The Future of Digital Well-Being explores how digital technologies and artificial intelligence are reshaping human flourishing and the meaning of the good life, with insights from philosophy, ethics, psychology, and communication science.
Interest in digital well-being has increased in recent years as researchers from many disciplines have acknowledged the power of emerging technologies to dramatically affect our lives. Studying digital well-being requires us to engage with age-old questions about the nature of human flourishing and how to cultivate it, while simultaneously striving to understand how artificial intelligence and other digital technologies are changing the very nature and meaning of the good life. To do this, the contributors use conceptual and empirical tools from a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, and communication science, to illuminate the importance of digital well-being in the age of artificial intelligence. In the final part of the book, the chapters introduce ethical perspectives from non-Western traditions, showing how designing effectively for digital well-being requires that we make use of global conceptual resources.
This book is designed to appeal to an international audience, with contributors and perspectives drawn from both Western and non-Western contexts. Practitioners and industry professionals interested in the ethical implications and practical applications of digital technologies will find this book useful, and it will be of particular interest to those engaged in interdisciplinary research on digital well-being, including philosophy, psychology, communication studies, ethics, and STS.
Table of Contents:
Contents
Forward
James Williams
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
Matthew Dennis, Peter Königs
Part 1: Foundational Issues
2. What is Digital Well-Being? Comparing Definitions Across Disciplines
Lyanne Uhlhorn, Matthew Dennis
3. Beyond Digital Well-Being: Exploring the Role of Meaningfulness and Collaborative Research in Digital Technology
Markus Rüther
4. Digital Well-Being and Emotional Engagement: Towards a Social Turn
Jeroen Hopster
Part 2: Empirical Perspectives
5. Social Media Use, Social Media Addiction and Well-Being: Empirical Evidence
Julia Brailovskaia
6. Measuring the Benefits and Drawbacks of Ubiquitous Connectivity: The Digital Well-Being Scale
Mariek M. P. Vanden Abeele, Michaela Šaradín Lebedíková, Kyle Van Gaeveren, David de Segovia Vicente, Stephen L. Murphy
Part 3: Ethical Topics
7. Well-Being, Digital Lives, and ‘Losing Touch with Reality’
Emma Gordon
8. Follow the Instagram Model? Why Restricting Political News on Social Media Enhances Digital Well-Being
Bartek Chomanski
9. AI companions: Assessing the Future Risks and Benefits to Well-being
Dan Weijers, Nick Munn
10. Reimagining Digital Well-Being in an Age of AI-Enabled Digital Twins
Christopher Burr, Steven Niederer, David Wagg
Part 4: Intercultural Perspectives
11. Enlarging the Self: Digital Well-Being through Confucian Philosophy
Pak-Hang Wong
12. Counteracting Digital McMindfulness from a Neo-Confucian Perspective
Joseph Sta. Maria, Matthew Dennis
About the Author :
Matthew J. Dennis is an Assistant Professor in Ethics of Technology at TU Eindhoven, the Netherlands. His research focuses on how emerging technologies challenge our notions of creativity, autonomy, and well-being. He is the author of Cultivating Our Passionate Attachments (2021) and co-editor of Values for a Post-Pandemic Future (2022).
Peter Königs is Assistant Professor of Practical Philosophy at TU Dortmund University, Germany. His current research interests are in the ethics of technology, political philosophy, and social epistemology. He is the author of Problems for Moral Debunkers: On the Logic and Limits of Empirically Informed Ethics (2022).
