Douglas Rushkoff: 'I’m thinking it may be good to be off social media altogether'

The media critic on the malfunctioning tech economy, digital detoxes and why Facebook is unhygenic

Douglas Rushkoff emerged as a media commentator in 1994 with his first book, Cyberia. His debut examined "the early psychedelic, rave roots of digital technology. I was trying to infer what a digital society might be like given the beliefs of these people," he tells me during a phone interview from his Brooklyn home.

He has published 10 books detailing an increasingly fierce critique of digital society. Along the way Rushkoff has coined terms that have slipped into the lexicon such as "digital natives", "social currency" and "viral media". He has also made several documentaries and written novels both graphic and regular; consulted for organisations from the UN to the US government and composed music with Genesis P-Orridge. In 2013 MIT named him the sixth most influential thinker in the world, sandwiched between Steven Pinker and Niall Ferguson.