Alumni news

Adele Zeynep Walton (International Development, 2017) Photo credit: Jesse Mwenda

Adele Zeynep Walton, a University of Sussex alumna, freelance journalist, and campaigner, lost her sister to online harms. Motivated to analyse the digital world and the potentially negative impact that it has on our lives, Adele has secured a book deal to publish her first book; Logging Off: The Human Cost of Our Digital World.

“I studied International Development at Sussex. Initially, I thought about studying nursing as I've always been a people person, but during a placement at Southampton General hospital I realised I couldn’t even watch people being given injections, so that was a no go! I was drawn to Sussex as I knew that it was ranked number one in the world for Development Studies, and I loved the library there. It's quite an iconic building, but it wasn’t just the architecture that attracted me – it was the range of books. I've always been a massive bookworm, so it's quite a full circle moment to be talking about my first book.

“The genesis of my book Logging Off: The Human Cost of our Digital World came about when I met a pensioner called Tony. I noticed an advert in the community press saying, “intelligent pensioner requires smartphone tuition.” I immediately felt that I wanted to help – it just seemed like just the right thing to do. So, I replied to the advert and met Tony. We're still friends today. Over the years, I've taught him how to use his phone, but when I met him he didn't even know how to turn it on, let alone look up bus times, use maps, text, or call people.

“That experience got me thinking that the digital world really is a double-edged sword. I began to connect the dots about things that, as a Gen Z, I hadn’t before. As someone who had grown up online, I’d never really thought about how people who aren’t tech savvy manage to, for example, access their bank accounts now that so many high street banks are closing. Meeting Tony encouraged me to look beyond my own experience of the digital world, which in many ways has been a beneficial one, certainly in terms of launching my career as a freelance journalist and making professional connections.

“In October of that same year, I lost my sister to online harms. That was the trigger to write my book. It got me thinking that death is the worst case scenario that you can experience as a result of the lack of safeguards that we have in the digital world, the speed that the digital world is changing, and because the related legislation is not able to keep up. I wondered why no one was really talking about it, except tech bosses or people in the tech industry. The public at large doesn’t really have a space in which to talk about their concerns, their experiences, and how worried and fearful they are about the digital world and social media.

“Logging Off focuses on the lived experiences that are arising due to the digital world. It examines how our lives are being shaped by the invisible forces of social media and algorithms, and all the digital things that we often hear about but don't quite understand how they work. The book clearly maps out what the consequences are of those forces, and what the solutions are to preventing the harms that are unfolding.

“If you've got any fear or anxiety about the digital world or about social media, whether it's about your workplace becoming digitised and your work being managed by algorithms rather than your manager, or your kids being addicted to their smartphones, I think this book is going to fuel your desire to rebuild the digital world.

“It’s not just about the technical aspects of redesigning or reworking technology, it's about reclaiming the human values of connection and socialising that social media companies have promoted to us. Those are values that are really important to all of us, but which aren’t being enhanced by social media. If anything, social media is fuelling the opposite. So, what I really want us to be able to do is go back to those human values that were at the root of why we all jumped to engage with digital technologies in the first place and why we were so excited and captivated by them.

“I want us to slow down our adoption and embrace of technology. I think technology is now being sold as the silver bullet to every problem. Collectively we really need to ask, “do we actually need this?” because a lot of the harms are arising thanks to our relentless embrace of these technologies. Of course, this is all in the tech companies’ interests, but often it's not in ours.

“The hardest thing about writing the book was trying not to get bogged down and overwhelmed. Every day there are new developments in the digital world, be it technological innovations or online harms and, initially, I felt like my book had to cover it all. Thankfully, an author friend reminded me that people don't read books to get the most up-to-date information on a subject, they read books to find out how to think about it. If people trust my voice as a writer, then that is what’s going to change their perspectives.

“I’m enormously proud of being offered a book deal. I’m also proud to be a member of the group ‘Bereaved Families for Online Safety.’ There’s so much stigma around mental wellbeing and young people’s mental health. As a family, we have been fearful about speaking out about our experiences, but I know that by doing so we might prevent other people from slipping down the rabbit hole of harm that has been created by the online world.”

Interview by Emma Wigmore.

Adele's book will publish in hardback, audio, and ebook on 27 March 2025. You can pre-order it here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/logging-off/adele-zeynep-walton/9781398722927.

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