Embodiment and the Infinite Scroll (2020)

An excerpt from:

EMBODIMENT AND THE INFINITE SCROLL:

A Phenomenological Exploration of 'Emerging from Cyberspace'

"[...] the self becomes the only reality: the uncomfortably solipsistic crawl space in which I'm afraid to get stuck." (Sudjic, 2018: 40)

"We all remain stuck in the social media mud, […]" (Lovink, 2016)

"To understand the reality of a phenomenon is to understand the phenomenon as it is lived by a person." (Staiti, 2012)

From the vantage point that millennials are the first generation to have experienced social media from their teens onwards, this project explores the ways in which the solipsistic pull of the smartphone screen specifically, may impact modes of embodiment.

The area of interest for this project was initially very large: the impact of smartphone use on social relations. I focused it down on the link between smartphone use and the decrease and active avoidance of face-to-face interaction, which I had noticed in myself in recent years. Seemingly, the more time I spent on social media, specifically on Instagram, the more isolated I felt from the physical world around me and the more likely I was to avoid speaking to others face-to-face in every day life. I experienced this as a problem, and the sense of isolation and alienation only led me to retreat back to and delve further into cyberspace – where I felt familiar, in control and, therefore, safe. Social media seemed to be both, the locus originis and the locus causa. This led me to the topic or problem of online embodiment.

CENTRAL ‘HOOK’/ Findings:

My data showed that there are many common experiences and shared modes of (dis)embodiments in relation to scrolling. The only experiences that stood out were the ones by the members of Generation Z (b. between 1996 and 2015), which spoke of a more positive embodied experience of scrolling, i.e.: “I was in 'another place', disconnected from the real world but I felt at peace.” Taken together, one can summarise that all participants feel disconnected from the world around them whilst scrolling, however, the difference is in seeing it as a problem or as a welcome retreat. Whilst social media offers a space for identity-forming away from heteronormative mainstream society, this research looked at whether there is a shift in our embodiment, testing whether scrolling does indeed cause “a dissonance between our digital selves and our analogue bodies, which is 'throwing us into a […] state of anxiety'." (Douglas Rushkoff in Sarah Genner, ON |OFF: Risks and rewards of the anytime-anywhere internet. 2017: 25). The data collected from those participants who remember a childhood without social media (millennials, who were in their teens when social media websites and apps emerged), confirms this feeling of dissonance and state of anxiety caused specifically when ‘emerging from cyberspace’.

Summary:

The phenomenological accounts in this project prove that there is a felt and lived mind/ body divide; a phenomenological disconnect, when so submerged in an Infinite Scroll, and that this can cause feelings of alienation (where the body is alienated from itself (Leder, 1990)). It is only from this vantage point that I can truly begin to think of a visual translation of this dysembodied* experience of cyberspace. In line with Charlotte Bates (2012: 30) and Seweryn Rudnicki (2017: 4), I call for the "revival of sociological interest in online embodiments" and for “a re-engagement with the old mind-body dualism, but in a novel way”.

*By dysembodied, I refer to contemporary modes of online embodiments, where elements from the physical world, like a cramping hand or a full bladder, are seen as hinderances and distractions.