Digital Exhaustion: Burnout, Fatigue, and Overload in the Age of Constant Connectivity

Overflowing email inboxes. Back-to-back Zoom meetings. Unending data extraction. Constant connectivity. Disruptive notification pings. Social media ‘addiction’. Binge-watching. Daily life in digital culture can be exhausting. This timely and urgent edited collection takes the theme of ‘digital exhaustion’ as a starting point for critical inquiry into the ever-expanding presence of digital technologies in our personal and professional lives. We offer ‘exhaustion’ as a broad and versatile conceptual prism for thinking through human-technology relations in the current climate of constant digital connectivity. Digital exhaustion - along with a range of other related affects and experiences, including burnout, Zoom fatigue, information overload, social media overuse, and bed rotting – have all emerged as key structures of feeling in the present. As digital technologies become increasingly entrenched in our daily lives the need to engage in sustained dialogue about digital futures and the ways that these technologies are being deployed, embraced, and opposed is of pressing importance. This edited collection is responsive to this need.