Digital Silence
Level 1, Unit 3 

Unit 3: Digital Silence

This unit invites students into a critical examination of how technology shapes not only their attention but their very consciousness—exploring the revolutionary potential of intentional digital disconnection. Rather than positioning technology as inherently problematic, we investigate how power operates through digital spaces and how strategic "unplugging" can become an act of resistance against systems designed for constant consumption.

Through a collective technology audit, students will document not just how much time they spend with devices, but how digital engagement patterns reflect and reinforce broader systems of privilege, access, and control. They'll analyze whose interests are served when attention becomes a commodity, questioning the corporate architectures that profit from their continuous connectivity.

Students will engage in increasingly extended tech-free experiences, noticing how different bodies and minds respond to digital silence. These embodied investigations challenge the normalized expectation of perpetual availability, creating alternative possibilities for connection—both with themselves and with others.

The journey culminates in students developing personalized digital boundaries that honor their unique circumstances while collectively imagining new relationships to technology that prioritize wellbeing over productivity, depth over breadth, and intentionality over compulsion.

Key Explorations:

• Mapping personal technology ecosystems and their influence on cognitive autonomy

• Examining digital silence as both privilege and resistance

• Investigating FOMO (fear of missing out) as a manufactured state serving commercial interests

• Creating intentional tech-free zones as liberatory spaces

• Reimagining digital engagement through a lens of collective care rather than individual consumption

This unit positions students not as passive consumers of technology but as critical agents capable of transforming their relationship with digital spaces through the revolutionary act of deliberate silence.