Healthy Users: The Governance of Well-being on Social Media

In this book talk, Niall Docherty will present empirical and theoretical findings from Healthy Users (2025, UC Press) to show how living well online is not as simple as it seems

Location: LT G.12, Clothworkers Building North

The psychological and well-being risks of social media are commonly known and well understood. So far, however, no meaningful political regulation or change in platform business models have dealt with the problem head on. Up against the stated toxicity of platforms, individual users are instead encouraged to adopt healthy scrolling habits and practices of conscious use - by platforms and governments alike. All it takes is a little self-discipline. In this book talk, Niall Docherty will present empirical and theoretical findings from Healthy Users (2025, UC Press) to show how this individualised focus functions as a contingent mode of governance, combining logics of neoliberalism, responsibilization, practices of psychologized person-making, and persuasive capitalist interfaces. Because of this, this talk will show how the problem of social media well-being is not as simple as it seems. Instead, its current controversies can lead us toward much more fundamental questions about what it means to live well online today, the restrictions this may impose upon us, and the ways in which we may overcome them if we so wish.

Dr Niall Docherty is a Lecturer in Data, AI and Society in the School of Information, Journalism and Communication at The University of Sheffield. His work explores the philosophical and political stakes of digital well-being, appearing in interdisciplinary venues such as ACM CHI, Information, Communication and Society, Science as Culture, Business and Society, and Social Media + Society. Previously, Niall was a postdoc in the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research New England, and Visiting Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy. In March 2026, Niall will begin an AHRC Catalyst funded project exploring the epistemological foundations and practical limits of technological control.