Interfacing ourselves : living in the digital age / edited by Cristina Bodinger-deUriarte.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I. Digitizing identity -- Offline as misaligned: millennials coping with the loss of digital presence -- Digital ink: social media and tattoo culture in considerations of gender -- Powering down: theoretical lenses to examine the agency of our smartphones -- From backstage to digital front stage: online queer community, identity, and emotion management -- Digital dependency interrupted: profiles of withdrawal for self-described Internet addicts -- Part II. Mediated relationships -- How do I love thee? Let me text the ways: interfacing intimacy -- La familia in digital space and face-to-face: millennial Latinx navigating navigating, customizing, and reconfiguring familismo -- Is unmediated more? When physical presence does not equate to digital presence -- Interfacing conflict: advice columns and digital life -- Part III. Virtual agency and the digital dystopia -- Islands in the stream: how digital music piracy became a normal activity -- Community or catharsis? Online activism, digital community, and social agency -- Power and money: explaining the rise of digital media through surveillance capitalism -- Knowing you better than you know yourself: manufacturing perceptions -- Part IV. Capping it off -- Why we care: netizenship and informed choice -- Annotated methodology - investigative process: research reflections.

Interfacing Ourselves consists of new work that examines digital life on three levels: individuals and digital identity; relationships routinely intertwining digital and physical connections; and broader institutional and societal realities that define the context of living in the digital age. A key focus is what it means in varied social arenas when most individuals live as co-present or multi-present--simultaneously engaged in digital and physical space--alone and with others. Topics include how: digital life contributes to well-being; individuals experience digital dependency; a smartphone is more than a smartphone; netiquette reveals social change; some online communities become prosocial salient havens while others reinforce social inequality; Millennials build intimacy; Latinx do familismo; and digital surveillance and big data redefine consumerism, advocacy, and civic engagement. Six chapters incorporate insights from hourly journals of Millennials undergoing a period of digital abstinence. Other chapters draw from surveys, digital auto-ethnography, content analysis, and other methods to explore digital life at the level of individual and interactive experience, and at a broader institutional and societal level. Ultimately, the book presents the need for living a mindful digital life by developing greater awareness as an individual, a social being, and a netizen and citizen.