Well-being in the Digital World
Project dates: 1 Sept 2023 – 1 Sept 2025
Grant numbers: European Commission [grant number 101102749] and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) [grant number EP/Y027973/1].
PI: Dr Cristina Voinea
The internet and other digital technologies, such as LLMs, are deeply embedded in our lives and are often seen as enhancers of life quality: they make various activities more efficient, freeing up time for other well-being enhancing activities; open up new possibilities for action and communication that were previously unavailable; and facilitate access to and sharing of information. However, internet services, apps and LLMs have also been associated with states of ill-being: they distract users from their purposes by instilling habits and goals that have not been deliberately chosen, spread mis- and disinformation which ultimately lead to polarization and radicalization, and weaken social cohesion and democracies worldwide. They also lead to deskilling, be it cognitive or moral. Given these perils, interest in how the internet and other digital technologies mediate well-being has grown exponentially in recent years. The overall objective of this research project is to offer a philosophically informed account of the impact of digital technologies on well-being that can be used to develop policy and design recommendations.
Publications
Voinea, C., (2024), 'On Grief and Griefbots', Think, Vol: 23(67): 47-51
Voinea, C., Marin, L. and Vică, C., (forthcoming 2024), 'Digital Slot Machines: Social Media Platforms as Attentional Scaffolds', Topoi : an International Review of Philosophy, Vol: online 2 March 2024
Lavinia Marin, Alexandra Morris, Cristina Voinea, Youssef Jallali. 2024. “Reflective and dialogical approaches in engineering ethics education”. In The Routledge International Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education, Tom Børsen, Diana Martin, Gunter Bombaerts, Roland Tormey, Shannon Chance, and Thomas Taro Lennerfors (Eds.), Routledge, In press.
Practical Ethics blog posts
Political Campaigning, Microtargeting, and the Right to Information, 26 January 2024
On Grief and Griefbots, 13 November 2023
