Healing Space | Digital disruption is disruptive

If you have built a tribe online, losing access to a tech service when it becomes priced out of your range, or because it shuts down, or changes hands, can become hurtful. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Note to readers: Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods.

Every startup is here to ‘disrupt’ the space you live in. Disruption in itself is an act of violently overthrowing the status quo. While this represents often a billion-dollar opportunity for the entrepreneur, it can have other connotations for the users. Precisely because people who use services offered by tech companies are seen as ‘users’, it has become easy to forget that they are in fact people, with feelings, loyalties and who bear the brunt of corporate decisions. When you have to migrate users from one site to another, the solution you need is also digital, like transferring data from one mobile phone to another when you upgrade. But connections online are not mere ‘data’. They are actual conversations and connections, memories, thoughts, ideas and feelings, from anger to shared joy, several dating back a decade or more, between people. Some people have watched others’ kids grow up online, some met their partners or dated via these online connections. Others yet used to be friends and colleagues but aren’t anymore. So when an Elon Musk buys out a Twitter, it’s not users who migrate, it’s people. The solution to one lies in technology, the solution to the other lies in compassion and empathy.

Disruption in the digital space can become hard for people who use apps and services online. When an organization shuts down abruptly, or an old way of working and accessing information changes, it does impact the emotional lives of people. Hal Gregersen, MIT Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Innovation, decided to launch the ‘Managing the Human Side of Digital Disruption’ course at MIT this year to meet precisely this lacuna. Gregerson calls it the “affect-centred approach”. While Gregerson is still dealing with the human impact within the company, observing that many tech leaders rarely have good interpersonal skills, the broader impact is also beyond the company, to those who access its services and policies. However, corporate organisations and leaders and policy makers are not investing in investigating that outfall. You and I are collateral damage to the big disruptors. What this means is that we need to look out for ourselves.

If you have built a tribe online, losing access to a tech service when it becomes priced out of your range, or because it shuts down, or changes hands, can become hurtful. Apart from any monetary or networking impact, if it’s the kind you’ve paid for services on, such as an NFT access system, crypto, or a dating website, it can mimic the sense of loss of sense of community and belonging. This is particularly true of people who are lonely, who do not socialise much, or can’t because they are limited by disability, poverty, location or even inhibited by aspects like social anxiety.

Many people have their own reasons for taking to the online space. Human beings aren’t as dynamic as machines are being built to be. Not because you can’t physically get up and move to the next network or app or server system, but because you still have unresolved feelings about it.

Social media and communication apps in particular are habit-building. You wake up every morning and check things in a specific order or at a specific time. You anticipate mentions, arguments, know who your allies are, and whom to block, avoid, gossiping about a common interest or enmity further heightens the sense of ‘group’. All of this locates you and offers you identifiers for your passage through the digital society.

When disrupted, even something as seemingly insignificant as changing the like button, a thematic colour or font, has repercussions. It can leave you feeling disgruntled, upset, irritable and annoyed, though you may not be able to pinpoint why. With larger disruptions, such as having to move off entire platforms, and away from an entire social network that is impossible to replicate in its entirety, you may feel anxious or even slide into isolation or a persistent sense of unhappiness. You may question why you should try restoring networks again, or starting over, because it feels inevitable that it could be taken away again, and you might feel like that option to connect and belong has been taken away from you.

This kind of disruption dysphoria is a normal byproduct of the times we live in and needs some careful maneuvering, backing up connections through manual and offline means, archiving, and spreading your digital existence across multiple servers and services, so you don’t get abruptly cut off by yet another disruption in the tech sector.

How to safeguard your digital social life from disruption

1. Don’t rely on a single app or service. Even if it works well enough, access multiple interfaces and modes of service.

2. Back up connections that are meaningful to you. This includes block lists.

3. Take the effort to connect offline, or in real life. Via a phonecall, video call, in person meet-ups, so the connections are not lost when the tech is outdated.

4. All tech will be outdated someday. Even Google chat isn’t as ubiquitous as it used to be anymore. Expect to have to move from a service someday.

5. To the corporate, you’re a user. Your feelings don’t count. Don’t become corporate fodder. Take what is useful to you, and invest emotionally in offline community.