Cal Newport, with his bestselling book ‘Digital Minimalism’, has yet again proved that his writings resonate with the generations. His ‘Deep Work’ book had already served the lives of millions. However, in the recent dilemma of distractions and social media addiction, ‘Digital Minimalism’ is a book that reveals the ugly truth of how we as a society have become glued to white screens instead of living our lives.
About The Author
Cal Newport is a computer science professor at Georgetown University, USA. More for his services towards computer science, the author is loved and admired for his non-fiction self-help books. Arguably, the most famous amongst them was ‘Deep Work’. However, ‘The Digital Minimalism’ from Cal Newport has the potential to change the perspective of society like no book has ever done before.
Digital Tools – Mix Harm With Benefits
‘Digital Minimalism’ beautifully explains why we as a society are unable to deal with the menace of digital distraction. According to the book. The evils of the media are served in a golden, shiny package of a few benefits. This becomes a trigger for society to continue using those tools. Thereby opening the ways for their distractions too.
Did Steve Jobs Design Phones To Be as Addictive As Those Are Today?
85 times, that is the number of times an ordinary man checks his phone in a day. This compulsive negative activity that is stealing a lot of our time must never have come to mind of Steve Jobs, the great, once he designed Apple Phones. However, that corporate culture and the audience’s innocence have brought us to the point of this destructive addiction to which we are all victims.
Auto-Tagging Feature in Photos – An Uninvited but Liked Disturbance
The social media applications are training their algorithms to recognize faces. When we upload a picture of a group of friends on Meta (formerly Facebook), it asks us whether we want to tag the people in the picture with us. It automatically recognizes the face and links that person’s profile with our post. All that we have to do is click ‘yes’. But the other person who receives the notification falsely assumes that you have been missing him badly. In reality, all that you had to do was click ‘yes’
Digital Declutter – A Month-Long Divorce To Digital Distractions
The book ‘Digital Minimalism’ by Cal Newport has given a unique approach to quitting social media in a systematic way. He starts undertaking a one-month ‘Digital Declutter’ exercise. During this exercise, you will be expected to get rid of all social media activities for a complete month. After the end of the month, you would be allowed to start getting back only those applications on your phone that are meant to provide value and service to you, instead of merely social distractions.
‘Fear’ Is a Magnet for Social Media
There is a long tail of fears that forces us to be in front of screens all the time. Fear of missing something interesting, fear of missing a call or message from some loved ones, fear of needing the phone unexpectedly, and fear of being bored. All these self-created fears have made us believe that in today’s society, mobile phone is a thing that is to be kept closer at all the times. Nothing pleases the attention economy more than this.
Face-to-Face Communication is Richer Than Digital Communication
One of the most celebrated and promoted benefits of social media is that it removes the compulsion of face-to-face talk. It can be replaced by a voice message, text, or video message. But, it is being totally ignored that there is no match to face-to-face talk when it comes to impact. Visiting your brother with his first child has no match to a comment on an Instagram photo of that baby. The coming generations need to realize this factor.
Has Social Media Made Communications Better?
For ages, human relationships have been flourishing. However, in recent times, the same are being questioned. What changed? The very source that some claim to be the cause of connectivity is increasing distances amongst us. Not many people were aware of that or talking about that. Until we read ‘Digital Minimalism’.
The Desire for Recognition through Dance Instead of Handicraft
Social media is exploiting the very basic desire of human beings. That is to be recognized and known. In the past, to achieve that recognition, one had to strive hard and achieve something notable. The same is not the case in the era of social media. A person with his phone can go online, do something silly, and gather the likes, comments, and visibility that was available only to famous stars in the past.
Having undergone the basics of the book, it seems very pertinent to answer certain questions and queries that readers have regarding this book.
What is Digital Minimalism?
Digital Minimalism is a recently evolved concept of reducing our digital footprint for the overall betterment of mental state and social relationships.
How To Minimize Digital Footprint?
‘Digital Declutter’ is a recent idea introduced by Cal Newport for reducing our Digital Footprint. According to this principle, we have to unplug all our digital tools for a month. After the passage of one month, we are allowed to reintroduce the digital platforms to our lives step by step. That return to digital tools will be planned according to our needs and requirements, not on the basis of the addictions we have developed over time. To stick to the habit of staying away from social media, you must read James Clear’s book Atomic Habits.
How Can I Get Digital Minimalism?
The first step to achieve Digital Minimalism is to get hold of the book titled the same. In order to achieve Digital Minimalism, it is very important to understand the philosophy behind how the distracted digital world works. Having gone through that, the desired step needed to be taken can be made easier to take.
Conclusion
To conclude, the Digital Minimalism book by Cal Newport is full of in-depth analysis of how we have reached where we are in terms of digital slavery. Having established the foundation of this trap, Cal Newport gives us step-by-step practical measures to get out of this menace. Highly recommended to be read. If you are considering some high-quality fiction of high quality, you must consider reading ‘Housemaid’ by Freida McFadden.
Leave a Reply