Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

Your Time = Their Money. You should feel empowered to instead invest this value in things that matter more to you

This book is truly a need of the hour, specially for people who spend a lot of time, being glued to their digital screens. The author discusses the psychological impacts of this habit or rather addiction. He says this is a behavioral addiction, which these social media or digital companies target at.

He quotes the statement of Bill Maher who runs a show in HBO,

The tycoons of social media have to stop pretending that they are friendly nerd gods building a better world and admit they are just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children. Because, lets face it, checking your likes is the new smoking.

We ought to understand, how the digital revolution has changed our lives. It creates an imbalance in human psyche, leading to depression and other issues that were once, a rare phenomenon. He also clearly explains the chemical imbalances, created by the constant dopamine, oxytocin changes in our body, aided by a 👍 or a 💬, thereby satisfying our need to get the approval, as that is how we are wired, as social animals.

Human Beings really cannot be in touch with more people, but social media gives us this illusion. The more time we spend, the more and merrier they fill their treasuries, by selling our attention to the global influencers.

He also stresses on the importance of solitude and a deep reflection, which has guided the human race to reach this place on earth. But in this recent era of technology, that very solitude seems to be not experienced by many, because of the effects of digital medium.

The core idea of this book is to adopt digital minimalism and ways to follow this ideology like inculcating many healthy leisure activities in our every day lives. The emphasis is on leveraging the advantages of technology, without entering the digital gutter that it tries to pull us into. Few more lines from the book stated/quoted by the author,

Tech companies encourage behavioral addiction : intermittent positive reinforcement and the drive for social appeal.

Optimizing how we use technology is just as important as how we choose what technologies to use in the first place.

Even old ideas require new investigation to underscore their continued relevance.

Consider the technology optional unless its temporary removal would harm or significantly disrupt the daily operation of your professional or personal life.

Regular doses of solitude, mixed in with our default mode of sociality, are necessary to flourish as a human being. Its more urgent now than ever that we recognise this fact, because, as for the first time in human history solitude is starting to fade away altogether.

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