#IanMannReviews | A compelling case for minimalizing our use of digital technology

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. By Cal Newport  

No serious commentator could think we’d be better off going back to an earlier technological age. This book makes a compelling case for minimalizing our use of digital technology, so it is important to know who the author is. 

Cal Newport is a tenured professor of computer science at Georgetown University, ranked 24th in the U.S., where there are over 5,000 universities. He is the author of 6 books including this one: a New York Times bestseller. Newport has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Economist.   

The average modern user spends around two hours per day on social media and related messaging services, and close to half that time dedicated to Facebook’s products alone. Additionally, that user will compulsively check their devices eighty-five times a day! 

That might well not seem like much of a problem because people have been filling their free time with a variety of distractions throughout the ages. Further, it’s widely accepted that new technologies such as social media and smartphones, massively changed how we live in the twenty-first century.  

Newport makes a very strong case that this time is very different. Let me describe just two aspects of this problem.  

San Diego State University psychology professor, Jean Twenge, is one of the world’s foremost experts on generational differences in American youth. She has been in this field for over 25 years. Her conclusions undoubtedly apply to youth in other countries, and probably in similar measure.  

She has observed a shift in teenage emotional states that is troubling. She reports never having seen anything like it in her studies, which go back as far as the 1930s.  “Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed!” It is no exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. (The demographic cohort known as iGen were early adolescents when the iPhone was introduced in 2007, and high-school students when the iPad was launched in 2012.)  

Based on the correlation between the launch of these product and the steep rise in psychological problems, Professor Twenge asserts: “Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones... To my surprise, anxious teenagers tended to agree... Social media is a tool, but it’s become this thing that we can’t live without, that’s making us crazy.”  

All people, (not only the young,) who are in the top 25% of social media users, are three times more likely to be lonelier than someone in the lowest 25%. What is ironic about this conclusion is that social media is supposed to make people more socially connected, and yet the more time you spend connecting, the more isolated you’re likely to become.   

MIT professor Sherry Turkle, distinguishes between ‘connection’ and ‘communication.’ Connection is the low-bandwidth interactions that define our online social lives; and conversation, the much richer, high-bandwidth interactions that define real-world encounters between people.  

All social media, email, text, and instant messaging are merely connection.  Extensive research demonstrated that the human brain has evolved to process the flood of information generated by face-to-face interactions. What their eyes are saying, the tone, the hesitations, the smile or scowl, the speed of speech, and a host of other very subtle clues, add meaning to the conversation.  

“To say (connection is) like driving a Ferrari under the speed limit is an understatement (when compared to conversation); the better simile is towing a Ferrari behind a mule.” The problem is that social media, email, text, and instant messaging are teaching your mind that connection is a reasonable alternative to conversation.  

How did we get into this problem in the first place? Actually, it happened by accident. No one intentionally decided to dumb down human interaction or to create emotional distress. 

“People don’t succumb to screens because they’re lazy, but instead because billions of dollars have been invested to make this outcome inevitable,” Newport explains. High-end device companies and attention-economy conglomerates discovered that there are vast fortunes to be made in a culture dominated by gadgets and apps.  

Tristan Harris, (see his Ted Talk) was a student of BJ Fogg’s Attention Lab at Stanford. He reports that there is a whole playbook of techniques that are used by technology companies to get you to use their products for as long as possible. Why? Because that’s how they make their money. This is not unlike big tobacco companies engineering cigarettes to be more addictive.  

For example, we know that humans have always had a drive for social approval. In Palaeolithic times, it was crucial that you carefully managed your social standing with other members of your tribe - because your survival depended on it. Today, if lots of people click the little heart icon, it feels like the tribe is showing you approval, which we have evolved to crave strongly. 

“Some of these addictive properties are accidental, (few predicted the extent to which text messaging could command your attention), while many are quite purposeful (compulsive use is the foundation for many social media business plans),” Newport notes. 

In 2018 Newport conducted an experiment in which over 1,600 people agreed to perform a digital declutter under his guidance and report back about their experience. This required that participants refrain from all optional online activities for thirty days.  Behind this was the intention of choosing a digital minimalist existence, where you might miss small things, so that you don’t diminish the large things that you already know with certainty make life richer. 

By default, we have a maximalist digital approach - any potential for benefit is enough to start us using any technology that catches our attention.  

After the 30-day detox you will be able to better select what really adds value in the short and long term to your life. You will be in a much better position to optimize how, when and where you use technology, which is just as important as how we choose what technologies to use in the first place.  

Remind yourself as you glance at your phone while talking to your child or partner, that the cost of a thing is the amount of “ life” which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. Then consider how you would benefit from “digital minimalism” and consider the 30-day detox.

This book in essence is a call to declutter so you can fill your life with more things that really matter to you. This is an important approach worth reading more thoroughly.