Digital Intensity, Information, and Intimacy for Young Adults Living with Chronic Illness

Online platforms play an important role in how people understand their experiences of chronic illness, learn about their condition(s), and connect with others. This paper draws on 33 semi-structured interviews with young adults (aged 19–29) living with chronic illness in Australia to examine the varied impacts of online platforms on young people's understandings and experiences of illness. Focusing on participants’ experiences of the intensification of anxieties around illness, the finding and sharing of information, and supportive communities, I suggest that this array of experiences demonstrates the need to deliberately cultivate online platforms that provide digital intimacy and support for those experiencing chronic illness, in contrast to those that affectively amplify fear. I further argue that this pursuit is connected to the broader need to uncover, interrogate, and reform stigmas and silences about chronic illness, given that online community can be an important way to resist these individualizing and stigmatizing discourses.