Last month, I read a book called Digital Minimalism, by Cal Newport. This book has been changing my life.

The Role of Technology in Our Lives

A lot of us grapple with tons of screen time in both our personal and professional lives. But what does it mean? Is it okay? Is it good, is it bad? It’s a weird situation with more questions than answers. On one hand, I love what my phone and my computer add to my life: incredible utility in the form of google maps, a calculator, google searches, and a camera (among others), ability to connect with friends and family via phone, text, and social media, ways to share my writings with the world in the form of a blog, streaming entertainment in the form of Netflix and YouTube and Spotify, and many more. It seems ridiculous to not want all of these things. But when we think about all of these positives, we often forget to acknowledge what we give up. For me personally, my free time seems to disappear in the blink of an eye, immediately going straight to YouTube and social media, leaving me exhausted and artificially busy. My attention span is far worse than it used to be, as I check my phone and various sites with muscle memory and can barely focus on anything. These are both fairly serious issues, more so than their brief one-liner descriptions let on. We will return to these in-depth later on.

How does one “solve” this? Are we just screwed, and have to take it all as one “all-in-one” package full of both amazing benefits and terrible negatives? It can certainly feel like it, when trying to think about the role of technology of our lives. Hell, even talking about the role of technology in our lives is fairly risky, as introspection about one’s own habits often generates a lot of feelings in almost everybody who owns a smartphone.

But I’m here to tell you, no — we’re not screwed. There is a way to extract the positives of engaging with technology without having to face the negatives through a strategy Newport dubs “digital minimalism”. It isn’t a gimmick or a “quick tip.” It is instead a philosophy of technology use that will reshape from the ground up how you interact with technology. And more than that — it is ultimately a philosophy of how to live an intentional life. This Digital Minimalism is not minimalism in the sense that most of us think of (cutting down on possessions, decluttering, etc), but shares the same fundamental principles. It seeks to trim down on our technological habits, retain those that are ultimately beneficial for us, and remove the rest. Even simple technological habits that seem neutral, small, and innocent can often be taking away from our lives in ways we don’t see until they are gone. This simple recentering of what’s important in your life and subsequently trimming out both unnecessary and malevolent apps can be powerful. In Newport’s words: “minimalists don’t mind missing out on small things; what worries them much more is diminishing the large things they already know for sure make a good life good.” [1]

Sounds simple enough, but there is a key point here that I think is worth emphasizing. 

Apps aren’t all positive. When we think of downloading another application from the App Store, we often don’t really think of these as having any real negatives. It’s just software, how could the simple presence of a free application on your phone detract from your life? But it can.

On the surface, the apps sound fantastic! Users download these apps innocently and excitedly, eager to get in on the action and to gain the potential benefits. The joy of hopping on YouTube or Snapchat or Facebook for the first time, for instance. All the excitement about the possibility of connection and a fun new platform. No-one expects the tailspin that often ensues months to years down the line for users, when they blink and realize they’ve spent all of their free time for the past N days scrolling and scrolling on Instagram, chasing a feeling that is never entirely reached. In other words, a loss of control. A loss of control that changes us more than we would expect.

As Newport puts it: “No one, of course, signed up for this loss of control. They downloaded the apps and set up accounts for good reasons, only to discover, with grim irony, that these services were beginning to undermine the very values that made them appealing in the first place: they joined Facebook to stay in touch with friends across the country, and then ended up unable to maintain an uninterrupted conversation with the friend sitting across the table.” [2]

Now, how do we decide which applications we should keep and which ones we should toss? Ultimately, the most important step is an evaluation of the application and what positives and negatives it adds to your life. Even then, it can be murky as to which ones are “worth it.” 

Luckily, Newport has a fix for this.

He suggests a two-question screening for all applications.

1) What benefits does this application provide? (And are these ones you care about?)

2) Is this application the best way to achieve those benefits?

For example, one common reason for engaging with social media is to expose yourself to new ideas. I felt this way myself about Instagram, as I have become educated on a lot of topics via Instagram. But is this application the best way to achieve that? For me, I have begun to realize that it isn’t. Newport raises a similar example in the instance of someone who uses Twitter for an hour a day to expose themselves to new ideas. That’s roughly 30 hours a month. When I think of myself spending those 30 hours on Instagram each month, I think that there’s gotta be a more effective use of that time to achieve my goals. Newport agrees. He argues that another effective way to expose yourself to new ideas could be to go to a lecture on one of these subjects, once a month, and talk with people there. This would take only a few hours per month, saving you 27 hours every month. That’s insane! Another one would be to read books on a wide variety of topics, and to educate yourself that way. This is one I have been implementing myself.

The Negatives of Technology

Note: This only should serve as a reflection of my personal experience how various applications affected me personally. Your experiences and relationships with various applications of technology will vary, and ones that I found problematic might serve a different, more fulfilling role in your life. I don’t seek to judge or make any objective statements on these applications. All I would encourage you to do is to question all applications and all habits, and come up with answers for yourself, as the question of which ones are “good” and which ones are “bad” is a very unique and personal question that will vary with every person and the surrounding context of their life — one I can’t answer. I also would like to acknowledge the inherent privilege in being able to make such a decision — as the option of owning a computer or smartphone is one many people don’t have.

I’d now like to begin discussing in a bit more detail how these apps have had a negative impact on my life, as I think it can be easy to forget how very real these negatives are, and to dismiss them away, but I caution you not to, and to reflect on how they affect your own life.

How can a simple software application detract from your life?

The first and foremost way for me is time. I spend a large portion of my day on my phone and computer. This is something that has crept in so slowly and methodically for me, as well as the fact that most people these days are spending a chunk of time with these devices, that has made this feel like less of an intentional decision and more of a societal shift. It feels less like an intentional individual choice and more like the fact that we (as a society) drive cars to work now instead of ride horses, or use computers instead of typewriters to write. Something that may have complexity and nuance but simply is how it is for most of us. Something we’ve never really questioned on the level of personal choice. When in reality, a substantial shift has taken place on the individual level, and I’d never really stopped to think about it. I never really stopped to think about whether or not my hours on YouTube every day were how I wanted to spend my days — whether they were providing the value that I was seeking in them, and what they were providing at all. I quickly began to realize that for me personally, this isn’t how I wanted to spend my time and ultimately, my life. YouTube wasn’t really “giving” me anything beyond filling my time, keeping me away from boredom, and giving me short-term dopamine hits, all through an extremely addictive platform. I never really thought about this before, as it wasn’t ever an intentional choice I made to ‘start’ watching lots of YouTube, it was sort of something that just happened. But make no mistake, it was still siphoning away hours of my life a day. As Newport puts it, “it’s easy to be seduced by the small amounts of profit offered by the latest app or service, but then forget its cost in terms of the most important resource we possess: the minutes of our life.” [3]

I also think about how much more I can accomplish in my writing projects and in my work when I am not using these platforms.  I have infinitely more time and energy. Newport sums it up poetically with this one line: “You can’t, in other words, build a billion-dollar empire like Facebook if you’re wasting hours every day using a service like Facebook.” [4]

And beyond productivity, there are tons of other activities that I could use that time on: reading books, hiking, yoga, meditation, cooking, catching up with friends, etc. Activities that support my values and bring me fulfillment.

It all sounds so silly and obvious when put in this way, but it is amazing how long we can go doing something without stepping back to evaluate its role in our lives. That is what I want to advocate in this post. Step back and evaluate what’s in your life. Evaluate how you spend your time and energy. Measure how you spend your hours in a given day. See if they are to your liking, and if it is in your power to change them for the better, attempt to do so.

Other Effects and Making a Change

Beyond simply the hours put into these specific platforms, I began to notice more systemic effects in their absence. I suppose I didn’t really realize how much my phone had changed me. It is remarkable how scatterbrained I have become. To quote Newport, “the urge to check Twitter or refresh Reddit [or any other social media] becomes a nervous twitch that shatters uninterrupted time into shards too small to support the presence necessary for an intentional life.” [5] It is really difficult for me to sit down and focus on anything at the computer for a prolonged duration without flicking between tabs of social media and news via muscle memory. Even in writing this post, I’ve flicked through Firefox tabs a gazillion times. It’s something that I’m working on.

Even when I am not on these platforms, they still find a way to seep in to the rest of my day and affect how I live, how I feel, and how I find space for myself.

Another form by which these reverberations manifest for me is music. I struggle to do most of my daily activities without some form of music or audio playing in the background. While this is a very subtle one, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with listening to lots of music, I think the telling part for me is that I become uncomfortable in its absence. I feel a strong need to fill that empty space with something.

And this is the key point underlying the whole problem.

I had come to fear the absence of stimulus, the blank space. I frantically flick through social media, watch videos with the majority of my spare time, listen to music while I cook, drive, write, read, etc, all in an effort to run from the blank space and the latent darkness I perceived within it.

Because when these platforms pervaded my life, there was no blank space. No respite. No time to dedicate to certain hobbies or to true rest. My free time was all instantly devoted by default to these platforms, as that was what I did with my free time. I would be tired after a busy day of errands, work, volunteering, hiking, or what have you, looking for some rest and an easy activity to refresh me. Something that I could do that didn’t require much energy. So I would flick on my phone or laptop. But it didn’t refresh or fulfill me, I would just wind up staying up late after a rabbit hole of YouTube videos and end up more exhausted than I started. 

And for what — to feel a little less alone?

More than anything, they just left me wanting more. Wanting something more refreshing, more fulfilling. They left me to try to pursue my dreams with the small shards and slivers that were left in between my daily activities and my technology use.

And that is how it felt. As I had begun to solidify some of the goals I wanted to accomplish in my spare (not working) time such as writing a book, I found myself lacking both the time and the energy to actually work on them. But that is absurd! I’m a 22 year old traveling the U.S. in a van working part-time remotely. I should have nothing but time. And yet I somehow was always running out of it. 

This was the impetus for me to reevaluate what I was spending my time on, and I rapidly began to realize just how much time every day I was spending on social media and YouTube. That daily amount of time seemed to morph and expand to fit however much time I had free each day, so that every day was automatically filled to the brim. And therein lies the problem. My situation of “having no time” was completely self-generated, and obviously not the real lack of time that so many people actually have. I paradoxically had no real free time, when all I had was free time.

And yet at the time I was experiencing all of this, I didn’t really see a way out of my pickle, as I didn’t understand what was going on. Newport’s book really helped me to see it, and to begin the process of re-evaluating how I spend my time. I am happy to say that although I have tons of possessions scattered across my van (hello snowshoes and potted plants) and am not a ‘minimalist’ in the stereotypical sense, I do think that the key notion of evaluating your life and trimming the unnecessary potentially harmful parts to make way for more of the good is a great idea that I will be attempting to implement.

Ultimately, what I realized is that I didn’t want to have to pursue my dreams in the margins of my free time anymore. I wanted them front and center.

Cutting Back on Social Media: What I Did

Now, a reminder that the message here should not be “complete abstinence from technology.” The message should be to step back and evaluate how you are using it, and see if you can optimize your use of technology to better fit your goals. This will vary with every person.

How did I do this?

For me, I cut back significantly on my time on social media and YouTube. 

With regard to YouTube, I am still working on trying to cut it out fully (which I think will likely be the healthiest decision for me, as I lose control often with the platform), but social media I think I have figured out.

There are three main benefits I was gaining from social media platforms.

1) Exposure to news and new ideas

2) Platform to post blog-related content

3) Keep in touch with friends via messaging

And while I *was* receiving these benefits, I also often found myself scrolling endlessly on the platforms (especially Instagram), with only a small fraction of my time on the app delivering the benefit I was after. I decided then to optimize my usage of these platforms, with one major step: delete the apps off my phone.

After doing this, I was able to cut down significantly on my screen time without really hampering any of the benefits at all. In terms of the three main benefits:

1) Exposure to news and new ideas ——> Stop using social media as the primary source for this.

I now read the news for a set amount of time each day (I get a summary email from theSkimm which takes me ~5 minutes each day and catches me up to speed on recent events. I can then dig deeper into a specific topic if I wish, but most days, this is enough.) and don’t use the Instagram Stories and Explore tabs for expanding my worldview and instead devote that time to reading, which accomplishes a similar goal for me.

2) Platform to post blog-related content 

and 

3) Keep in touch with friends via messaging

I am able to do both of these from my computer, and as this then requires me to intentionally go on these websites on my computer instead of opening the app on my phone, I tend to log on, accomplish my specific goals, and then log off, without wasting time scrolling endlessly.

While I will note that I am certainly not perfect and I don’t follow this *100%* of the time, I have been making it a personal goal to shift towards this model the vast majority of the time. Sometimes I’ll accidentally end up in a YouTube rabbit hole, but a lot less. It’s something I’m working on.

And as you can see, I still use technology! I still use my phone and computer everyday! I haven’t forsaken it. But they don’t rule me as much as they used to, and I am able to enjoy the benefits while minimizing the negatives and regain control in my life. That’s the beauty of this philosophy of digital minimalism — you don’t have to do anything drastic if you don’t want to. Just simple evaluation and reflection, and then making small changes, which can lead to big results. If you find this interesting and want to hear more, I’d recommend checking out Cal Newport’s book. He goes into much more detail and uses much better prose than I do.

Regardless of whether you check out the book, I would like to encourage you to reflect on how you use your technology, how it is effecting your life both positively and negatively, and see if there are ways to optimize that relationship. For all you know — it could revolutionize your life, give you back tons of hours a day, improve your focus, and make you a more fulfilled person with more time to pursue your dreams. You’ll never know until you try.

All of this led me to a lot of introspection about how I spent my time, and why these patterns of use manifested so strongly for me. Why did these types of platforms suck me in so much? Why was I especially prone to YouTube and Instagram Explore pages for hours on end? What was I seeking?

But I think perhaps I got directionality confused a bit. I don’t think I was really seeking anything in particular.

I think I was running from something.

The blank space.

The complete absence of blank space in my life led me to a question:

When was the last time I actually sat with myself and did nothing?

The Blank Space Theory

One winter day after making lunch, I sat in the driver’s seat of my van and stared out the window as I ate, watching the snow fall gently between the Utah juniper trees.

While this sounds ridiculously unimportant, I realized as it was happening that it was probably the first time I had simply sat with myself in a long, long time. The first time I had sat alone with no video playing, no music playing, no phone in hand, no screen in sight, no book to read, utterly nothing. Simply me and my (very beautiful and very neglected) surroundings. It was beautiful, sublime, and profound in a way that is hard to translate. It felt as if I had been staring at my phone for years, and this was the first time I ever really looked up from it and truly saw what was around me. Slowing down in various moments throughout the day paradoxically can imbue it with more meaning, not less. Not everything has to be go-go-go, trying to cram as much content in as possible. Sometimes, we just need to step back and appreciate the content that’s already there.

When was the last time I looked around? When was the last time I tried to pay attention to my daily surroundings? Sure, I paid attention to the nature on my hikes, but what about the beautiful things I walk past every day? The Juniper tree by the side of my van. The photos on my walls. The periodic rain and snow outside. The bushes. My mug of tea. The beauties of everyday life often go overlooked.

When was the last time I even sat with my own thoughts and emotions? If my life has been a continuous audio-video stream from the Internet to my brain, when was the last time I ever turned that off and stopped to process anything internally? What is it even like to think without a constant stream of content? 

I had been running for years from having to face the blank space, and subsequently: my emotions, thoughts, and the world around me. But when I finally was able to stop running and face said blank space, I discovered not oblivion but beauty.

That is why sitting and watching the snow fall in the junipers on a winter day, simply staring out the window, was a beyond magical experience for me. I have been making an effort to do this and to take time for myself to be present in other ways, ever since. Sometimes it looks like a quiet meal while gazing out the window. Sometimes it’s washing the dishes in the quiet. Sometimes a sunset, sometimes a short walk. Sometimes even a brief pause to look around the room or to think. 

The world is singing a beautiful song. Sometimes, we just have to stop for a second and listen carefully, in order to hear it.

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Resources Cited

[1] Digital Minimalism, by Cal Newport, Portfolio/Penguin, New York, 2019, p. 30.

[2] Newport, p. xi.

[3] Newport, p. 42.

[4] Newport, p. 199.

[5] Newport, p. xi.