Digital Minimalism: The Key Principles to Follow to Improve Your Quality of Life
Digital Minimalism is a book that highlights why you should put boundaries around technology. These are the key principles from the book you can adopt in your own life.
In today’s day and age, the idea of digital minimalism can be a turn-off. It almost feels impossible to live without a smartphone.
This is exactly why I think Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by productivity expert Cal Newport is a must-read. It reshapes the entire conversation around what technology is and how you should incorporate it in your life.
It isn’t a binary, zero-sum game where you use it or you don’t and get left behind. Technology usage is a careful balancing act that needs to be moderated to retain human autonomy over the algorithms that control us.
Here are my top takeaways from Digital Minimalism.
Principle #1: Digital minimalism is a philosophy about mobile computing, not technology in general
When you dive into Digital Minimalism you’ll notice it isn’t a call to abstain from technology. To the contrary: digital minimalism is a philosophy to create boundaries around technology use in an increasingly cluttered world.
Our relationship with technology radically changed after the iPhone was invented. As Cal Newport notes in interviews with members of the iPhone design team, it was originally intended to be an iPod that could make phone calls. The mobile computer we keep in our pockets today is not what Steve Jobs originally envisioned it to be.
While this might seem like a minor detail it really does matter. Much of the software and apps that were designed for mobile computing were created to mimic the same physiological response you might get pulling a lever at a slot machine. Everything from the scrolling layout of most social media apps to the obnoxious notification alerts was designed to cultivate addiction.
Digital minimalism is a philosophy to help us better understand what technology has become and create boundaries to contain it. The phones we carry with us wherever we go aren’t actually phones. They’re devices that contain much of our social well-being and the source of our personal gratification. Think about it.
Principle #2: The problem stems from addictive social media apps that were designed for mobile phone use
Cal Newport spends a good portion of the book analyzing our social media habits, specifically, as they relate to Facebook. This is for good reason: Facebook is a leader in mobile computing and has more or less created a de facto social media monopoly in the communications space.
Meta, the renamed parent company of Facebook, owns Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. These three platforms combined have over 6 billion users. That means around 75 percent of the world’s population is engaging with a Meta-owned platform every single day.
The book didn’t really touch on the role Facebook played in the 2016 U.S. presidential election but most folks can agree that Facebook political advertising played a significant role in the outcome.
Since the book was published a whistleblower has testified before Congress, sharing evidence that Facebook knows its products have adverse mental health impacts on kids and the company is still targeting them.
It’s the modern version of the tobacco companies knowing their products cause cancer and still continuing to market to minors with the hope of turning them into lifelong addicts.
Facebook’s entire business model is built on selling digital ads. Approximately 97.9 percent of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertising. This means Facebook has a vested interest in making you addicted to constantly checking your phone.
Digital minimalism is thus a philosophy to combat the Facebook problem. Specifically how Facebook reengineered your phone from being a device that makes phone calls to something that facilitates an addiction, making it a predictable source of ad revenue for them.
Principle #3: Digital minimalism is about creating boundaries to deliberately use technology, not to turn you into a Luddite
The goal of digital minimalism is not about eliminating technology from your life. Even Cal Newport says he doesn’t aspire to create Luddites out of his work. Instead, it is designed to make you more aware of your relationship with technology. It provides a framework for using technology rather than continuing to let it use you.
As we begin to move into Web 3.0 I think this imperative is important now more than ever before. In the early days of the internet, it was something to log into from a desktop computer. Over the last decade, it’s evolved into something that you can take with you in the form of a smartphone. In the not-so-distant future, the internet of things and virtual reality will mean technology will become more or less integrated with humans.
The ability to discern useful applications of technology from harmful ones, specifically social media, is going to become incredibly important in the years to come. While most new technologies are created with some sort of useful benefit, those benefits don’t always outweigh the costs of using said technology.
Using a philosophy like digital minimalism to cultivate a deliberate technology practice will help you retain your autonomy even as it becomes increasingly harder to do.
Principle #4: This philosophy can actually be applied to everything in your life (not just technology)
The second half of the book is dedicated to meaningful action steps you can take to “declutter” and eventually implement a minimalist mindset to technology usage. What I enjoyed about the process is that you can adapt it to any facet of your life, not just your social media habit.
There are many vices that fill emotional voids in our lives. Our self-worth is often derived from external validation that is beyond our control. This happens on Instagram as much as it happens in the office.
Cal Newport shares one example of a think tank executive who gave up an established career to pursue a new life as a motorcycle mechanic. He summed up one of the benefits of pursuing a craft rather than a career:
“They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on…Craftsmanship must reckon with the infallible judgment of reality, where one’s failures or shortcomings cannot be interpreted away.”
We fill our lives with things to distract us from the absence of self-worth.
This manifests in our material possessions, our careers, and how we engage with social media. The process of digital minimalism illuminates how and why you use technology to meet deeper, internal needs in your life. This process of introspection is useful for all aspects of life beyond a simple digital declutter.
Principle #5: Digital minimalism leads to better relationships with yourself and others
The last takeaway I want to highlight is how digital minimalism helps you improve your relationship with yourself — and others. As I noted above our digital habits tend to fill the void that exists when we don’t meet our own emotional needs. When we substitute shallow communication via likes, comments, and DMs we miss out on the vital human connection that gives our lives meaning.
Humans are wired for connection. At the beginning of the book, Cal Newport notes how this need to belong to a tribe and seek out social approval is our natural default setting. Social media companies hijacked this to create an addictive technology that simulates our social needs without actually meeting them. Thus it’s no surprise that in our hyperconnected world, people feel lonelier and more isolated than ever before.
Digital minimalism is not just a strategy to be a more deliberate consumer of new technologies. It’s imperative to reestablish deep, meaningful connections with other human beings. Through these connections only then can we accept ourselves for who we are, as we are.
(And that’s the point)
When you look at the increase in depression, anxiety, and self-loathing from the context of social media you can start to see how these feelings are deeply connected to the content we consume. We develop a sense of self-hatred not because we want to but because we are told to.
Why do you think that is?
It goes back to Cal Newport’s use of Facebook as the focal point for his argument for digital minimalism. The goal of all media is to sell more advertising, not to sell a product. It turns out we the consumers have always been the product. Our eyeballs are monetized and sold to the advertiser willing to pay the most for our attention.
Facebook didn’t invent this business model. They just used new technology — the smartphone — to engineer the best results possible for their advertisers.
Towards the end of the book, Cal Newport calls on digital minimalists to organize into something he calls an “attention resistance.” He is not alone in this call. The Social Dilemma is a documentary filled with the very people who created these technologies agreeing that it is time for people to reclaim their humanity.
Re-learning how to connect with yourself and others is at the heart of the digital minimalism philosophy. Asserting authority over your own autonomous decision-making will help you focus, live a more meaningful life, be a better steward of your finances, and develop richer connections with other people.
The purpose of life, after all, isn’t the sum of items we possess but the richness we are able to experience in fellowship with other human beings.
The book is Digital Minimalism and it’s well-worth the read. Borrow it from your local library or get it wherever books are sold.
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