Another interesting lifestyle story in the NYT this week on surviving in an analog world caught my eye.
In Digital Addiction Getting You Down? Try an Analog Cure, Cal Newport writes about an experiment he conducted as background for his new book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World in which 1600 folks signed up this past January to be research. The task was “avoiding optional digital technologies in their personal life, including social media, online news, video games and streaming.”
Many of the participants in this digital declutter sent me reports about their experiences. One of the more striking findings was the degree to which low-quality, algorithmically optimized digital content had colonized their leisure time. When they powered down their devices, these declutterers were suddenly confronted with empty stretches that they had no idea how to fill.
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Melissa, revamped her social life, setting up dinners with friends and scheduling regular face-to-face time with her brother — who, to Melissa’s frustration, had a hard time looking up from his phone during their meetings. Yet another volunteer, Caleb, began journaling and listening to vinyl records from beginning to end. He told me the experience of listening to music is completely transformed when you lose the ability to tap “next” when you get antsy with the current song. An N.Y.U. student who wanted to stay informed during his declutter arranged to get a newspaper delivered to his dorm room, while a father named Tarald invested his reclaimed attention into remaining undistracted while with his children. He told me it felt “surreal” to be the only parent at the playground not looking down at an electronic device.
According to research conducted by SF State Professor of Health Education Erik Peper “"The behavioral addiction of smartphone use begins forming neurological connections in the brain in ways similar to how opioid addiction is experienced by people taking Oxycontin for pain relief— gradually,"
People in the study who were most heavily hooked to their smartphones showed significant signs of anxiety, isolation, depression, and loneliness.
"More eyeballs, more clicks, more money," says Peper of the high tech companies behind the design, strategies, and hardware which keep us hooked.
How about you? How much of a challenge would it be for you to abstain from the digital world and what would you do with your free time?
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