Book Review: Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, by Cal Newport
Why you should ditch your smartphone and delete Twitter (jk but not really).
Portfolio, 2019, 284 pages
The key to living well in a high tech world is to spend much less time using technology.
Georgetown computer scientist Cal Newport's Deep Work sparked a movement around the idea that unbroken concentration produces far more value than the electronic busyness that defines the modern work day. But his readers had an urgent follow-up question: What about technology in our personal lives?
In recent years, our culture's relationship with personal technology has transformed from something exciting into something darker. Innovations like smartphones and social media are useful, but many of us are increasingly troubled by how much control these tools seem to exert over our daily experiences--including how we spend our free time and how we feel about ourselves.
In Digital Minimalism, Newport proposes a bold solution: a minimalist approach to technology use in which you radically reduce the time you spend online, focusing on a small set of carefully-selected activities while happily ignoring the rest.
He mounts a vigorous defense for this less-is-more approach, combining historical examples with case studies of modern digital minimalists to argue that this philosophy isn't a rejection of technology, but instead a necessary realignment to ensure that these tools serve us, not the other way around.
To make these principles practical, he takes us inside the growing subculture of digital minimalists who have built rich lives on a foundation of intentional technology use, and details a decluttering process that thousands have already used to simplify their online lives. He also stresses the importance of never clicking "like," explores the under-appreciated value of analog hobbies, and draws lessons from the "attention underground"--a resistance movement fighting the tech companies' attempts to turn us into gadget addicts.
Digital Minimalism is an indispensable guide for anyone looking to reclaim their life from the alluring diversions of the digital world.
I came to this book ready to be convinced. What I was hoping for was some concrete ideas for what I already perceive to be a problem. I am usually lukewarm about self-help, motivational, and "transformational" books for the same reason I am lukewarm about entire fields like counseling, psychology, and philosophy; I rarely feel like they tell me anything I don't already know or could intuit on my own. However, in this case, I have recognized recently that I need help. I am much, much too Online. Can we call it an "Internet addiction" when I can quit any time? Hah.
But seriously, Cal Newport, a professor of computer science who ironically advocates having less technology in your life, pointed out a lot that resonates with me. The way in which social media apps, from Facebook and Twitter to Instagram, Reddit, Discord, TikTok, YouTube, and yes, Netflix, Substack, Goodreads, DuoLingo, Udemy, ESPN, CNN, BBC, all those other "good" and "useful" and "informative" or "educational" sites, are engineered, deliberately, to capture your attention with "notifications", to reward you with red "update" icons like a rat seeking a pellet, to encourage you to "Like" your friend's vacation pics or a funny D&D Alignment quiz.
It is, unironically, a problem I have been vaguely wanting to address for years but recently, as my age increases and the years I have left to actually do meaningful things decreases, has felt more urgent. I do exactly what Newport describes: cycle through half a dozen to a dozen different sites multiple times a day, clicking "Like," checking how many people upvoted me, reading updates, then repeating the cycle in case I might have missed something in the meantime. It's a time suck and I know it's a time suck and I have half-heartedly resolved to break this pattern many times, realizing how many hours I have wasted that could have been put to better use. The "addiction" paradigm may seem overblown, and yet, I have been about as successful as an alcoholic or a smoker saying they know they should quit and really, they can do it whenever they want to, they just have to decide they will.
My first indication that this hyper-connected generation was suffering came a few years before I started writing this book. I was chatting with the head of mental health services at a well-known university where I had been invited to speak. This administrator told me that she had begun seeing major shifts in student mental health. Until recently, the mental health center had seen the same mix of teenage issues that have 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.
She told me that everyone seemed to suddenly be suffering from anxiety or anxiety-related disorders. When I asked her what she thought caused the change, she answered without hesitation that it probably had something to do with smartphones. The sudden rise in anxiety-related problems coincided with the first incoming classes of students that were raised on smartphones and social media. She noticed that these new students were constantly and frantically processing and sending messages. It seemed clear that the persistent communication was somehow messing with the students' brain chemistry.
However, I also felt like he oversold the case a little. For example, he cites studies that show that the more someone uses social media, the more likely they are to be lonely. The implication being that social media "disconnects" people and causes loneliness. Which may be true, but it seems equally likely that people who are already lonely and disconnected are more likely to seek out social media.
My problem is not anxiety, loneliness, or feeling like I need to maintain my follower count. My problem is checking updates and doomscrolling.
Unfortunately, Digital Minimalism is basically a long blog post worth of content padded out to fill a book. Cal Newport talks about the value of personal social connections, face to face interaction, quality time with one's thoughts, analog activities ("doing things in the real world"), and all the reasons that social media and smart phones are distractions. He spends large portions of each chapter talking about the habits of people like Henry David Thoreau, Abraham Lincoln, and Marcus Aurelius, as well as his own commitment to daily walking (without a cell phone). These are basically the "persuasive" part of his thesis. Unsurprisingly, he also talks about the technological habits of the Amish and the Mennonites.
Of course he isn't trying to convince people not to use technology. He acknowledges the many individual circumstances that apply to people and doesn't offer a blanket prescription for everyone trying to wean themselves off the electronic tether. He isn't pretentiously demanding everyone go live in a farmhouse without WiFi to do "real" writing, for example. But he brings up many anecdotes of people who tried to do writing or other work, only to be foiled by the presence of WiFi and the lure of the Internet, and the popularity of tools like Freedom and website blockers that helps some people reclaim their time and attention. He talks about a subculture of digital minimalists who have replaced their smart phones with flip phones, even people who still need to use text for their jobs. He also makes a compelling argument that social media and smart phones have transformed the way people interact, and not for the better.
Most of us are not going to go back to flip phones or commit to universally valuing analog over digital. But Newport does make it sound like an attractive lifestyle. His habit of walking for hours every evening just isn't going to work for everyone, and while he doesn't actually say he's morally superior for not having a Facebook or Twitter account, he does seem a touch smug about it.
His actual proposals are basically:
I am very tempted to implement at least some of these suggestions. One of the exercises Newport suggests is a "digital decluttering," in which you basically take yourself off of social media entirely, and as offline as possible, for 30 days. At the end of this time, you can evaluate and slowly re-add, one by one, the tools you actually think you need. He bolsters this proposal with the testimony of people who did this and found that after the first few days of "withdrawal" they realized they didn't miss regular "New message" alerts and people Liking their posts as much as they thought they did, and that when they came back online, they did so with a much lower presence.
I would really like to build better and more productive habits. I think about all the other things I could do - writing, painting, drawing, reading - in the many hours I have wasted reading le outrage d'jour on Twitter or chatting with "friends" on Discord and Facebook and reddit and other forums. (No offense to y'all, but the majority of you, whom I have never met in real life, would not miss me much if I disappeared. So many of our "friends" are just avatars and usernames we can't even connect to a face or any kind of identity.)
Digital Minimalism made me think. It's got a lot of worthy ideas, but the self-help portion came more in the form of bullet-pointed suggestions that could have been a blog post. I suppose for someone not already persuaded, much of the extra verbiage was meant to present his case to a skeptical, Very Online audience ("You want me to do what with my smartphone???"). I just didn't find it as personally useful as I was hoping.
My complete list of book reviews.
Portfolio, 2019, 284 pages
The key to living well in a high tech world is to spend much less time using technology.
Georgetown computer scientist Cal Newport's Deep Work sparked a movement around the idea that unbroken concentration produces far more value than the electronic busyness that defines the modern work day. But his readers had an urgent follow-up question: What about technology in our personal lives?
In recent years, our culture's relationship with personal technology has transformed from something exciting into something darker. Innovations like smartphones and social media are useful, but many of us are increasingly troubled by how much control these tools seem to exert over our daily experiences--including how we spend our free time and how we feel about ourselves.
In Digital Minimalism, Newport proposes a bold solution: a minimalist approach to technology use in which you radically reduce the time you spend online, focusing on a small set of carefully-selected activities while happily ignoring the rest.
He mounts a vigorous defense for this less-is-more approach, combining historical examples with case studies of modern digital minimalists to argue that this philosophy isn't a rejection of technology, but instead a necessary realignment to ensure that these tools serve us, not the other way around.
To make these principles practical, he takes us inside the growing subculture of digital minimalists who have built rich lives on a foundation of intentional technology use, and details a decluttering process that thousands have already used to simplify their online lives. He also stresses the importance of never clicking "like," explores the under-appreciated value of analog hobbies, and draws lessons from the "attention underground"--a resistance movement fighting the tech companies' attempts to turn us into gadget addicts.
Digital Minimalism is an indispensable guide for anyone looking to reclaim their life from the alluring diversions of the digital world.
I came to this book ready to be convinced. What I was hoping for was some concrete ideas for what I already perceive to be a problem. I am usually lukewarm about self-help, motivational, and "transformational" books for the same reason I am lukewarm about entire fields like counseling, psychology, and philosophy; I rarely feel like they tell me anything I don't already know or could intuit on my own. However, in this case, I have recognized recently that I need help. I am much, much too Online. Can we call it an "Internet addiction" when I can quit any time? Hah.
But seriously, Cal Newport, a professor of computer science who ironically advocates having less technology in your life, pointed out a lot that resonates with me. The way in which social media apps, from Facebook and Twitter to Instagram, Reddit, Discord, TikTok, YouTube, and yes, Netflix, Substack, Goodreads, DuoLingo, Udemy, ESPN, CNN, BBC, all those other "good" and "useful" and "informative" or "educational" sites, are engineered, deliberately, to capture your attention with "notifications", to reward you with red "update" icons like a rat seeking a pellet, to encourage you to "Like" your friend's vacation pics or a funny D&D Alignment quiz.
It is, unironically, a problem I have been vaguely wanting to address for years but recently, as my age increases and the years I have left to actually do meaningful things decreases, has felt more urgent. I do exactly what Newport describes: cycle through half a dozen to a dozen different sites multiple times a day, clicking "Like," checking how many people upvoted me, reading updates, then repeating the cycle in case I might have missed something in the meantime. It's a time suck and I know it's a time suck and I have half-heartedly resolved to break this pattern many times, realizing how many hours I have wasted that could have been put to better use. The "addiction" paradigm may seem overblown, and yet, I have been about as successful as an alcoholic or a smoker saying they know they should quit and really, they can do it whenever they want to, they just have to decide they will.
My first indication that this hyper-connected generation was suffering came a few years before I started writing this book. I was chatting with the head of mental health services at a well-known university where I had been invited to speak. This administrator told me that she had begun seeing major shifts in student mental health. Until recently, the mental health center had seen the same mix of teenage issues that have 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.
She told me that everyone seemed to suddenly be suffering from anxiety or anxiety-related disorders. When I asked her what she thought caused the change, she answered without hesitation that it probably had something to do with smartphones. The sudden rise in anxiety-related problems coincided with the first incoming classes of students that were raised on smartphones and social media. She noticed that these new students were constantly and frantically processing and sending messages. It seemed clear that the persistent communication was somehow messing with the students' brain chemistry.
However, I also felt like he oversold the case a little. For example, he cites studies that show that the more someone uses social media, the more likely they are to be lonely. The implication being that social media "disconnects" people and causes loneliness. Which may be true, but it seems equally likely that people who are already lonely and disconnected are more likely to seek out social media.
My problem is not anxiety, loneliness, or feeling like I need to maintain my follower count. My problem is checking updates and doomscrolling.
Unfortunately, Digital Minimalism is basically a long blog post worth of content padded out to fill a book. Cal Newport talks about the value of personal social connections, face to face interaction, quality time with one's thoughts, analog activities ("doing things in the real world"), and all the reasons that social media and smart phones are distractions. He spends large portions of each chapter talking about the habits of people like Henry David Thoreau, Abraham Lincoln, and Marcus Aurelius, as well as his own commitment to daily walking (without a cell phone). These are basically the "persuasive" part of his thesis. Unsurprisingly, he also talks about the technological habits of the Amish and the Mennonites.
Of course he isn't trying to convince people not to use technology. He acknowledges the many individual circumstances that apply to people and doesn't offer a blanket prescription for everyone trying to wean themselves off the electronic tether. He isn't pretentiously demanding everyone go live in a farmhouse without WiFi to do "real" writing, for example. But he brings up many anecdotes of people who tried to do writing or other work, only to be foiled by the presence of WiFi and the lure of the Internet, and the popularity of tools like Freedom and website blockers that helps some people reclaim their time and attention. He talks about a subculture of digital minimalists who have replaced their smart phones with flip phones, even people who still need to use text for their jobs. He also makes a compelling argument that social media and smart phones have transformed the way people interact, and not for the better.
Most of us are not going to go back to flip phones or commit to universally valuing analog over digital. But Newport does make it sound like an attractive lifestyle. His habit of walking for hours every evening just isn't going to work for everyone, and while he doesn't actually say he's morally superior for not having a Facebook or Twitter account, he does seem a touch smug about it.
His actual proposals are basically:
- Don't click "Like."
- Delete all social media apps from your smartphone. If you must engage, do it only on a laptop or desktop.
- Be very intentional about what apps and sites you check, and set yourself a schedule.
- Just because something "might" be beneficial doesn't mean you should use it. Only use it if it's the "best" tool for what you want.
- Spend time alone.
- Reclaim leisure time, and pursue offline activities.
I am very tempted to implement at least some of these suggestions. One of the exercises Newport suggests is a "digital decluttering," in which you basically take yourself off of social media entirely, and as offline as possible, for 30 days. At the end of this time, you can evaluate and slowly re-add, one by one, the tools you actually think you need. He bolsters this proposal with the testimony of people who did this and found that after the first few days of "withdrawal" they realized they didn't miss regular "New message" alerts and people Liking their posts as much as they thought they did, and that when they came back online, they did so with a much lower presence.
I would really like to build better and more productive habits. I think about all the other things I could do - writing, painting, drawing, reading - in the many hours I have wasted reading le outrage d'jour on Twitter or chatting with "friends" on Discord and Facebook and reddit and other forums. (No offense to y'all, but the majority of you, whom I have never met in real life, would not miss me much if I disappeared. So many of our "friends" are just avatars and usernames we can't even connect to a face or any kind of identity.)
Digital Minimalism made me think. It's got a lot of worthy ideas, but the self-help portion came more in the form of bullet-pointed suggestions that could have been a blog post. I suppose for someone not already persuaded, much of the extra verbiage was meant to present his case to a skeptical, Very Online audience ("You want me to do what with my smartphone???"). I just didn't find it as personally useful as I was hoping.
My complete list of book reviews.