The Ethoses of (Dis)Connecting with Friends on Social Media: Digital Cocooning and Entrepreneurial Networking among People with Eating Disorders

Abstract

Recent media studies conversations on disconnection or reducing mainly the quantity of engagement with social media so as to enhance well-being have suggested that these practices articulate a contemporary spirit focused on self-care and performance (productivity) that does not consider others or collective solutions. Drawing on and pushing forward disconnection research, we put forward a Foucauldian inspired concept of ethos that draws attention to qualitatively different principles and values characterizing social media socialities which users seek to foster and avoid. Interviews with people ( n = 31) with eating disorders (EDs) featured what we call digital cocooning; that is, interaction with trusted real-life friends and family afforded by messaging apps characterized by mutual responsiveness, acceptance, and belonging. However, what we term entrepreneurial networking with wider acquaintances mostly on traditional social media was experienced as evaluative and competitive and fuelled a sense of non-belonging, prompting unfriending. Disconnection research has highlighted how social media (dis)connections are often underpinned by contemporary possessive individualism, obscured by the dominant research on ostensibly universal psychological processes. The concept of ethos pushes this research beyond criticism toward also highlighting alternatives or how social relations in social media and society could be imagined otherwise.