Logging Off w/ Adele Walton

Jun 6, 2025

Adele Walton, a British Turkish journalist and online safety advocate, shares her journey from a youth consumed by social media to a campaigner for safer online spaces. She candidly discusses the emotional toll of her sister's loss due to online harms and her motivations for writing *Logging Off*. The conversation delves into the burdens of online perfectionism, the need for trauma-informed design in technology, and the pressing demand for accountability in digital policy, emphasizing the importance of genuine human connections amidst a complex digital landscape.

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INSIGHT

Logging Off Rejects Urgency Culture

Logging off means rejecting the culture of urgency and attention addiction fostered by social media.
Slowing down and setting boundaries leads to reclaiming personal time and autonomy.

ANECDOTE

Selfie Obsession as Control

Adele's teenage years involved obsessively curating the perfect selfie to control her body image.
This was both a coping mechanism and a way to seek validation through social media likes and comments.

ANECDOTE

Teaching Tech to Tony

Adele taught an elderly man, Tony, how to use a smartphone, witnessing digital exclusion firsthand.
This experience exposed her to realities outside her digital native bubble.

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Adele Walton’s new book *Logging Off: The Human Cost of our Digital World* is out NOW — for this week’s episode Alix sat down with her to discuss the book, and what pushed her to write it.

Adele shares her experiences of using social media from age ten, and growing up only ever feeling ‘understood’ by her followers. And now, the constant ‘how can I make content out of this??’ mindset has followed her into adult life.

Adele has been severely effected by online harms through the loss of her sister, and is working to use her lived experiences in her campaigning and advocacy work. The answer for Adele has never been to go full Luddite and reject social media — rather she wants to make online spaces safer for everyone.

Further reading & resources:

Buy Adele’s book: Logging Off: The Human Cost of our Digital World
The Facebook Eye by Nathan Jurgeson — 2012 article from The Atlantic
Smartphone Free Childhood
Ripple — a suicide prevention browser extension

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Adele Zeynep Walton is a British Turkish journalist, online safety campaigner and the author of Logging Off: The Human Cost of Our Digital World. She is a campaigner with Bereaved Families for Online Safety, youth ambassador for People Vs Big Tech, and a founding member of the EU youth movement Ctrl + Alt + Reclaim.She is the founder of Logging Off Club, a community which brings people together offline at phone free events to reconnect with themselves and others across the UK. As a Gen Z who grew up on social media, Adele regularly speaks about digital wellbeing, social connection and rebuilding empathy in a polarised world.Adele has written for The Guardian, The Independent, the i, Dazed, i-D, VICE, Metro, Refinery 29, The Big Issue, Jacobin, Open Democracy, gal-dem, Computer Weekly and more. Her articles have been translated into Brazilian Portuguese, German, Italian, Swedish, Turkish and Spanish, and she has been interviewed on Times Radio, LBC Radio, Sky News, BBC Radio Scotland and Channel 4 News and more. Between 2023-2024 Adele was DAZED's first ever political book columnist, where she has interviewed authors including Naomi Klein, Emma Dabiri, Vicky Spratt and more.