Author(s): Tanya Goodin

Personal Development

What are you willing to lose for a connected life?

We lead disoriented digital lives that wreak havoc on our offline existence. With these two worlds inextricably linked, strange new social norms and harmful habits are warping the very fabric of our daily lives. Friendships, wealth, even our ethics, are each being tested as we precariously balance technology's benefits against its mounting cost. My Brain Has Too Many Tabs Open explores the escalating impact of classic digital dilemmas and offers a toolkit for anyone who has lost their way.

Digital detox expert and eternal optimist Tanya Goodin is on a mission to help us get to grips with our brave new digital world and exist in it happily. Through client confessions and eye-opening research, Tanya investigates our tech-versus-life experiences, unravels their surprising and devastating consequences, and tells us how to do better. Whether you are dealing with a partner who is mindlessly scrolling rather than listening to you (phubbing), flooding social media with your child's image (sharenting), or panicking whenever you misplace your phone (nomophobia), learn how to recognise and label dependent behaviours - both of yourself and others - and find actionable answers in this book.

Complete with diagnostic guides to tell-tale signs and a manifesto for improved digital citizenship, this habit-improving bible offers the conversation-starting vocabulary we so desperately need to understand and untangle our relationship with technology for a more humane world.

Among the scenarios included are:

• Doomscrolling - endlessly consuming doom-and-gloom news, a habit perpetuated by attention-seeking algorithms that triggers anxiety and depression; 


• Comparison Culture - 52% of teens feel less confident because of feeling inadequate when comparing their social media profiles with other people's; 


• Vampire Shoppers - dead-of-night, sleepless shoppers who spend a third more than daytime shoppers, and range from nocturnal gamers to exhausted parents; 


• Digital Legacies- before the end of the century there could be 4.9 billion deceased internet users, yet only 7% of us want our online profiles maintained after death; 


• Cybercondria - Dr Google is causing a wave of misdiagnoses from anxious searchers, with 35% of all US adults among this number;


• Clicktivism - also known as slacktivism, is virtue signalling through performative alignment with online causes, but can it ever amount to meaningful change?