Media is, in one way or another, with us all of the time.

With a 24-hour news cycle, push notifications on our smartphones, Google Home, Alexa and Siri listening for our beck and call, and social media provoking our fear of missing out, media can be hard to escape. So why not just opt out?

Louise Woodstock, an associate professor and chair of media and communication studies at Ursinus College, researches “media resisters,” a group of people—admittedly in the minority—who are voluntarily logging off from the inundation of information technology.

Louise Woodstock, chair of the Media and Communications Studies department is seen here on campus with a student.“There’s so much in our media-sphere that I think people consider media as inherent and integral to our lived experience,” Woodstock says. “It’s not as if we go about our lives and sometimes we’re paying attention to media and sometimes we’re not. It infuses and informs so much of our daily lives.”

“Media comes at us in a variety of ways every day and even when it’s not, it’s right there, at the push of a button or via vocal command, for us to consume,” she says.

The idea that there are people intentionally filtering or limiting how they engage with media was attractive for Woodstock to pursue in academic research. So, she conducted a series of qualitative interviews with people “intentionally and significantly limiting media consumption,” which she says carries a different meaning to different people.

“Some just decided they weren’t going to log on to Facebook for a while. That’s a low bar,” she says. “Others made much more drastic decisions. I talked to people who don’t have televisions at home or who don’t have cell phones. They are living in a way that’s less normative.”

So why do they do it? For one thing, it’s easy to get stressed. A 2017 American Psychological Association report reveals that two-thirds of Americans say they are stressed about the future of our nation. And the constant barrage of news items and tweets that bring forth those stressors are enough to make some want to resist engagement.

But Woodstock says for resisters, avoiding media isn’t about hiding from the bad. “It has more to do with taking back control and being proactive about media use.”

In her article, “Media Resistance: Opportunities for Practice Theory and New Media Research,” published in 2014 in the International Journal of Communication, Woodstock writes, “These practices assume that, like detoxing from sugar, our systems will recalibrate, asserting control or exercising choice over when and how to engage with media; and become more attuned as we consume more measured doses of media, or at least gain greater self-awareness of the impact, often construed as negative, of a life infused by real-time media.”

“It’s a self-protective move,” she says. “It has to do with a desire to be more intentional with your thoughts rather than feeling as though there is an encroachment of information and messaging from the world around you.”

And that, Woodstock surprisingly argues, could lead to a more engaged, more active citizenry.

Woodstock disputes the idea that media resistance gives rise to a less knowledgeable population. In a 2013 scholarly paper, she writes, “We would expect that people who avoid news would be less knowledgeable and less politically active, yet the news resisters interviewed here openly and passionately spoke about their commitment to social and cultural issues.”

“They are voting. A lot of them are active in their local communities, whether it be with school associations or volunteer work or religious communities,” she says. “Whatever it might be, it’s not as if they are shutting down. People feel more optimistic and motivated as a result. They feel like they have more to give back.”

When it comes to interpersonal relationships, and phone use in particular—like texting and social media—many people Woodstock interviewed said they are concerned with how technology impacts interpersonal relationships. Additionally, a reliance on technology— especially “the Internet of things,” home appliances and cars that connect and exchange data—encourage an “outsourcing of our knowledge and memories,” she says, and a “lack of focus” as in-person conversations take a back seat to those simultaneously occurring via our phones.

The culture of advertising, marketing and “cool” suggest that the use of new communication technologies positively correlates with desirable characteristics—it’s advantageous to be an “innovator” or an “early adopter” of these technologies, she says. And of course, being an early adopter of new communication technologies is also positively correlated with socioeconomic class.

For the resisters, technology and social media use can be hampering. It can be superficial and lead to miscommunication.

“The basic premise of what we all want with interpersonal communication is connection, real connection,” Woodstock says. “These tools are marketed as enabling us to connect more and in different ways, and indeed the technological capacities are remarkably powerful.”

“But when it comes to technologies and humans, it is always about the interaction between them. Media resisters’ experiences— that technologies sometimes have the opposite effect and that positive personal and social benefits result from less and more intentional media use—lead them to say that to truly connect, you first have to disconnect.”