For now it is a smaller percentage, but it is growing every day and the interesting thing is that it is not only people but also brands that wonder if it is worth staying connected at all times.
The tourism digital-free, meals or meetings without cell phones at the table are some of the strongest trends. Even among the youngest, the advantages of using “airplane mode” on their cell phones while studying are highly valued.
We went from FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out or fear of missing something) to JOMO (Joy Of Missing Out or the joy of disconnecting) because people are feeling that the promises they associated with connection such as having greater freedom and ability to relate with others they are not literally happening like this, on the contrary. Added to this is the fact that permanent hyperconnection tends to blur the boundaries between our personal and professional lives.
However, get out of scroll infinity and digital overabundance is complex, above all because there is a reality and that is that it is very difficult to sustain the fact of being disconnected at a socioeconomic level. Work, education and numerous activities of daily life, today, are carried out anchored to a necessary connectivity.
In this sense, the Argentine researcher Mora Matassi, suggests that it is necessary to ask whether this need for permanent disconnection that people manifest is a fashion, an exception or a problem. In other words, on the one hand, he states that “not being connected to the Internet appears as a problem that should be solved from the point of view of development”; on the other, disconnection is presented “as something that will tend to be more common in different social groups. It is even becoming fashionable (…)” and, finally, “disconnection appears desirable, on the side of productivity, happiness, calm, even (…) a form of self-care”.
But, ultimately, what is clear is that users are reaching a breaking point in their digital consumption that occurs precisely because the connection at all times and in all places generates a sensation of saturation and in the face of this it begins to gain place a dynamic in which to be on it is increasingly necessary to be off. As they say out there: “There is no Wifitalk to each other.”
Regarding this classic phrase that is usually seen in bars and restaurants, says Matassi, which highlights “the moralizing character of disconnection speeches ‘you’re behaving badly, you have to behave well’ and behaving well means talking to the another and not connect”.
The truth is that the debate on connection versus disconnection and its impact on people’s lives is already open, but as Matassi says “we live in a digital environment. We are social beings and the social happens in the digital”. So what happens if we disconnect?