Abstract
<jats:p>Digital media have become central environments through which social life is organized rather than optional tools. This chapter critiques dominant digital addiction narratives for individualizing and pathologizing practices that are increasingly shaped by institutional and infrastructural conditions. Drawing on communication theory, platform studies, and critical social theory, it proposes digital embeddedness as a more productive framework for understanding contemporary digital life. Digital embeddedness emphasizes how everyday communication, work, education, and public participation are organized through platform infrastructures that shape experiences of time, visibility, presence, and social belonging. The chapter highlights a freedom–dependence paradox in which digital media expand communicative possibilities while simultaneously binding individuals and institutions to opaque systems of governance and value extraction, calling for communication research to move beyond addiction discourses toward critical analyses of platform power.</jats:p>