Amidst increasing data extraction and fragile social infrastructure, Tejaswini Vaka argues that digital minimalism alone cannot rebuild community in Dublin.
In an attention economy where people are the free commodity providing rich predictive insights to companies hoarding massive amounts of data, the appeal of digital minimalism seems clear. Reclaim your attention, free your cognitive function, and beat the chronically online allegations! Or not.
The city is Dublin. US data centre giant Vantage has planned investments of over €1 billion to build a new campus in Grange Castle. Amazon believes their plans for three additional data centres in north Dublin ‘will not have a significant impact’ on climate in the area. In the data capital of Europe, these centres hum semi-lucidly in sprawling newly fitted office buildings while young citizens face yet another shortage: this time, it’s meaningful spaces for connection.
OECD figures show increasing rates of loneliness, with 16-24 year olds in Ireland reporting some of the highest levels of social isolation compared to other European countries. On a normal day’s morning commute, it’s possible to see 8 out of 10 people on public transport with their eyes glued to phones, or ears occupied with media. Not only is Gen Z obsessed with their damn phones, but the first generation of iPad babies have grown into teenagers that use ChatGPT as their regular search engine.
Some argue that digital minimalism provides an appropriate solution, often framing it as an escape from the nightly dopamine-fuelled doom-scroll before bed. Popularised by Cal Newport, digital minimalism argues for comfort with more solitude, increased in-person social activity, and replacement of time spent scrolling with meaningful leisure activities. While it is definitely useful advice that can be applied to regain consciousness of one’s time, the focus is heavily on productivity as a relative measure for better cognitive and social function. As the subtitle of his book suggests, ‘[Choose] a focused life in a noisy world’: extract the good juices from the fruits of technology and ‘sidestep’ the bad fibres.
Newport contextualises the profit incentives of big-tech, but fails to consider the plight of the modern student in the Western core, juggling the weight of not only several responsibilities but several social and economic crises that are restructuring our futures in real time. Even at UCD, social life is inevitably tied to digital presence. Society events, job opportunities, student union campaigns, academic communication, and much more is delivered digitally. A single missed email or notification could make or break that opportunity that could change a housing situation, or land someone a job. For international or commuting students, building new connections without the help of a single social media app may prove difficult.
Imagining a social life beyond social media means demanding the conditions that make it possible.
Being embedded within the social fabric of a city is an essential part of belonging. Despite longing for shared community spaces and collective experiences of joy, in the greater picture of Dublin—a city that is generally cold, rainy, and wet most of the year—there is an evident lack of physical spaces where people can meet and spend time with each other without spending money. The costs of logging off become even more apparent when the cycle of dependency on private venues, coffee, and alcohol squeezes the wallet. The spatial and material conditions of the city coupled with a lack of social infrastructure drive people to online third spaces. A 2024 National Youth Council study found that only 24% of young people felt there were enough safe spaces to meet friends and socialise.
Shoshana Zuboff describes the age of surveillance capitalism as one marked with excesses of wealth like never seen before; and the currency is information. Digital technologies at this stage of capitalism are moving from the status of a luxury to a vital appendage that mediates all other sectors of life and brings them together. Given the illusion of privacy and unlimited knowledge, young adults follow mutuals, like, save, and send reels—making new connections with people and ideas all in a few taps.
Under the surveillance of digital landlords, seemingly meaningless choices are conjured into a unique digital fingerprint. One’s day-to-day mindlessness is extracted and used to manipulate not only time, but a person’s very sensibilities, thoughts, perceptions, and ideas. Within a vast playground of digital realms and never-ending data centres to back them up, the architecture of social possibilities online is engineered long before people can make those decisions themselves.
Genuine disconnection requires collective change.
Framed as an individual solution to a deeply structural problem, the responsibility of self-regulating when billions of dollars are being poured into algorithms competing for our attention may seem like a no-brainer. Being off the grid is a privilege reserved for those who have built networks that can be accessed offline. In a city chock full of data centres that will definitely ‘not impact’ the environment, the ability to disconnect says less about discipline than it does about freedom from extraction. Genuine disconnection requires collective change.
Imagining a social life beyond social media means demanding the conditions that make it possible: public, accessible and free social spaces. For students, this could mean UCD investing in late-night, warm, accessible indoor spaces like study rooms, common areas, even 24-hour sections of the library. It means insisting on the right to be on the streets and squares without the expectation of consumption or the fear of being consumed for data. Dublin City Council could similarly expand public seating, extend library hours, and fund sheltered, heated civic areas—basic infrastructure that many European cities already treat as standard social provisions.
It might look like resisting the creep of facial recognition technologies into everyday life, or the rejection of behavioural profiling as a substitute for safety. It means recognising community should be continuously engineered, not by algorithms, but by those who actively participate in it. Despite being more connected than ever, our social worlds are narrowing, locked into the networks we first fell into. A truly social city is one where people know their neighbours, where help can be asked and offered without fear, and where belonging is something built right into the walls of the city.