为连接做减法：“AI泔水”语境下Z世代数字排毒的策略性与关系优化逻辑

Doing Subtraction for Connection: The Strategy and Relationship Optimization Logic of Generation Z’s Digital Detox in the Context of “AI Slop”

摘要: 随着数字技术深度嵌入日常生活，尤其是身处“AI泔水”(“AI Slop”指由算法大规模生成的、同质化且无意义的冗余信息)充斥的数字环境中，连接过载与意义匮乏构成了Z世代社交生活的双重困境。在此背景下，“数字排毒”(Digital Detox)作为一种抵抗数字异化、重夺主体性的实践悄然兴起。然而，既有研究多将数字排毒视为追求心理健康的个体治疗行为或一种被商业收编的消费趋势，忽视了其作为Z世代主动管理、筛选与重组社会关系的复杂策略这一深层社会意涵。本研究旨在超越“健康效益”与“抵抗、收编”的二元叙事，探究Z世代如何通过数字排毒实践，能动地重构其数字社交图谱。采用建构主义扎根理论方法，对13名有意识进行数字排毒的Z世代用户进行深度访谈，并辅以网络民族志观察。研究发现，Z世代的数字排毒并非消极的逃避或简单的戒断，而是一个包含“诊断–干预–重组”三个阶段的“排毒–重构”循环。通过周期性断连创造的“反思性空间”，参与者对其社交关系进行“压力测试”与“功能评估”，进而实施“选择性剥离”、“模块化归档”与“精准化再连接”。本研究提出，数字排毒是Z世代在高度媒介化社会中，进行社交资本优化与关系伦理实践的关键技术。这一发现挑战了将数字排毒视为“反社交”的简化论观点，揭示了其作为应对“情境崩溃”、重建生活掌控感的深层社会文化逻辑，为理解数字时代的社交范式变迁提供了新的理论视角。

Abstract: As digital technology becomes deeply embedded in everyday life, especially in digital environments flooded with “AI Slop” (referring to algorithmically generated, homogeneous, and meaningless redundant information), connection overload and meaning scarcity form a dual dilemma in the social lives of Generation Z. In this context, Digital Detox has quietly emerged as a practice to resist digital alienation and reclaim subjectivity. However, existing studies often regard digital detox as an individual therapeutic behavior aimed at mental health or as a consumer trend co-opted by commercial forces, overlooking its deeper social significance as a complex strategy through which Generation Z actively manages, filters, and reorganizes social relationships. This study aims to go beyond the binary narratives of health benefits and resistance or co-optation, exploring how Generation Z actively reconstructs their digital social networks through digital detox practices. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 Generation Z users who consciously practice digital detox, supplemented by online ethnographic observations. The study finds that Generation Z’s digital detox is not a passive escape or simple abstinence, but a detox-reconstruction cycle composed of three stages: diagnosis-intervention-reorganization. Through the reflective space created by periodic disconnections, participants perform “stress tests” and “functional evaluations” on their social relationships, subsequently carrying out selective trimming, modular archiving, and precision reconnection. This study proposes that digital detox is a key technique for Generation Z to optimize social capital and practice relational ethics in a highly mediated society. This finding challenges the simplified view that digital detox is anti-social, revealing its deep socio-cultural logic as a way to address context collapse and restore a sense of control over life, offering a new theoretical perspective for understanding the transformation of social paradigms in the digital age.