“Over the past year, conversations about digital well-being evolved in a variety of ways, in part as a response to the increase in AI use. Many were initially framed around individual habits and behaviors, such as ‘screen time,’ online distraction and personal responsibility. Digital well-being and resiliency were incorrectly treated as a matter of lifestyle management. The dominant response, then, was to encourage people to regulate their use of technologies that are specifically designed to be difficult to resist. This framing placed the burden on individuals rather than addressing the broader architectures shaping digital experiences. More-recent debates reveal a significant reframing. Digital well-being (a term I prefer to use instead of ‘resilience’) is increasingly understood less as a function of personal discipline and more as a question of systemic tech design and governance. The health of digital life is shaped less by how long we spend on devices and more by who designs the platforms, under what incentives and with what data governance structures. In this sense, digital well-being becomes inseparable from questions of power, accountability and rights.
If AI and digital environments increasingly shape how societies function, then digital well-being must be understood as a public interest goal, requiring governance, collective investment and a more expansive vision of what a healthy digital future looks like.
“Another shift concerns the move from understanding well-being solely as individual mental health to acknowledging its collective dimensions: from polarization and misinformation to civic trust and democratic resilience. Well-being must be assessed not only for users, but also for societies. The question is no longer how AI and digital environments affect our attention alone, but how they affect our cohesion, understanding and ability to act collectively.
“A further change is the growing recognition that digital well-being cannot rely solely on protective measures, including restrictions, bans or safety features but must actively empower individuals and communities. Concepts such as data self-determination, social license and participatory governance offer an alternative – one that enables agency rather than merely mitigating harm.
“Finally, emerging debates on AI and resilience need to acknowledge plural conceptions of well-being, rooted in diverse cultural contexts rather than one global digital norm. If AI and digital environments increasingly shape how societies function, then digital well-being must be understood as a public interest goal, requiring governance, collective investment and a more expansive vision of what a healthy digital future looks like.”
This essay was written in January 2026 in reply to the question: “AI systems are likely to begin to play a much more significant role in shaping our decisions, work and daily lives. How might individuals and societies embrace, resist and/or struggle with such transformative change? As opportunities and challenges arise due to the positive, neutral and negative ripple effects of digital change, what cognitive, emotional, social and ethical capacities must we cultivate to ensure effective resilience? What practices and resources will enable resilience? What actions must we take right now to reinforce human and systems resilience? What new vulnerabilities might arise and what new coping strategies are important to teach and nurture?” This and 200-plus additional essay responses are included in the 2026 report “Building a Human Resilience Infrastructure for the AI Age.”