11/16/2026
06:00 PM - 08:30 PM | Weizenbaum-Institut, Hardenbergstraße 32, 10623 Berlin
Beyond Harm: Mobile Communication in Everyday Life
Public debates about smartphones increasingly focus on their potential harms: distraction, dependency, declining well-being, and social isolation. But what gets lost when we understand mobile communication primarily through the lens of risk?
This book talk brings together two leading mobile communication scholars to explore the other—and often more complex—side of mobile life. Adriana de Souza e Silva (Northeastern University) will introduce Mobile Networked Creativity, which examines how marginalized communities use mobile technologies, networks, and spaces to navigate precarity and create new forms of collective agency.
Jeffrey Boase (University of Toronto) will discuss The Digital Bind, which presents a comprehensive empirical study that explores the social implications of constant connectivity for family, work, and friendship. Drawing on the results of this study, he will discuss how the apps and devices that we use to navigate contemporary social life have become embedded in our lives and our relationships.
Following short introductions to their work, the authors will join Annika Baumann and Jakob Ohme from the Weizenbaum Institute for a fireside conversation about the role of mobile technologies in everyday life. Moving beyond simple narratives of either harm or empowerment, we will ask how mobile communication constrains and enables agency, relationships, creativity, and participation—and what this means for how we study mobile life today.