A new project will be launched to examine the ways in which digital well-being is currently framed as a user responsibility and will explore how we can all live better online.
The 拢300,000 鈥楥ontrol Shift Escape鈥 project, funded through the AHRC Catalyst Award, is led by Dr Niall Docherty, Lecturer in Data, AI and Society in the School of Information, Journalism and Communication.
The project will be split into three work packages - 鈥楥ontrol鈥, 鈥楽hift鈥 and 鈥楨scape鈥. 鈥楥ontrol鈥 will look at how digital well-being is framed in current discourse, in both academic research and the public media. This will include collaboration with a commissioned illustrator to display the current thinking in diagram form.
鈥楽hift鈥 will produce new concepts, measurements and designs with which to study digital well-being in its socio-technical context, rather than as an issue which is solely the responsibility of end users. This will involve synthesising previously separate philosophies of technology and wellbeing to create new, combined conceptualisations which don鈥檛 repeat the existing, politicised narratives around the subject.
The team will also bring together new networks of interdisciplinary scholars to develop innovative ways of researching in this area going forward. A collaborative workshop will be held with colleagues from human-computer-interaction, computer science and psychology to test and refine these newly synthesised ideas.
鈥楨scape鈥, co-led by Dr David Young, Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture at King鈥檚 College London, will engage with public audiences through collaboration with , a Sheffield-based social and arts charity led by curator Dr Sunshine Wong. The team will commission an early career artist to create a free public exhibition and events programme, to run for six weeks in Spring 2027 in Bloc鈥檚 gallery space and online.
The exhibition will offer fresh ideas and practices of digital well-being for people to explore in an accessible way. Going beyond simply showing the results of the research, the artistic collaborations will aim to provoke thoughts about a possible 鈥榳ay out鈥 of the current ideas around digital well-being for everyday people.
Dr Docherty said: 鈥It is common to think that we must control our engagements with technology, or be controlled by them. This is the case for how we imagine digital well-being, which is often reduced to controlling personal technological habits. We must resist addictive designs, manage the psychological risks of social media, and balance the attentive drain of always-available work and social cultures.
鈥淲hile habits are important, this focuses our attention onto the individual and away from the other factors that contribute to digital wellbeing today. This project will shed new light on these factors, exploring how digital wellbeing exists in relation to exploitative technological designs, existing sociopolitical infrastructures, regimes of data extraction, and inequalities.
鈥淚n doing so, it will critique whether 鈥榗ontrol鈥 is an appropriate model for digital wellbeing, and, more importantly, imagine new ways to study and experience digital wellbeing beyond its current form.鈥
This work is a continuation of Dr Docherty鈥檚 long-standing research interest in the responsibilisation of digital wellbeing in a neoliberal society, including his 2025 book Healthy Users, which was discussed in detail here.