Stayin’ alive? Reflections on navigating digital dependency

Abstract

Digital technologies are pervasive and ensnaring, resulting in widespread dependence of their varying forms and functions. In this commentary we reflect on the effects of our own digital dependencies, noticing how as digital technologies edge toward higher degrees of sentience, we humans are becoming psychically deadened, ever reliant on such technologies to support our fractured selves. Providing three intimate introspective accounts, we foreground emergent themes related to aliveness and addiction, illustrating how social media tendencies are rooted in existential insecurities stemming from psychic difficulties and traumas. We encourage marketing theorists to critically interrogate how digital technologies, and in particular social networking sites, exploit our vulnerabilities to propagate an addictive logic toward aims of capital accumulation.