Our world is, increasingly, a digital one. Over half of the planet's adult population now spend more of their waking hours 'plugged in' than not, whether to the internet, mobile telephony, or other digital media. To email, text, tweet and blog our way through our careers, relationships and even our family lives is now the status quo. But what effect is this need for constant connection really having? For the first time, Tom Chatfield examines what our 'wired' life is really doing to our minds, for better and for worse. This book asks what it means not simply to live within a digital century, but to live well with it and within it. Unlike most other contemporary accounts, it is neither a tale of technology doom nor glory, but a pragmatic guide to what questions we need to ask of the world around us; what it might mean to answer these; and what practical steps might allow us all both to choose and to use the tools at our disposal, and to prosper within a digital century in as fully human a sense as possible. One in the new series of books from The School of Life, launched May 2012: How to Stay Sane by Philippa Perry How to Find Fulfilling Work by Roman Krznaric How to Worry Less About Money by John Armstrong How to Change the World by John-Paul Flintoff How to Thrive in the Digital Age by Tom Chatfield How to Think More About Sex by Alain de Botton.