Stop Letting Life Overwhelm You and Start Achieving Your Dreams by Becoming a Digital Minimalist
By: Megan Holstein
Tags: Gadgets, Leadership, Digital Life, Lifestyle, Productivity

As for my computer, I only use it an average of 4 hours a day. Nearly all of it is spent working.

Screenshot of my Rescuetime Dashboard

Instead of spending 37 hours a week using my phone, I spend 14. Instead of spending 2 hours a day using my computer for leisure, I spend less than 2 hours a week using it for leisure. I have a lot more free time than people who aren’t digital minimalists. Nearly 20 hours more.

People often ask me how I have the time to go to the gym 3 days a week, read 100 books a year, go to doctor’s appointments 3 times a week, run a writing business, and have a thriving social life. Digital minimalism is how.

Digital minimalists aren’t swayed by advertisements

Nearly all free online services, from social media to mobile games, are supported by advertisements. In exchange for using the service for free, the user (you) agrees to watch advertisements.

This arrangement seems innocuous at first, but is very dangerous for our mental health. Even advertisements we consciously dismiss are remembered by our subconscious and make us more likely to buy that product later on. This is thanks to the mere-exposure effect, a cognitive bias that makes us more likely to enjoy something (or in this case, want to enjoy it) merely because we’ve been exposed to it.

It would be one thing if it were just the mere-exposure effect at work, but it’s not. These online platforms only make money when you see advertisements (advertisers pay them per view or per click), so the goal of these companies is to maximize the amount of time you spend looking at ads. They do this by using clever tricks to keep you online. Clever tricks like:

Infinite Scroll: Infinite scroll technology (being able to keep scrolling forever on Instagram, Tik Tok, or other platforms) triggers a primal part of our mind to keep looking for more. Humans tend not to feel satisfied until we have “completed” something, and infinite scroll keeps us trying to complete a task forever.

Event-Based Notifications: Software engineers design platforms so they automatically send you a notification when you are most likely to get sucked in. These notifications are triggered by time of day, location, or even just the amount of time it’s been since you last used the software. These notifications suck you in and keep you there.

Social Pressure: Whenever a friend is using the platform or popular creators “make posts” or “go live,” these platforms automatically let you know and invite you to hop online too. These invitations are not just kind invitations to join in on the fun, but invitations for you to give your valuable attention to them.

All of this together creates what has been called an “attention economy” — an economy that functions by convincing you to give your attention to platforms in exchange for software, enabling those platforms to sell your attention to advertisers.

What happens to you, of course, is an afterthought for these companies. If focusing all your attention on inflammatory political content makes you stressed and anxious, that’s not their concern. If it makes you feel bad about yourself, that’s not their concern either.

We’re starting to become aware that being the victim of an attention economy is terrible for your mental health. All that attention you’re giving platforms and advertisers is attention you’re not giving to friends, family, loved ones, work, and your own health.

“The tycoons of social media have to stop pretending that they’re friendly nerd gods building a better world and admit they’re just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children. Because, let’s face it, checking your ‘likes’ is the new smoking.” — Bill Maher

For this reason, digital minimalists are ruthless about keeping their attention for themselves. Digital minimalists don’t want advertisement platforms making them angry or feel bad about themselves so platform owners can make more money. They keep their attention for themselves, so they can make their own lives great.

Digital minimalists spend less money

As we’ve become increasingly aware of during the pandemic, much of our spending is driven by our enjoyment of online shopping. But online environments drive more spending than we think.

For instance, did you know that while most people can accurately guess the amount of time they spent online shopping, they cannot accurately guess the amount of money they spent. Studies show people routinely spend twice as much online as they think they did. When you consider that 77% of online window shoppers end up making an impulse purchase, it’s not hard to imagine how.

Online shopping is only becoming more powerful. Online shopping was predicted to comprise 54% of all sales in 2021… and that was before a pandemic shut down half the world. No doubt that gave online shopping a huge growth spurt.

But because digital minimalists spend less time online, and spend it more mindfully, they aren’t making these impulse purchases. They keep their money in their pocket, where they can use it as a savings fund or as a way to invest in their next small business or adventure.