Greg Pollock in Connection, Language and Family at Cyborgolgy critiques the view that “technology” or “social media” or “the digital” have impinged on an authentic mode of life that previously existed and which we retroactively call “offline.” He says that:

Saying that “online” is a modality means, as many at Cyborgology and elsewhere have argued before, that “being online” is not something that is either on or off, true or false, but always there in varying degrees of attention, intensity, and praxis. It also means that being online is not zero sum with being offline. Pulling out your phone doesn’t flip you over from offline to online. The phone was sending and receiving data while out of sight. Your brain was also aware of the potential for digital communication at a background level. Engagement with the digital modality can be more or less or intense, and regulating that modality of being is not a bad thing–it is probably a necessary practice in the care of the self, just as other modalities have been in the past.