Taxonomy of Digital Technology Nonusers - Who They Are, Why They Refuse, and What It Costs Them

Introduction

Scholarly taxonomies of technology non-use have treated it as an individual phenomenon — a personal choice, a skills deficit, an access barrier. The foundational work by Wyatt (2003) classified nonusers along axes of voluntariness and temporal status: resisters who never adopted, rejecters who walked away, the excluded who couldn’t get in, the expelled who were pushed out [1]. Satchell and Dourish (2009) added texture: lagging adoption, active resistance, disenchantment, disenfranchisement, displacement, disinterest — arguing that non-use is “active, meaningful, motivated, considered, structured, specific, nuanced, directed, and productive” [2].

These frameworks captured something real. But they were built for a world where technology was optional — where non-use was a position you could occupy without losing access to your bank account, your government, your doctor, or your job.

That world no longer exists.

The taxonomy below integrates insights from Wyatt, Satchell and Dourish, Ranchordás, and the emerging right-to-analog-participation literature with documented evidence of structural coercion, surveillance infrastructure, and institutional digital mandates. It covers digital technology broadly — smartphones, internet services, digital identity systems, platform-dependent services — because the harms of forced digitization do not respect device categories.

The taxonomy is organized by primary motivation for non-use or restricted use, and each category identifies: who occupies it, why, whether their position is voluntary, what structural consequences they face, and what legal or institutional protections (if any) exist.

Summary Table

The Taxonomy (Detailed)

Category 1: Surveillance-Aware Refusers

Who: Individuals who understand how digital tracking infrastructure operates and decline to participate in it. This includes people who have read the technical literature on carrier-level tracking (CSLI, SS7 exploitation, IMSI catchers, SIM card exploits), app-level data collection (SDK embedding, real-time bidding bidstream harvesting), and government procurement of commercially available location data — and who have concluded that the privacy cost of carrying a connected device is unacceptable.

Why: Their refusal is a rational response to documented institutional behavior, not a subjective feeling about technology. Carrier databases generate location data as a structural byproduct of network operation; users have no technical ability to prevent this short of powering off the device [3]. The advertising ecosystem broadcasts user data to potentially dozens of bidders in each of approximately 178 trillion annual RTB auctions in the U.S. and Europe [4]. Government agencies — FBI, ICE, CBP, DEA, DIA, IRS, Secret Service — purchase this commercially available data to bypass warrant requirements established by Carpenter v. United States (2018) [5]. FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed in March 2026 Senate testimony that the FBI is actively purchasing location data from data brokers [6].

Voluntariness: Voluntary in principle. Structurally punished in practice.

Structural consequences: Banks block VoIP numbers for SMS two-factor authentication, effectively mandating carrier-SIM relationships to access financial services [7]. NIST guidance classifies VoIP as inferior to SMS for authentication despite documented evidence that SIM swap attacks ($26 million in FBI-reported losses in 2024 alone) make mobile numbers less secure than password-protected VoIP accounts [7]. No regulatory requirement compels financial institutions to offer TOTP or hardware key alternatives. The result: participation in modern financial, healthcare, and government systems requires a smartphone, an active wireless carrier relationship, and submission to whatever data collection the chosen platform performs [7].

Legal protections: Effectively none. The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act passed the House 219-199 in April 2024 but has not passed the Senate [8]. Senator Wyden’s March 2026 Government Surveillance Reform Act would require warrants for data broker purchases but has not become law [6]. The practice of warrantless government purchase of location data remains legal.

Scholarly mapping: Extends Satchell and Dourish’s “active resistance” but with a structural rather than attitudinal basis. Their framework treats resistance as an individual disposition; this category describes resistance as a rational response to documented institutional surveillance.

Category 2: Communally Regulated Restrictors

Who: Members of communities where religious, cultural, or institutional authority regulates technology use. The most extensively documented case is the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community’s kosher phone system, but Buddhist monastic communities, Amish and related Anabaptist groups, and some intentional communities also fall here.

Why: The motivation is communal preservation — protecting shared values, social structures, and ways of life from technological disruption. Ultra-Orthodox rabbinical authorities partner with Israeli cellular providers to offer kosher phones stripped of internet, messaging, and social media, using distinctive area code prefixes (050-41, 052-71) that function as social markers: parents must provide kosher numbers when enrolling children in schools [9]. Buddhist forest monasteries like Wat Pah Nanachat instruct visitors to lock electronic devices in the monastery safe, characterizing them as creating “a worldly atmosphere which impinges on the simple, meditative lifestyle” [10]. In Thich Nhat Hanh’s communities, monks are not allowed to access the internet independently [10].

Voluntariness: Communally regulated — neither purely individual choice nor purely imposed. Members participate in communities whose norms they have (in most cases) chosen to join, but the norms themselves carry social enforcement mechanisms. The ultra-Orthodox dual-phone culture — a Haredi businessman told The Times of Israel he was “one of thousands of Haredim who keep a kosher phone for communal purposes and a non-kosher one as well” — demonstrates the tension between communal regulation and individual desire [11].

Structural consequences: The kosher phone system depends on aging 2G/3G networks that carriers want to phase out; United Torah Judaism has demanded infrastructure preservation, stating that “having phones that are only for picking up and calling, instead of having access to the Internet and all the rest, is very important for us” [12]. The July 2024 Knesset vote (60-53) formally codified the kosher phone system in Israeli law, rolling back consumer protections to grant carriers legal grounds to maintain restricted plans and giving Haredi institutions the ability to verify device compliance [9]. This legislation also required carriers to maintain access to government hotlines and emergency numbers, partially addressing criticism that kosher plans blocked access to domestic violence and LGBTQ support lines [9][13].

Legal protections: The July 2024 Israeli legislation is, as far as this research has found, the only law in the world that formally supports a community’s right to restrict smartphone functionality [9]. No equivalent exists elsewhere.

Scholarly mapping: Falls outside Wyatt’s individual-choice framework entirely. Satchell and Dourish’s categories assume individual actors making individual decisions. Communally regulated restriction is a collective choice with collective infrastructure — a fundamentally different phenomenon.

Category 3: Individually Motivated Spiritual/Temporal Restrictors

Who: Individuals who limit technology use for personal spiritual, wellness, or philosophical reasons — typically on a periodic or cyclical basis rather than permanently. This includes Ramadan digital fasters, Catholic Jubilee smartphone abstainers, Sabbath observers, personal digital detox practitioners, and individuals who periodically abandon social media for mental health reasons.

Why: The motivation is internal and voluntary — a felt need for spiritual discipline, attention restoration, or psychological relief. Imam Shadee Elmasry switched from a smartphone to a flip phone during Ramadan after experiencing physical symptoms — dizziness and illness — from constant connectivity, characterizing smartphones as “weapons of mass distraction” that are “spiritually killing us” [14]. The 2025 Jubilee Year decree included smartphone abstinence among recognized forms of penance for plenary indulgences, marking the first integration of smartphone fasting into Catholic sacramental practice [15]. IslamOnline proposed “digital seclusion” — a complete offline period — as parallel to itikaf, the traditional practice of physical seclusion for worship [16].

Voluntariness: Voluntary. Temporal non-use is the most socially legible and least structurally punished form of technology restriction.

Structural consequences: Minimal for temporal restriction. The Ramadan paradox illustrates a tension: Ramadan is simultaneously the period of greatest spiritual discourse about smartphone detox and one of the highest periods of smartphone engagement globally. In the METAP region (22 Muslim-majority countries), shopping app installs grew 28% during Ramadan 2024 compared to the annual average, with the UAE seeing a 126% increase [17]. This suggests temporal restriction operates alongside, not instead of, commercial digital engagement.

Legal protections: Right-to-disconnect legislation in ~20 countries provides legal cover for temporal work-related disconnection [18]. Religious temporal restriction (Sabbath, Ramadan) carries strong cultural legitimacy but no specific legal protection.

Scholarly mapping: Closest to Satchell and Dourish’s “disenchantment” — but disenchantment implies loss of faith in technology, whereas spiritual restriction often coexists with pragmatic technology use outside restricted periods.

Category 4: Medically Impaired Users

Who: Individuals for whom interaction with phones or digital devices triggers clinical symptoms — anxiety disorders, phobic responses, or physiological harm. This includes people with telephobia (fear of making/receiving calls), phonophobia (fear of loud sounds including phone rings), nomophobia in its severe form (pathological anxiety when separated from phones), and individuals whose existing conditions (PTSD, panic disorder, sensory processing disorders) are exacerbated by device interactions.

Why: The phone itself — or specific phone functions — triggers measurable physiological harm. Telephobia produces panic disorder symptoms: rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, trembling, nausea, and hyperventilation [19]. A 2019 UK survey found 70% of millennials versus 40% of baby boomers experience anxious thoughts when phones ring [20]. Among U.S. medical students, 9% demonstrate moderate to severe telephobia [21]. A 2025 meta-analysis of 43 studies (n=36,656) across 18 countries found 94% pooled prevalence of some degree of nomophobia, with 21% experiencing severe symptoms including tachycardia, respiratory alterations, trembling, and perspiration [22]. These symptoms represent HPA axis activation and autonomic nervous system engagement — definitional features of phobic responses with documented cardiovascular implications [23].

Voluntariness: Involuntary. Clinical conditions are not chosen, and the physiological responses are not under conscious control.

Structural consequences: Employment impairment — the Anxiety & Depression Association reports that anxiety impacts 56% of workers’ performance [24]. Social isolation. Inability to use phone-dependent services (telehealth, phone-based customer service, voice-based 2FA). No recognized basis for workplace or service-delivery accommodation equivalent to physical disability protections. A person with documented telephobia who is required to conduct job interviews by phone receives no legal protection.

Legal protections: None specific to phone-related phobias. General disability accommodation frameworks (ADA in the U.S., Equality Act 2010 in the UK) could theoretically apply if phone phobias meet diagnostic thresholds, but no case law establishes this application.

Scholarly mapping: Maps to Satchell and Dourish’s “disenfranchisement” — but disenfranchisement in their framework means socioeconomic barriers, not medical ones. Wyatt’s “excluded” captures involuntary non-use but assumes the barrier is external (cost, infrastructure), not internal (clinical condition). Neither taxonomy anticipated that the device itself could be a source of clinical harm.

Category 5: Economically Excluded

Who: Individuals who cannot afford devices, data plans, electricity, or the combination required for meaningful digital participation. This is the largest category globally and the most extensively documented in the digital divide literature.

Why: Cost. A smartphone plus monthly data plan represents a significant share of income for billions of people worldwide. In India, despite 95% Aadhaar biometric ID saturation, unique mobile subscriptions reach only 55% of the population — individuals without phones frequently register neighbors’ or relatives’ numbers, compromising the identity system’s integrity [25]. Feature phones prevalent among rural and low-income Indian communities face SMS delivery failures due to limited storage, and many users lack the digital literacy to manage phone memory [25].

Voluntariness: Involuntary. Economic exclusion is not a choice.

Structural consequences: Exclusion from digital government services, banking, healthcare portals, employment applications, educational resources, and social safety net programs. When India’s Aadhaar authentication system experienced outages, millions couldn’t access banking services or withdraw welfare benefits [26]. The digitization-by-default of public services is, as Ranchordás argues, “currently leaving many individuals behind” and “not only reproducing longstanding socioeconomic inequalities but also placing itself as a standalone source of exclusion” [27].

Legal protections: The EU’s European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles (December 2022) states it is “without prejudice to ‘offline policies’, such as having access to key public services offline” [28] — but the Declaration is non-binding. France’s 2018 “right to make a mistake in good faith” allows citizens one administrative error without penalty, a small accommodation to digital complexity [29]. No jurisdiction mandates that essential services maintain fully functional analog alternatives.

Scholarly mapping: This is Wyatt’s “excluded” and Satchell and Dourish’s “disenfranchised” — the most well-mapped category in existing taxonomies. What the existing literature underweights is the acceleration of consequences as services go digital-by-default.

Category 6: Competence and Literacy Excluded

Who: Individuals who lack the cognitive, educational, linguistic, or experiential skills to use digital technology meaningfully — even when devices and connectivity are available. This includes elderly populations unfamiliar with touchscreens, people with low literacy, non-native-language speakers navigating interfaces in dominant languages, people with cognitive disabilities, and people whose prior technology experience does not transfer to current interfaces.

Why: Digital literacy is not a single skill but a complex of competencies: navigating interfaces, evaluating information credibility, managing privacy settings, troubleshooting errors, understanding terms of service. A Finnish study of elderly participants (aged 65-82) found that non-users who choose not to use technology “also need to be considered in society by developing new service solutions for all” [30]. The participants criticized banks and public authorities for decreasing face-to-face services and forcing clients to use online services, stating: “There must be an alternative way to manage daily routines like banking” [30].

Voluntariness: Mixed. Some individuals lack skills involuntarily (cognitive impairment, educational deprivation). Others have skills but find digital interfaces sufficiently frustrating, opaque, or alien that they prefer non-use — a position closer to Satchell and Dourish’s “disinterest” but driven by interface hostility rather than indifference.

Structural consequences: Dependence on intermediaries (family members, social workers, commercial services like TurboTax) who may not serve the person’s interests [31]. Loss of autonomy in managing finances, health, government obligations. Vulnerability to fraud when intermediaries are untrustworthy. Exclusion from time-sensitive services (appointment booking, benefit applications with deadlines).

Legal protections: The German Data Protection Conference (DSK) adopted a late 2024 resolution urging that digital accounts or apps for essential services should not exclude anyone, noting this affects people unable to use digital technology “due to physical or mental impairment, age, lack of technology or lack of resources” [32]. Heribert Prantl argued at the DSK symposium that Germany’s Basic Law prohibition of discrimination (Article 3) should extend to “a fundamental right to analogue access to services of general interest” [32]. This has not been enacted.

Scholarly mapping: Overlaps with Wyatt’s “excluded” and Satchell and Dourish’s “disenfranchised,” but adds the dimension of people who have access but cannot use it — what Ranchordás calls being “connected but still excluded” [33].

Category 7: Infrastructure Excluded

Who: People living in areas without reliable cellular coverage, electricity, or internet connectivity. This includes rural and remote communities globally, populations in conflict zones, and communities where infrastructure has been damaged or never built.

Why: The infrastructure does not exist. No amount of individual skill, money, or willingness can overcome the absence of a cell tower or power grid.

Voluntariness: Involuntary. Infrastructure exclusion is imposed by geography, governance failures, and market decisions about where to invest.

Structural consequences: Complete exclusion from digital services, including emergency services increasingly dependent on digital infrastructure. The Church of England signed a 2018 accord with the UK government to support mobile phone infrastructure in churches serving poorly connected rural areas, viewing “equality of digital access” as consistent with its mission of service [34]. Ultra-Orthodox communities face a variant: their kosher phones depend on 2G/3G networks being phased out by carriers pursuing newer, more profitable technologies [12].

Legal protections: ITU and UN SDG 9 commitments to “provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries” [35]. The EU Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles commits to ensuring everyone has “access to affordable and high-speed digital connectivity” [28]. These are aspirational, not enforceable.

Scholarly mapping: Wyatt’s “excluded” in its purest form. The least contested category — everyone agrees infrastructure exclusion is a problem. The disagreement is over remedy: whether the solution is building more infrastructure (extending digital reach) or maintaining analog alternatives (preserving non-digital pathways).

Category 8: Ideological Refusers

Who: Individuals whose technology refusal is grounded in explicit philosophical, political, environmental, or anti-capitalist commitments. This includes technology critics who refuse participation on principle, environmental objectors to the resource extraction and e-waste generated by device production, anti-capitalist refusers who reject the commercial surveillance model, and cultural critics who see digital technology as inherently dehumanizing.

Why: Mark Boyle, who lived without modern technology and wrote about it for the Guardian, described his choice: “With all the switches, buttons, websites, vehicles, devices, entertainment, apps, power tools, gizmos, service providers, comforts, and conveniences surrounding me, I found there was almost nothing left for me to do for myself” [36]. This is refusal as a positive project — constructing an alternative way of life — not merely avoidance of harm.

Voluntariness: Voluntary. This is the category most squarely within existing taxonomies’ framework.

Structural consequences: Social marginalization. Employment barriers in industries that assume digital participation. Loss of access to services. But ideological refusers typically accept these consequences as part of their commitment — unlike surveillance-aware refusers (Category 1), who may want to participate in society but refuse the surveillance cost, ideological refusers are often building alternative social structures.

Legal protections: None specific. General rights to freedom of belief and expression protect the holding of anti-technology views but not the practice of living without technology in a society that increasingly mandates it.

Scholarly mapping: Wyatt’s “resisters” and Satchell and Dourish’s “active resistance.” The best-mapped category. What existing taxonomies miss is the distinction between ideological refusal (technology is wrong) and surveillance-aware refusal (technology is dangerous) — the first is a value judgment, the second is a risk assessment.

Category 9: Disenchanted Rejecters

Who: Former technology users who adopted digital tools, experienced harm — addiction, attention fragmentation, relationship damage, mental health deterioration, loss of valued analog practices — and deliberately abandoned or downgraded their use.

Why: Direct personal experience of technology’s costs. The documentary “Sing Me a Song” (2020) chronicles how smartphones transformed life at a remote Bhutanese monastery: young monks became absorbed in video games and social media, with one stating “I’m too far from the Buddha now” [37]. A June 2025 article in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review framed the attention economy as a manifestation of Mara — the Buddhist personification of temptation — with tech companies described as helping Mara “in a million subtle and not so subtle ways to pull us back toward base impulses” [38]. An academic who spent four weeks at sea without devices reported that “the time on that ship taught me there is a whole other side to life, the non-digital side, that gets pushed aside by the ubiquitous screen” [39].

Voluntariness: Voluntary, following involuntary harm. The initial adoption was voluntary; the harm was not; the rejection is a response to experienced harm.

Structural consequences: Same as Category 1 — loss of 2FA-dependent services, social isolation, employment barriers. But rejecters face an additional social cost: having to explain why they stopped using technology that everyone around them considers essential. Resisters (Category 8) have a coherent narrative; rejecters are often perceived as eccentric, anti-social, or unable to cope.

Legal protections: None specific to technology rejection. Right-to-disconnect laws (Category 11) protect temporal disconnection in employment contexts but not permanent rejection.

Scholarly mapping: Wyatt’s “rejecters” and Satchell and Dourish’s “disenchantment.” The most precisely mapped category after economic exclusion.

Category 10: Structurally Coerced Users

Who: People who would prefer not to use digital technology — or to use it far less — but who are compelled to by institutional requirements they cannot circumvent. This includes people required to use smartphones for 2FA to access banking; employees required to be reachable by phone or messaging platforms; students required to use digital platforms for coursework; patients required to use digital portals for healthcare; citizens required to use digital identity systems (Aadhaar, eID) for government services; welfare recipients required to interact with automated digital systems to maintain benefits.

Why: Not because they want to. Because the alternative — losing access to banking, employment, education, healthcare, government services, or social benefits — is worse than the surveillance, cost, cognitive burden, or anxiety that technology use imposes on them.

This category does not appear in any existing taxonomy. Wyatt’s framework assumes non-use is possible. Satchell and Dourish’s categories describe positions of non-use — why people don’t use technology. Neither accounts for people forced into use against their preference. Yet this may be the largest and fastest-growing category, as digital-by-default policies proliferate globally.

Voluntariness: Coerced. The appearance of choice — “you can always go to the branch” — erodes as analog alternatives are withdrawn. Ranchordás and Scarcella document how “the price of the convenience offered by automation is different, depending on who you are”: for tech-savvy citizens, digital government is convenient; for vulnerable citizens, “automation has failed to promote equalitarian access to public services” [31].

Structural consequences: This is the category where the consequences of non-use are so severe that the person capitulates. The 2FA analysis documents the lock-in: banks choose SMS 2FA as path of least resistance, block VoIP to reduce fraud liability, and offer no TOTP or hardware key alternatives. NIST guidance treats VoIP as inferior. Carriers profit from mandatory subscriptions. SMS aggregators profit from message volume. No regulation requires non-SMS alternatives. The result is “a de facto mandate that participation in modern financial and healthcare systems requires a smartphone capable of eSIM/Wi-Fi calling, an active wireless carrier relationship, and submission to whichever data collection the chosen platform performs” [7].

The Indian case makes this starkest: Aadhaar covers 95% of the population but unique mobile subscriptions reach only 55%. The gap means hundreds of millions of people must borrow or share others’ phone numbers to authenticate for government benefits — a structural coercion that compromises both dignity and data integrity [25].

Legal protections: Almost none. The EU Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles preserves offline access to “key public services” in principle [28], but this is non-binding. The German DSK resolution urges analog alternatives for essential services [32]. Belgium has established anti-discrimination legal precedents upholding offline alternatives [40]. No jurisdiction mandates that banks, employers, or healthcare providers offer fully functional non-digital pathways.

Scholarly mapping: No mapping. This is the gap. The 2026 paper “Digital by Default and Digital Exclusion” in the European Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences comes closest, framing the “digital underclass” as “the result of institutional implementation logics, normative settings, and infrastructural prerequisites that selectively enable or even deny access” and arguing for “enforceable analog alternatives” [41]. But even this paper analyzes exclusion from digital access rather than coercion into it.

Category 11: Temporal Disconnectors (Worker)

Who: Employees who exercise — or seek to exercise — a right to disconnect from work-related digital communications outside working hours. This includes workers in jurisdictions with right-to-disconnect legislation, workers whose employers have implemented disconnection policies, and workers who disconnect informally at personal cost.

Why: The smartphone has collapsed the boundary between work and non-work. A 2016 French study found 37% of workers used professional digital tools outside work hours and 62% wanted more controls [18]. The European Parliament declared in its January 2021 resolution (472-126-83) that the right to disconnect is a “fundamental right,” stating that “interruptions to non-working time and the extension of working hours can increase the risk of unremunerated overtime” and “can have a negative impact on health, work-life balance and rest from work” [42].

Voluntariness: Voluntary where legally protected. Precarious where not. In jurisdictions without right-to-disconnect legislation, workers who disconnect risk career consequences — what the EU Parliament calls “victimisation and other repercussions” [42].

Structural consequences: In ~20 countries with legislation (France 2016, Belgium 2022, Italy, Spain, Australia 2024, Ontario 2021, and others), workers have formal protections [18][43]. In the EU, social dialogue negotiations for a binding directive failed in November 2023 when employers’ organizations refused to agree on text [44]. In most of the world, no protection exists. The German automaker Volkswagen implemented a company-wide freeze on out-of-hours emails in 2012 [18]; the French telecommunications group Orange signed a company agreement in 2016 [45]. These remain exceptions.

Legal protections: France’s Labour Code Article L2242-17 (2016) [18]; Belgium’s 2022 civil servant disconnection law [43]; Italy’s 2017 “smart work” law [18]; Australia’s 2024 law for companies with 15+ employees [43]; Ontario’s Working for Workers Act 2021 [46]; European Law Institute Guiding Principles on the Right to Disconnect [47]. No EU-wide directive despite the 2021 Parliament resolution.

Scholarly mapping: Not in prior taxonomies. Wyatt and Satchell/Dourish assume non-use is persistent — a state. Temporal disconnection is cyclical — a practice. The right-to-disconnect literature treats it as a labor right, not a technology non-use phenomenon, and the two literatures have barely spoken to each other.

Category 12: Temporal Disconnectors (Personal)

Who: Individuals who periodically choose non-use for personal wellbeing — digital detox days, phone-free meals, screen-free vacations, Sabbath or Ramadan observance, app deletion during specific periods.

Why: Attention restoration, stress reduction, relationship maintenance, spiritual practice. Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare published 2025 clinical guidance citing research that even short digital detoxes of 24-48 hours were linked to lower stress and improved mood [48]. The Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee decree included weekly smartphone abstinence among recognized forms of penance for plenary indulgences [15].

Voluntariness: Voluntary. The most socially acceptable form of non-use — culturally mainstreamed and commercially supported (wellness retreats, screen-time apps, digital detox programs).

Structural consequences: Minimal for brief periods. Longer disconnections (weeks or months) begin to trigger the same service-access problems as permanent non-use (missed 2FA codes, expired sessions, lapsed accounts).

Legal protections: Right-to-disconnect legislation covers the work dimension [18]. Religious temporal restriction carries cultural legitimacy. No legal barrier to personal disconnection — but also no legal protection if disconnection causes a person to miss a time-sensitive benefit, appointment, or obligation delivered exclusively via digital channel.

Scholarly mapping: Partially captured by Satchell and Dourish’s “disenchantment” but better understood through the emerging “disconnection practices” literature, including Nguyen et al.’s 2023 Journal of Communication study finding that disconnection practices reproduce digital inequality because the ability to disconnect is itself a privilege [49].

Category 13: Displaced by Obsolescence

Who: People whose existing technology has been rendered non-functional by infrastructure changes they did not choose — 2G/3G network shutdowns, software end-of-life, platform deprecation, hardware incompatibility with updated services.

Why: They were using technology. The technology moved on without them. This is not a choice; it is something done to them by carriers, manufacturers, and platform operators optimizing for newer, more profitable technologies.

Voluntariness: Involuntary. The user’s device worked yesterday. Today it does not. They did not change; the infrastructure did.

Structural consequences: Ultra-Orthodox kosher phones — typically older devices running on 2G/3G networks — face this acutely. United Torah Judaism’s Yitzhak Pindrus stated: “Having phones that are only for picking up and calling, instead of having access to the Internet and all the rest, is very important for us, for our homes, for our education, and that’s why we’ll do anything for that to happen” [12]. Elderly users globally face similar displacement as carriers shut down legacy networks. The devices that served them become inert objects.

Legal protections: None. Carriers are generally free to decommission networks on their own timelines, subject to regulatory notification requirements. No right to continued service on legacy infrastructure exists.

Scholarly mapping: Satchell and Dourish’s “displacement” — the closest match in any existing taxonomy. Wyatt’s “expelled” also applies. What neither captures is the cascading effect: when displacement from one technology layer (network) forces adoption of another (smartphone with full internet capability), displacement becomes coerced upgrade.

Category 14: Privacy-Exercising Minimizers

Who: People who own and use digital devices but systematically limit their data exposure — no apps beyond essentials, no location permissions, degoogled Android ROMs (GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, LineageOS), Faraday bags, VPN-only internet use, separate devices for separate functions, cash instead of digital payment, pseudonymous accounts.

Why: They want the functionality but reject the surveillance bargain. They are attempting to use technology on terms other than those the industry has set.

Voluntariness: Voluntary, but requiring significant technical knowledge and ongoing effort. This is the province of the technically sophisticated — a form of non-use available primarily to those with the skills to implement it.

Structural consequences: Reduced functionality — many services assume full app ecosystems and default permissions. Social friction. 2FA complications when VoIP numbers are blocked [7]. EFF’s March 2025 release of Rayhunter, an open-source tool for detecting cell-site simulators, exemplifies the cat-and-mouse dynamic: users must actively detect and evade surveillance infrastructure [50].

Legal protections: GDPR in Europe provides some basis for data minimization as a right [28]. No jurisdiction protects the right to use a device in a privacy-preserving configuration if doing so means the device cannot perform functions the person needs (e.g., banking 2FA).

Scholarly mapping: A variant of Satchell and Dourish’s “active resistance” — but enacted through technical countermeasures rather than outright refusal. The 2009 framework did not anticipate users who remain within the technology ecosystem while systematically subverting its data collection mechanisms.

Category 15: Guardian-Restricted Minors

Who: Children and adolescents whose parents, guardians, schools, or jurisdictions restrict or prohibit their digital technology use.

Why: Developmental protection. Pope Francis raised concerns about children’s exposure to pornography via mobile devices in 2018, noting falling ages of first exposure [51]. The Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference advocated for social media companies to be held legally accountable, supporting Australia’s 2024 law raising the social media minimum age to 16 [52]. The Vatican’s January 2025 document “Antiqua et Nova” addressed challenges digital technology poses for children’s development [53]. Pope Leo XIV stated that young people “must be helped rather than hindered in their relationship with new technologies” [54].

Voluntariness: Imposed by adults. The child’s preference is overridden by guardian or institutional judgment — a legitimate exercise of parental authority, but one that creates its own structural consequences.

Structural consequences: Social exclusion from peer groups organized around digital platforms. Reduced access to educational resources that assume device ownership. Tension between protection and participation: the child protected from technology may also be excluded from social life organized through technology.

Legal protections: Parental authority is broadly protected. Australia’s social media minimum age law (2024) [52] provides jurisdictional backing. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation restricts processing of children’s data. No jurisdiction mandates that schools provide fully functional non-digital pathways for all assignments and communications.

Scholarly mapping: Not in prior taxonomies, which focus on adult decision-making. This category introduces the dimension of delegated non-use — non-use imposed by one person on another for protective reasons.

Structural Observations

The Coercion Gradient

These 15 categories are not discrete boxes. They describe positions along a gradient from full voluntary refusal to full involuntary coercion. The gradient runs:

Voluntary refusal (Categories 8, 3, 12) → Voluntary but structurally punished (Categories 1, 9, 14) → Communally regulated (Category 2) → Imposed by others (Category 15) → Involuntary (Categories 5, 6, 7, 13, 4) → Coerced into use (Category 10)

The most important finding of this taxonomy is that Category 10 — structurally coerced users — sits at the far end of a gradient that no existing scholarly framework maps. Everyone to the left of Category 10 on this gradient is either choosing non-use or prevented from use. Category 10 is where the system forces use on people who would prefer otherwise. And as analog alternatives disappear — as bank branches close, government offices go digital-only, employers require app-based scheduling, healthcare moves to patient portals — Category 10 grows at the expense of every other category. The surveillance-aware refuser (Category 1) who capitulates to 2FA requirements becomes a coerced user (Category 10). The elderly person excluded by competence barriers (Category 6) who is forced onto a digital portal to maintain benefits becomes a coerced user (Category 10). The ideological refuser (Category 8) who needs a bank account becomes a coerced user (Category 10).

The direction is one-way. No structural force moves people from Category 10 back toward voluntary non-use. The right-to-disconnect movement (Category 11) protects temporal non-use in employment; it does not protect the right to permanently opt out of digital systems.

What No Law Protects

The July 2024 Israeli kosher phone legislation [9] protects communal device restriction (Category 2). Right-to-disconnect laws in ~20 countries [18] protect temporal worker disconnection (Category 11). Australia’s social media age limit [52] protects minors (Category 15). The EU Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles [28] aspires to offline public service access (Categories 5, 6).

No law anywhere protects a citizen’s right to:

• Access banking without a smartphone (Category 1, 10)
• Receive government benefits without digital authentication (Category 5, 6, 10)
• Hold a job without being digitally reachable outside work hours in jurisdictions without right-to-disconnect legislation (Category 11)
• Receive workplace accommodation for phone-related phobias (Category 4)
• Maintain service on legacy networks when carriers phase them out (Category 13)
• Use a digital device in a privacy-preserving configuration without losing access to essential services (Category 14)

This is the gap. Not a gap in scholarly taxonomy — a gap in the right to live.

Bibliography

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