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Refusal to use the Internet is no longer a weakness, a whim, or stupidity. People deliberately limit one freedom for the sake of another. But is it possible to be free from the pressures of technology without giving up the use of social networks? Are we trading the freedom not to be involved in online communication for the approval and comfort of being a user?

For what reasons does a person refuse to be a winner in the digital divide?

Media ecology

In November, as part of the NOW festival on modernity, British anthropologist Daniel Miller gave a lecture, during which he spoke about the diversity of practices that exist among Internet users. Miller demonstrated how the same social networking services, such as Facebook , Twitter , email, instant messengers, etc., sometimes play opposing roles and functions in the daily lives of people from different countries.

During the lecture, one listener asked Miller a question: what to do if she does not want to use social networks at all, but is forced to do so, otherwise she will not be able to get a job, study at university, etc.? After all, a person outside of social networks raises a lot of questions in the modern world. How is it: a person wants to be involved in modern life, study at university, work - and at the same time not use social networks?

According to surveys by Pew Research Center , the largest American polling plant, the majority of Americans who do not have access to the Internet are poorly educated, middle-aged, and poor. More often these are women. In general, the lack of online life is usually seen as a component of the “digital divide” [1] that needs to be combated. But what is described as an opportunity in this struggle (access to the Internet) is increasingly becoming a social responsibility.

At the same time, psychologists, philosophers and sociologists have been writing about information overload for decades. The conversation about this began a long time ago, but with the development of the Internet it is taking new turns. Geert Lowink writes that “an important aspect of media literacy is the ability to step away from the screen,” and draws attention to how modern technology, politics and economics are closely intertwined. To choose from the best, to be successful, to do everything - online services seem to exist so that a person acts exactly this way and does not think about the consequences. The Internet is gradually becoming “invisible”, not recognized as a source of opportunity or tension.

Digital Divide

In 2001, one of the major articles about the digital divide appeared. It was written by famous sociologists Paul DiMaggio and Esther Hargittai. The article begins with the assumption that using the Internet brings social benefits: increased job opportunities, increased mobility, increased social capital. But there is one important nuance. While technology is relatively new, knowing how to use it can only be an advantage. Once they are available to everyone, lack of access becomes a disadvantage.

But in the middle of this decade, it's not just about access or digital literacy. It's not just email skills or the ability to send a message that are needed. The point is that in many areas of activity you need to be able to and actively use popular services, that is, to be a user: to participate in solving work issues, exchange educational literature, even discuss the child’s affairs with other parents.

Being a user is also a kind of skill, a skill that is sometimes lost due to the intuitiveness of interfaces. According to the first netart artist of Runet Olya Lyalina, “the word “user” is the last obstacle on the way of computers to becoming completely invisible.” While maintaining the ability to be a user, we understand that it is not always so easy, but is easily lost.

Surprisingly, however, this is not the case. Just such paradoxes are described by researchers, take, for example, the above-mentioned DiMaggio. Users themselves realize the need to sometimes be independent of technology. Perhaps the mildest form of such a reaction is a “digital detox”, giving up gadgets for a while, which becomes a form of relaxation for people from big cities (and without smartphones, they actually have a lot of things to do and entertainment). But on the other hand, there is a rejection of new technologies. This happens in schools and among young people: students and teenagers sometimes turn out to be more radical than their parents in asserting that there is “live communication”, and there is its simulation on the Internet.

Research does not yet show that this trend is large; in fact, large survey centers, by inertia, are more willing to be interested in how many people are “connected,” and those who do not use the Internet are a vanishingly small proportion of the population.

Based on survey data, we can say that users do not need the freedom provided by new technologies on the Internet. This is the hypothesis that first comes to mind from a common sense point of view when we look at the research numbers. Thus, a public opinion poll conducted by the Levada Center in October 2014 showed that 54% of the Russian population is of the opinion that there are many malicious websites on the Internet and therefore censorship should be applied to cyberspace, while only 32% of the population believe that the threat is exaggerated and there are no grounds for censorship.

But the Annenberg study, which is concise and clear, shows that this is not the case. An article by Grigory Asmolov, a doctoral student at the London School of Economics and a participant in this study, explains that there are no users who want unfreedom. There are various factors and interactions that influence our decisions. In Russia, this is largely the context of old media, which tells the user how to relate to new ones. If we look at how the Internet is mentioned in newspapers and TV programs, we will see that from an interesting novelty and a convenient tool, it sometimes turns into a dangerous technology. This technology either destroys teenagers, or becomes a tool of manipulation, or causes addiction. It would seem that, on the one hand, we are witnessing the convergence of media, the diversity of formats and the transition to digital, but at the same time, frightening stories that prevent people from perceiving the Internet as a space of alternatives and opportunities and turn it into an unsafe analogue of old media in new furs .

Unfreedom and freedom

But the phenomenon we're talking about is what happens to power users. Perhaps the most famous text about how difficult it is to be a user of a social network belongs to Alice Mavrick and Dana Boyd. They describe the life of a social media user as inevitably existing in a paradoxical situation. We, who write on Twitter , are expected to be both sincerity, authenticity and compliance with the strict standards of expectations of the audience, which, however, we ourselves come up with, based on the images that arise in the online community. It is possible to exist in this paradox, but people get tired of constantly feeling like they are not alone in the crowd, always in sight.

Bullying, constant rating of each other without a particular purpose, gossip - this is not about bullying among teenagers, these are elements of collective life on social networks, acutely felt by adults. And at the same time, social networks are endowed with their own subjectivity: they “dictate” and “delay.” Marketers of large corporations continue to work in the same spirit as ten years ago, offering to delegate all social life to their services and gadgets, to become completely included, completely dependent and thus uniquely free. I deliberately do not give literary examples so as not to evoke associations with dystopias, for example Orwell. An attentive reader will understand that dystopias are, rather, a habitual way of describing fears from a changing society, not an explanatory model at all, but a factor. Speaking about freedom as unfreedom, many think about Orwell’s “freedom is slavery,” although the older generation would probably first remember that freedom is a necessity, albeit a known one. So, the need to use social networks is not fully understood or, at least, not fully realized.

And, being unconscious, such questions and paradoxes turn out to be what users want to free themselves from. This is not about abandoning all progress and going into the woods. Freeing yourself from the need to constantly be present in the online environment means being able to not respond to messages immediately, not reveal your real name on a social network, not talk about your private and professional life to an ultimately indefinite number of people.

But in the diversity of Internet services, a set of informal and formal norms gradually emerges, with which one has to relate. We are hardly aware of this process. John Perry Barlow once wrote that the inhabitants of cyberspace are entering into a new social contract. But then we were talking about thousands of users, and today there are billions of them. And collective reflection on the new conditions of communication on the Internet is lacking, despite visionary and global initiatives like Web We Want . Moreover, to quote Geert Lovnik’s article again: “Public discussion of self-restraint in the consumption of information often borders on moralizing and preaching, and if translated into politics, it can easily lead to a soft form of censorship, cutting off others with a firewall.” Behind this fear of censorship there is also a reluctance to establish the figure of a censor, especially since it can easily become a machine. But the fact is that technology is formed by social relations and only then, indirectly, begins to influence them.

The Internet today is becoming the same as reality - local is the new black . And just as they feared the vortex of the globalized Internet, where pornography warehouses and strangers are in chat rooms, today people are not satisfied with the fact that everyone knows everyone. And if you are not included in these networks, alas, the effect is the same as if you cannot move to another city. Registration is not required yet, but the obligations are approximately the same.

The question from the listener of Daniel Miller’s lecture, which we talked about at the very beginning, is actually about how the Internet was a dream come true for the generation of globalists, a transparent and comprehensive space of connections, but has become something completely different - a tool of connection, not unification.

In any case, while such questions and doubts arise, we still hope that technology follows dreams.

[1] “ Digital inequality ” is a concept associated with the idea of ​​a “digital divide” ( digital divide ) , a situation of uneven access to digital technologies.