DIGITAL MINIMALISM

Cal Newport, 2019

BYN369 DIGITAL LITERACY - Dr. Simge Süllü Durul - Fall 21/22

 BYN369 DIGITAL LITERACY - Dr. Simge Süllü Durul - Fall 21/22

“Burnout”
 BYN369 DIGITAL LITERACY - Dr. Simge Süllü Durul - Fall 21/22

You need so much less for fulfilled lives

■ What do we actually need for fulfilled lives?

■ Which technology can you not live without?

 BYN369 DIGITAL LITERACY - Dr. Simge Süllü Durul - Fall 21/22

Digital Declutter
Stay away from noncompulsory online activities for 30 days

During this period, you will

■ Start to take walks;
■ Talk to your friends face to face;
■ Read books;
■ Interact with others;
■ Watch the clouds;
■ But most importantly, you will gain an understanding of what you value the most.
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This is not what we signed up for!

the-facebook.com iPhone
2004 2007
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Losing control

■ It’s an industry worth billions of dollar.

■ All of these are products of the attention industry.
■ Individuals are almost forced to use these technologies.
■ Technology is not neutral.
■ Checking how many ‘likes’ you got is the new smoking.

■ Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab

 BYN369 DIGITAL LITERACY - Dr. Simge Süllü Durul - Fall 21/22

Digital Addiction
Addiction: a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological
need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity having
harmful physical, psychological, or social effects and typically
causing well-defined symptoms (such as anxiety, irritability,
tremors, or nausea) upon withdrawal or abstinence : the state
of being addicted

Behavioral Addiction of New Technologies

(Alter, 2017):
• New technologies are particularly suitable for
creating behavioral addiction.
• The addictive characteristics of new technologies
are carefully planned design qualities.
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What makes them so addictive?

■ Intermittent positive
reinforcement (aralıklı
olumlu pekiştirme)

■ Drive for social

approval (toplumsal
onay dürtüsü)
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What is digital minimalism?

A philosophy of technology in which you focus your online time
on a few carefully selected activities that support the things
you value.

“Wish I could do it, but I can’t”

 BYN369 DIGITAL LITERACY - Dr. Simge Süllü Durul - Fall 21/22

Principles of Digital Minimalism

Principle #1: Clutter is costly.

Principle #2: Optimization is important.

Principle #3: Intentionality is satisfying.

 BYN369 DIGITAL LITERACY - Dr. Simge Süllü Durul - Fall 21/22

Principle #1: Clutter is costly

“Digital minimalists recognize that cluttering their time and attention with too many
devices, apps, and services creates an overall negative cost that can swamp the small
benefits that each individual item provides in isolation.”

Thoreau’s New Economics

 BYN369 DIGITAL LITERACY - Dr. Simge Süllü Durul - Fall 21/22

Principle #2: Optimization is important

“Digital minimalists believe that deciding a particular technology supports something

they value is only the first step. To truly extract its full potential benefit, it’s necessary to
think carefully about how they’ll use the technology.”

Law of Diminishing Returns

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Principle #3: Intentionality is satisfying

“Digital minimalists derive significant satisfaction from their general commitment to

being more intentional about how they engage with new technologies. This source of
satisfaction is independent of the specific decisions they make and is one of the biggest
reasons that minimalism tends to be immensely meaningful to its practitioners.”

“Purpose over convenience”

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“Less is more”

vs.

“The more, the merrier”

 BYN369 DIGITAL LITERACY - Dr. Simge Süllü Durul - Fall 21/22

Digital declutter
1. Put aside a thirty-day period during which you will take a break from
optional technologies in your life.
2. During this thirty-day break, explore and rediscover activities and
behaviors that you find satisfying and meaningful.
3. At the end of the break, reintroduce optional technologies into your
life, starting from a blank slate. For each technology you reintroduce,
determine what value it serves in your life and how specifically you
will use it so as to maximize this value.
Outcomes
1. Digital declutter works.
2. Declutter process can be tricky.
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Step #1: Define Your Technology Rules

■ The digital declutter focuses primarily on new technologies, which
describes apps, sites, and tools delivered through a computer or
mobile phone screen. You should probably also include video games
and streaming video in this category.
■ Take a thirty-day break from any of these technologies that you deem
‘optional’—meaning that you can step away from them without
creating harm or major problems in either your professional or
personal life.

Convenience does not mean necessity

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Step #2: Take a Thirty-Day Break

■ You will probably find the first week or two of your digital declutter to be
difficult, and fight urges to check technologies you’re not allowed to check.
These feelings, however, will pass.
■ The goal of a digital declutter, however, is not simply to enjoy time away from
intrusive technology. During this month-long process, you must aggressively
explore higher-quality activities to fill in the time left vacant by the optional
technologies you’re avoiding. This period should be one of strenuous activity
and experimentation.
■ You want to arrive at the end of the declutter having rediscovered the type of
activities that generate real satisfaction, enabling you to confidently craft a
better life—one in which technology serves only a supporting role for more
meaningful ends.
Technology as a means to an end
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Step #3: Reintroduce Technology

After reintroducing technology, ask yourself,
■ Does this technology directly support something that I deeply value?
■ Is this technology the best way to support this value?
■ How am I going to use this technology going forward to maximize its value and
minimize its harms?
To allow an optional technology back into your life at the end of the digital declutter, it
must:
■ Serve something you deeply value (offering some benefit is not enough);
■ Be the best way to use technology to serve this value (if it’s not, replace it with
something better); and
■ Have a role in your life that is constrained with a standard operating procedure that
specifies when and how you use it.
 BYN369 DIGITAL LITERACY - Dr. Simge Süllü Durul - Fall 21/22

Spend time alone

■ Solitude
■ Solitude Deprivation: A state in which you spend close to zero time
alone with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds.

Leave your phone at home

Take long walks
Write
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Don’t click “like”

■ When given downtime, our brains default to
thinking about our social life.
■ The more you use social media to interact with
your network, the less time you devote to
offline communication.
■ The more you use social media, the less time
you tend to devote to offline interaction,
meaning you’re more likely to feel lonely and
miserable.

connection vs. conversation

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Reclaim Leisure
• “A life well lived requires activities that serve no other
purpose than the satisfaction that the activity itself
generates.”
• “If you begin decluttering the low-value digital
distractions from your life before you’ve convincingly
filled in the void they were helping you ignore, the
experience will be unnecessarily unpleasant at best
and a massive failure at worse.”

• How do people of FI 2.0 live?

• Arnold Bennett (1910) How to live on 24 hours a day

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How to reclaim leisure

1. Prioritize
demanding activity
over passive
consumption;
2. Use skills to
produce valuable
things in the
physical world; and
3. Seek activities that
require real-world,
structured social
interactions.
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Suggestions for leisure

■ Fix or build
something.
■ Plan your low-quality
leisure activities.
■ Become part of a
community.
■ Stick to your leisure
plans.
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Join the Attention Resistance

■ Attention economy: the business sector that makes money
gathering consumers’ attention and then repackaging and
selling it to advertisers
To join The Attention Resistance:

1. Delete social media from your phone;

2. Turn your devices into single-purpose
computers;
3. Use social media like a professional;
4. Embrace slow media; and
5. Dumb down your smartphone.
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