digital futures, this book offers fresh insights into how we might understand—and rethink—digital wellbeing, social media addiction, and the growing demand for a right to disconnect.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Chapter 1: Digital Exhaustion: An Introduction
SECTION I: PLATFORMS
Chapter 2: The Email Charter: A Manifesto for Digital Humanity
by A.R.E. Taylor
Chapter 3: Work harder, not smarter: Passive Income and the Exhaustion of Influencer Labor
by Grant Bollmer & Katherine Guiness
Chapter 4: Do Hustlers Dream of Restful Sleep? The Digital Denial of Rejuvenation in an Age of Endless Work
by Jamie Allan
Chapter 5: Stepping Away from FIFA: An Autoethnographic Recollection of Burning Out Annually
by Aditya Deshbandhu, Prashant Rai, and Baibhav Singh
Chapter 6: Learning Management and the Production of Exhaustion: An Analysis of D2L Brightspace LMS
by Mario Khreiche & Zhuro Deng
SECTION II: PLACES
Chapter 7: Fears of Exhaustion, Dreams of Resilience: The EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act and the Cínovec Lithium Deposit
by Johannes Bruder & Anastasia Kubrak
Chapter 8: Exhausting Environments: Urban Installation(s) and the Green City
by Linda Kopitz
Chapter 9: Keep Calm and AmaZen: Materialities of Energy-as-Work in Digital Mindfulness Technologies
by Natalia Stanusch
Chapter 10: ‘Virtual Commute’ as Digital Remedy
by Artur de Matos Alves & Ana Jorge
SECTION III: PRACTICES
Chapter 11: Experimenting with Exhaustion: A roundtable conversation between the Fuck Healing (?) Collective and Linda Kopitz
Chapter 12: Coaching Digital Minimalism: The Labour of Upkeeping Digital Media
by Ana Jorge and Patrícia Dias
Chapter 13: Designated WIP Time: Craft Videos, Female Labour, and Online Communities of Care
by Maryn C. Wilkinson
Chapter 14: Touching Sounds: ASMR as a Digital Remedy
by Yigit Soncul
Chapter 15: Digital Exhaustion and Human Rights Defenders
by Siena Anstis
Coda: Z-mail
by Steven B. Katz
Author Biographies
Index