Reclaiming agency when technology disrupts our lives
Creating routines with purpose
Image by rawpixel.com
Some years ago, before the smartphone came out, I checked into a boutique hotel in a small town in the Netherlands. It had a beautiful modern interior with stone surfaces. At the reception desk, I pulled out my laptop for the hotel confirmation number and laid it on the gleaming stone counter while I fumbled for my passport and credit card. In a split second before I could even react, my laptop slid down the imperceptibly sloped stone surface and crashed onto the stone floor.
Watching it fall felt like watching a disaster film scene in slow motion. I panicked, turned it on, and saw a kaleidoscopic mess on the screen. I knew it was bad. I needed my laptop to present slides for a talk in just a few days. A computer repair shop found that only the display was damaged—the hard disk was intact. But in the three long days I had to wait for the screen to be replaced, I was stuck without a computer.
I felt that part of me was severed. My usual methods of coordinating with others or finding information were gone. It took awhile, but I got over the dismay and created a new routine for seeing the city. I turned to a paper map, wandered the winding streets, and discovered unexpected delights.
We are most comfortable when life is predictable and stable—a concept sociologist Anthony Giddens calls ontological security--the confidence we get from routine and continuity. It’s why without my laptop, I felt completely destabilized.
Routines provide grounding. Children develop confidence when they grow up with the stability of routines and consistent structures: a place they can call home, a supportive family, the same school and friends. When my kids visited their Austrian grandmother, her strict routines--set wakeup times, meals, playtime and bedtime--produced surprisingly well-behaved kids. Their routines were predictable, unlike the improvisational life in our own family, where juggling work and personal life left plenty of opportunity for their misbehavior.
When routines are disrupted, even in small ways, the discomfort can be real. My morning routine—wake up, eat breakfast, shower, check email—can be thrown off if the water is suddenly shut off in the apartment building. Last month, a Google Cloud outage interrupted services like Spotify, Discord, and Snapchat, throwing off people’s daily habits worldwide. More serious life events—breakups, moves, job losses—can shatter routines altogether.
The introduction of new technology has always played a powerful role in shaping—and often disrupting—our life routines. Consider how the telephone, the automobile, and television, each rewired our patterns of everyday life. But in the digital age, these changes are happening at an accelerated pace. Smartphones, for example, have changed norms of in-person interactions so thoroughly that checking a device mid-conversation now barely seems rude. Our attention spans have shrunk—they are now down to 47 seconds on average on screens. Sleep routines have changed, with many waking in the night to automatically check their phones.
With the rapid rise of AI, the disruption is growing deeper and more unpredictable. The ways we write, learn, and even engage in creative projects like composing music, are being transformed.
Our ontological security is steadily eroding in our digital age.
Familiar routines are disappearing, and new ones are forming, often shaped by systems we don’t fully understand or control. Here are just a few examples:
The pressure to keep up with emails and Slack messages breaks focused work patterns.
Scrolling through shortform content like TikTok fragments our attention.
Children now play sports on PlayStations rather than outside.
Constantly changing algorithms affect what shows up in our feeds.
A recent AI tool developed by Microsoft, found to be four times more accurate than doctors, will transform patient-doctor routines.
Routines naturally change and evolve, shifting with circumstances. Some changes are triggered by major events like a hurricane, while others are sparked by minor events, like my smashed laptop. But the influence of technology on our routines has crept up on us like a fog rolling in. Many of us are struggling to define and make sense of our new routines and what they mean in our lives.
We are at a crossroads: we can passively adapt to the routines that technology nudges us toward, or we can actively shape new ones that better serve our needs.
Giving up technology isn’t realistic. And while trying to change the larger systems that disrupt our routines—like the tech industry--is necessary, it’s a slow process. A more immediate path though is available to us: taking agency. This means reclaiming our power to form new, intentional routines using technology as a tool rather than letting it dictate the rhythms of our lives.
We saw the power of agency during the pandemic. Our familiar order was upended, but many turned to digital tools to rebuild routines: working from home, attending classes online, connecting with friends and therapists over Zoom, ordering food with apps. These new routines helped maintain a sense of order amidst the disorder. And after the pandemic, some of these new patterns continued, like remote work. According to the Flex Index, 67% of companies now offer workplace flexibility.
As new technologies continue to emerge, we will face even more disruptions to our familiar routines. The real question is: how will we respond? Do we let technology steer us, or do we steer it?
Taking agency means consciously shaping routines that work for us. You can start with small changes. If you’re unhappy with your daily social media routine, then create a new routine: call a friend, or better yet, meet in person. If your sleep suffers because you check your smartphone, develop a new routine of putting it in another room. If your doctor relegates too much decision-making to an AI tool, ask her for an explanation of the results and ensure that her human perspective remains part of the conversation.
Technology should help us build ontological security—our sense of stability and continuity—and not undermine it. And that requires intention and agency.
Our relationship with technology isn’t fixed; we shape our routines through our choices and our awareness. Disruptions are inevitable, but they also offer opportunities to pause, reflect, and reimagine routines that can ground us.
When we recognize our power to adapt and build new patterns that reflect our values and needs, we turn technology from a source of instability into a resource for creating a more intentional, grounded life. Ontological security doesn’t come from resisting change—it comes from engaging with it, deliberately and with purpose.
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You can read more about how we can take agency in our digital era in my book Attention Span, now out in paperback with new exercises.