Digital Detox, Trends, and Segmentation in Tourism

The chapter aims to demonstrate the growing importance of the concept of 'digital detox' as a segment of the tourism market to indicate the reasons and factors that encourage its demand, the diversity of establishments, the strategies employed by them, the limits, facilitating the adaptation to market conditions, and assisting in the development of marketing strategies that respond to customer needs. Through a content analysis of some research papers from the last 10 years and websites, as well as an interview with the founder from one of the establishments specialized in “disconnection with technologies” experiences, the “Offline House,” this study presents inputs on marketing (digital), tourism (niches), and consumer behavior.

Understanding digital disconnection beyond media studies

Digital disconnection or ‘digital detox’ has become a key reference point for media scholars interested in how media technology increasingly gains influence on our everyday lives. Digital disconnection from intrusive media is often intertwined with other types of human conduct, which is less highlighted. There is a potential for media scholars to engage with what seems to be a mainstreaming of digital disconnection from self-help literature via mobile applications to media activism and public debate. In this article, we therefore aim to examine digital disconnection beyond media studies by distilling five common positions: disconnection as health, concentration, existentiality, freedom and sustainability. An underlying theme in all five positions appears to be the notion of responsibilisation, although some of the positions attempt to portray disconnection as a way to ultimately resist such responsibilisation. The article thus aims to spur media scholars to treat digital disconnection as part of broader cultural trends.

Echolocation as theory of digital sociality

Public attention on disconnection and digital detox focuses on the health and wellbeing associated with disconnecting without much attention on what happens to selfhood or identity when abruptly disconnected. In an age of ubiquitous internet and “always on” use practices, what does disconnection do? Focusing on what happens when we disconnect, at the micro level, reveals interesting echolocative communication patterns otherwise not noticed. Abruptly stopping the continuous call and response pattern of interaction among youth produces deep anxieties and feelings of existential vulnerability that are commonly brushed aside. The work in this article is part of a larger project related to echolocation as a theory of communication. In an era of constant connectivity and “always on” or more importantly, “always available” internet, the seemingly seamless and steady state of connectivity is, at the more granular level, a process of continual echolocation, in the way we might think of sonar, whereby certain animals like bats determine the shape and location of objects in space by sending steady streams of signals and attending closely to the quality of the echo. Echolocation challenges researchers and theorists to reconsider the core elements and processes in an era of continuous, machinic as well as human interaction in multiple and massive networks of information flow. This does not mean we no longer experience dyadic (two person) or intra interactions, of course, but echolocation, the process of moving, navigating, and positioning through radar-like call and response provides a promising model to apply to how humans make sense of who they are in the complexities of continuous and tangled data flows.

AFFORDANCES IN DIGITAL DETOX AND PRODUCTIVITY APPS

The smartphone has become a crucial devise in everyday life, providing access to a range of communication, entertainment and utility tools. This has led to concern about intrusive media and worries that tech companies take advantage of our "easily distracted mind". This has also incited a booming app industry where digital detox and productivity apps are offered as tools to restrain smartphone use. The aim of this study is to add new empirical data and a conceptual framework to shed new light on this issue. The analysis is based on descriptions of 70 digital detox and productivity apps retried from the App Store and Google Play. The analysis focus on affordances, and distinguishes between two broad categories: undesign affordances, which comprise affordances that punish or inhibit certain types of use and gamification affordances which, in general, reward the user or encourage certain user behavior. The product description is also subject to a discourse analysis. A general finding is gamification affordances such as rewards, achievements, and ratings are generously used in most apps regardless of what kind of context it is meant to be used. More relentless undesign affordances, such as complete blocking of the smartphone is uses to a much lesser degree. The frequent use of gamification design means that the apps can, paradoxically, direct more attention toward the smartphone.

The disconnection turn: Three facets of disconnective work in post-digital capitalism

In post-digital capitalism, digital disconnection is not merely a “luxury” but also an obligation. Aiming to re-contextualize digital disconnection outside of digital detox resorts, social media, and elitist activism, this article asks how the ongoing disconnection turn affects how we (think about) work. With cues taken from digital disconnection studies and (digital) work/labour research, I inquire three facets of disconnective work. I elaborate, firstly, what disconnection might mean for work, as I scrutinize ideals pertaining to “deep” and “slow” work. Secondly, I unveil how disconnection may materialize at work, as I inspect “the post-digital workplace” and “disconnective technologies of work.” Thirdly, using “The Post-Digital Housewife” as a rhetorical figure for grasping the daily, typically unpaid, work that the disconnection turn makes acute, I recognize disconnection as work. The article concludes by presenting four dialectics of disconnective work, which serve to remind us of the paradoxical role of disconnection in processes of empowerment and exploitation.

Research trends on digital detox holidays: a bibliometric analysis, 2012-2020

The addiction problem associated with the overuse of technology has spread to tourism, with recent literature suggesting that tourists may want “disconnection” while traveling. This study, therefore, focuses on the new and poorly understood concept of the digital detox holiday. There is confusion in the literature since there are many terms to refer to it, such as digital-free tourism, unplugged tourism, and disconnected tourism. This study clarifies digital detox holiday as a tourism form. First, based on a review of previous research, a digital detox holiday model was proposed to resolve the confusion. Second, publications in Google and Scopus databases (2012-2020) were reviewed by bibliometric analysis and science mapping analysis via VOSviewer. The results revealed that the digital detox holiday can be considered a form of digital-free tourism and unplugged tourism. The results also showed that it is a recent research topic, with an increase in relevant publications since 2016, especially after 2018. Consequently, the publication trend is likely to accelerate further in the future. This study contributes to the literature by describing the characteristics of the digital detox holiday and visually mapping publications to highlight trends.

Retreat Culture and Therapeutic Disconnection

Digital detox retreats, mindfulness retreats, yoga and health retreats, nature and wilderness retreats, the me-retreat. Within our current culture of connectivity to go on a retreat as a way to reduce stress and improve one’s quality of life by temporarily disconnecting from our everyday (media) environments has been a growing trend. While generally conceived to be beneficial to the well-being of those who partake in it, retreat culture has also been criticized (in public and scholarly discourse alike) for feeding into the neoliberal program of privatizing solutions to what are, in fact, social problems. Here, the retreat reveals itself to be part of a disciplining leisure industry that parasitizes on our need to disconnect. Expanding on this controversy, this chapter probes the retreat as an un/critical imaginary that discloses some of the cracks in our existing reality, opening up a transitional space in which change may take place.

Disconnect to Reconnect! Self-help to Regain an Authentic Sense of Space Through Digital Detoxing

A typical call in contemporary self-help literature is to “look away from screens and enter the physical world.” Drawing on an empirical analysis of 15 self-help books, this chapter explores advice to reconnect with social and physical spaces by taking a break from digital technology. Digital detox is a relatively new term, but its ideological foundations are familiar from a long history of media and technology criticism. In the chapter, self-help advice on digital detoxing is discussed in the light of classical and contemporary criticism of media influence. Although the self-help books illuminate obstacles and difficulties, they propagate an optimistic belief that invasive technology can be controlled, authenticity restored, and social and physical dislocation reversed.