I touched on the Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World last week in a post on willpower, and felt his important work warrants a deeper overview, so much in fact that I’m going to divide it into multiple articles. Newport is a professor of computer science at Georgetown University and the author of a number of important books including Deep Work, So Good They Can’t Ignore You and How to Become a Straight-A Student .

Newport’s thesis on digital minimalism:

Our current relationship with the technologies of our hyper-connected world is unsustainable and is leading us closer to the quiet desperation that Thoreau observed so many years ago. But as Thoreau reminds us, ‘the sun rose clear’ and we still have the ability to change this state of affairs. To do so, however, we cannot passively allow the wild tangle of tools, entertainments, and distractions provided by the internet age to dictate how we spend our time or how we feel. We must indeed take steps to extract the good from these technologies while sidestepping what’s bad. We require a philosophy that puts our aspirations and values once again in charge of our daily experience, all the while dethroning primal whims and the business models of Silicon Valley from their current dominance of this role; a philosophy that accepts new technologies, but not if the price is the dehumanization Andrew Sullivan warned us about; a philosophy that prioritizes long-term meaning over short-term satisfaction. A philosophy, in other words, like digital minimalism.

The era of the smartphone is incredibly fascinating. For all the positives these devices have brought to society, so many of us struggle with the nagging feeling that for all the good they provide, there’s a downside. Newport’s use of the famous Henry David Thoreau term, “quiet desperation”, is very fitting. Smartphones and social media apps, with the promise of optimizing our life and making us more connected, often have the opposite effect.

Rather than staking the claim that we need to avoid these devices, that in many cases can make our lives easier, Newport’s point is that we need to re-define our relationship with the digital world, essentially putting them to use for our best aspirations, not against them.

In his push for Digital Minimalism, Newport focuses on four key areas: Spend Time Alone, Don’t Click Like, Reclaim Leisure and Join the Attention Resistance. Rather than one extremely long post on each area I’ve chosen to divide these entries into multiples, which I will post over the next week. Right now I’ll focus on an area that I’ve struggled with, with spending time along (from our devices).

Spend Time Alone: Newport believes the humans are “not wired to be constantly wired.”

From the book:

“Returning to our canary-in-the-coal-mine analogy, the plight of iGen provides a strong warning about the danger of solitude deprivation. When an entire cohort unintentionally eliminated time alone with their thoughts from their lives, their mental health suffered dramatically. On reflection, this makes sense. These teenagers have lost the ability to process and make sense of their emotions, or to reflect on who they are and what really matters, or to build strong relationships, or even to just allow their brains time to power down their critical social circuits, which are not meant to be used constantly, and to redirect that energy to other important cognitive housekeeping tasks. We shouldn’t be surprised that these absences lead to malfunctions.”

The generation hit particularly hard in this area is what Newport characterizes as the iGen, a term coined by Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University. This is the generation born between 1995 and 2012 that have grown up entirely in the digital world.

Via Twenge:

“But the impact of these devices has not been fully appreciated, and goes far beyond the usual concerns about curtailed attention spans. The arrival of the smartphone has radically changed every aspect of teenagers’ lives, from the nature of their social interactions to their mental health. These changes have affected young people in every corner of the nation and in every type of household. The trends appear among teens poor and rich; of every ethnic background; in cities, suburbs, and small towns. Where there are cell towers, there are teens living their lives on their smartphone…Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.”

According to Newport and Twenge the constant interaction with our phones is depriving us of key solitude. As a parent of two teenage kids, I can attest that managing screen time is a constant struggle. My wife and I use applications that limit the amount of screen time per day, but we fight the constant battle and arguments that we are damaging their social life because many of their friends don’t have the same screen time limits.

We’ve discovered that when you do limit screen time, the results are miraculous. Do you want an engaged teenager spending quality family time talking, watching movies or playing games? Do you want your teenager to read more? You’ll be amazed how limiting screen time re-engages them instantly.

Of course it’s not just teenagers. This is an area that I’m guilty of myself, and I’ve made a concerted effort to regain solitude myself. I was never disconnecting. I’d workout with headphones in my ears at all times, listening to Audible books or podcasts. I would couple this activity with constantly listening to the same content while doing chores around the house or running errands, or commuting to work. Essentially every free moment was filled with what I considered positive content to push me forward and make me more successful. What I was missing was the fact that I was never alone with my thoughts. I was always alone with someone else’s thoughts.

Solitude is important.

I was missing the reboot. Think of your brain like a computer. Think of that same computer with dozens of windows open, overloaded with programs running and constant activity. Just like we have to reboot our computer, we have to reboot ourselves occasionally. Time alone thinking, or time spent walking or running in nature without the stimulus of music or someone talking in your ear is critical.

I’ve posted before about the benefits of walking and disconnecting and referenced Friedrich Nietzsche, who used to walk up to eight hours per day and made the statement that “all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” The great philosopher was moving, thinking, alone with his thoughts. These are the critical times that help you work things out, solve problems and come up with your next brilliant idea to move you forward professionally or personally.

It’s time to stop letting these devices control our free time. It’s critical to find time to detach, refresh our minds and think. So next time there’s a break at your kids soccer game resist the urge to pull your phone out and aimlessly scroll through Facebook. Get up, walk around. Have a conversation with someone. Take a deep breath and admire the beauty of the natural world.

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