A Letter To You About Choice: The Super Connected Petition
A call to protect choice in a digital-first world — for everyone who values real connection.
Dear Friends,
After much back and forth with the House of Commons, my petition has now been published — and I truly hope you’ll sign it.
‘Provide a Legal Right to Access Certain Services Without a Digital Device’
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/725049
Like many others, I’ve spent the past few years immersed in the fight against digital dependency — particularly its grip on children. In my own work with fellow artists and young people more broadly, I’ve seen how quickly constant digital connection can strip away not only attention, but imagination, presence and confidence.
At the same time, I’ve seen the effects of digital-only access in my own life — managing my mother’s healthcare, struggling with travel options as someone who chooses not to use a smartphone, and watching local banks close down — severing yet another human connection in favour of a screen.
Bit by bit, these choices are fading away, and what was once a rich network of human relationships is being replaced by something entirely different: a world where the primary relationship is between one human and one screen — with tech companies in control of the digital dial, free to turn it up or down whenever they like, while we’re left reaching for the control that’s no longer ours.
For years, I’ve explored these issues through every tool I have — song, stage, screen and story — with my heart-work, Super Connected™.
Along the way, I’ve met with doctors, teachers, musicians, writers and unions — all facing different symptoms of the same crisis: a society reshaped by digital norms. This petition carries not just my voice, but theirs too.
This isn’t about resisting technology — it’s about making sure we remember how we began, at the same time as looking forward. Like the place of my roots, Soho, as it once was — community cohesion meant past, present and future rubbing along together. I love technology. But innovation should mean more choices, not less.
We don’t need to throw out the old to usher in the new. They can co-exist, and that is at the heart of all mentor/mentee relationships — the educational bedrock of our human family. Real life shouldn’t need a login.
That’s why I’ve started this petition — to protect our right to live in a society that values both digital and non-digital ways of life.
It might work for the lords of Silicon Valley to “move fast and break things,” but what is being broken — as our partners at Health Professionals for Safer Screens have outlined — is the human spirit, before it’s even come of age.
This petition asks only one simple, reasonable thing: to safeguard non-digital access to essential services as a protected choice, so that no one is left behind or born into a world that assumes digital is the only way.
Some may feel this is an over-reaction. But why don’t we make sure that it’s always an overreaction? By passing legislation that protects an individual’s right to control the dial between digital and non-digital life.
If we do not petition for this to be safeguarded now, in years not far from now, we may not have the chance.
I don’t know if it’s possible to reach 100,000 signatures before the deadline in November, but Kate and I are taking Super Connected™ on tour across the UK this year — meeting smartphone-free audiences in real spaces, — so we will do our best to bring the petition to as many people ‘in-world’ as well as online. The rest really is up to you.
The conversations we’re having with parents, teachers and communities make it clear: this is the moment to act on what’s fast becoming one of the most serious crises of our time — the relationship between digital dependency and our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health.
With Big Tech advancing at speed and its influence over governments growing, now is the moment to ask the British Government to put in safeguards — before we no longer have the choice to ask at all.
If this resonates with you, please sign and share.
This is not just about policy — it’s about protecting our human right to choose, or refuse to be Super Connected.
With love and gratitude,
Tim Arnold
P.S. Read real-life stories of being locked out of life because of digital norms here.
‘Tim Arnold is a singer-songwriter, performance artist, filmmaker and activist. He has researched screen addiction, digtial dependency and the effects of social media on mental health since 2017, with his study culminating in the critically acclaimed album, film and multimedia theatre show, Super Connected’
— BBC 5 Live
