# (Re)Politicizing Digital Well-Being: Beyond User Engagements

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.08199 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.08199/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 15 Mar 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [A Systematic Literature Review of Human-Centered, Ethical, and Responsible AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05284/) (2023)
- [Can Workers Meaningfully Consent to Workplace Wellbeing Technologies?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07242/) (2023)
- [Closing the AI Trust Gap: The Case for Independent Certification for Trustworthy AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.15992/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The psychological costs of the attention economy are often considered through the binary of harmful design and healthy use, with digital well-being chiefly characterised as a matter of personal responsibility. This article adopts an interdisciplinary approach to highlight the empirical, ideological, and political limits of embedding this individualised perspective in computational discourses and designs of digital well-being measurement. We will reveal well-being to be a culturally specific and environmentally conditioned concept and will problematize user engagement as a universal proxy for well-being. Instead, the contributing factors of user well-being will be located in environing social, cultural, and political conditions far beyond the control of individual users alone. In doing so, we hope to reinvigorate the issue of digital well-being measurement as a nexus point of political concern, through which multiple disciplines can study experiences of digital ill as symptomatic of wider social inequalities and (capitalist) relations of power.