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Digital Minimalism: What It Is and Why You Need to Start Adopting It--NOW

Book Spotlight: "Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

“Technology is intrinsically neither good nor bad. The key is using it to support your goal sand values, rather than letting it use you.”

- Cal Newport


The App Store is coming for our souls.

In his fascinating research, Digital Minimalism, associate professor computer science at Georgetown University Cal Newport has uncovered just how extreme digital and social media use (obsession?) has and will affect our students. Newport, in his brilliant writing style, compares the need to check a notification or immediately read a text message to that of Plato’s famous chariot metaphor. To refresh your memory, in the allegory, Socrates explains to Phaedrus that our soul can be best understood as a chariot drive struggling to rein in two horses. It’s best that we allow the horses to represent the following—one symbolizes our better nature and the other our baser impulses. When we increasingly cede autonomy to the digital, we energize the latter horse and make the driver’s struggle to steer increasingly difficult—a diminishing of our soul’s authority. 

What does that have to do with digital minimalism? Is it just about minimizing screen time? Surely it’s not that serious.

Wrong. The average Facebook user utilizes thee company’s products a little over 50 minutes each day (but the average demographic of FB users are middle-aged or baby boomers). What about our students?

Far worse: In a 2015 study by Common Sense Media, researchers found that teenagers were consuming media—including text messaging and social networks—9 hours per day on average. Think this is an exaggeration? Personal experience will tell you it’s not. Given a sample size of 14 7th-grade girls (remember, 12 or 13-year olds), the average screen time (thanks to a new feature on the Apple iPhone’s OSX11 software) was 3 hours and 55 minutes per day. At 12 years old. During a school day.

So, what’s the point? Why do we need to regulate digital use—for ourselves and our students?

Newport recalls how the mental health center on campus had seen the mix of teenage issues that had been common for decades—homesickness, eating disorders, some depression, and the occasional case of OCD. Then everything changed. Seemingly overnight, the number of students seeking mental health counseling massively expanded and the standard mix of teenage issues was dominated by something that used to be relatively rare: anxiety. The sudden use in anxiety-related problems coincided with the first incoming classes of students that were raised on smartphones and social media. 

Think about it. How often do you hear someone in your immediate circle (of similar age and professional status) plagued by anxiety? It has morphed its way into our everyday conversation way too often than it used to.

So, what’s the solution? Delete Instagram? Turn on “Do Not Disturb?” Keep our phones in “Airplane Mode?” Simply limit screen time?


Newport suggest a much more sustainable and practical way to minimize our digital footprint and increase our actual face time (not FaceTime).

Cal Newport defines digital minimalism as “a philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.”

Rather than going “off the grid” for the sake of being contrarian, prioritize your screen use for what really matters.

Take-away principles:

  1. Clutter is costly

    The world is loud enough as it is. Why bring more distractions and clutter into our headspace. Instead, adopt Thoreau’s idea of new economics: The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. It starts with us modeling behavior for our students. Every time you’re tempted to mindlessly scroll on Instagram (at the traffic light, in line at the grocery store, we’ve seen you), ask yourself “Is this worth the exchange of talking to people in line with me or engaging with the cashier? Is it worth not listening to my favorite song on the radio? Is it worth giving up a few minutes to tune into my favorite podcast? Is it worth not to skim the magazine headlines at the checkout? Is it worth not connecting with another human being?

  2. Optimization is important

    Think back to your Econ 101 class. Remember the law of diminishing returns? The spike of temporary happiness or thrill you may feel when you read that text message in record time, peruse yet another online sale just to clear your inbox notifications, or keep up with your likes on Instagram (Come on, really?), will be just that—temporary. And ultimately, your brain will no longer recognize the spike as a spike—-if your dopamine levels always remains at that threshold. Think about it. The returns just won't be there, the thrill won’t be the same, and you’ll feel less secure/worthy/proactive/productive/”caught up” if you’re living life behind your iPhone.

  3. Intentionality is satisfying

    Think about how many times you have talked about or at least overheard conversations of New Years Resolutions, diet plans (Keto? Whole 30? Gluten-Free? Dairy-Free? Vegan? Plant-Based? Paleo?), exercise workouts, fitness classes, workout apps, and the like just since the beginning of the year. Seriously, in the last 90 days—how many times have you heard friends and colleagues (and maybe you, too, chimed in) talk about how they’re abstaining from cheese or bread or wine or meat? Or how they’re intentionally hauling themselves to the gym 5 days a week? Or, in this Season of Lent, how they’re intentionally giving something up—a habit, a fix, a lifestyle, a food item, a vice?

This is bigger than the next “fix.” This is a lifestyle. And the mental health of our students depend on us to get this right and model safe and healthy digital consumption.