Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport - A bold act or resistance.

I left Facebook two years ago and I haven’t returned since. The controversies over fake news, and the still unfolding saga of Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and the Brexit campaign have played a role, but I had started despising Facebook long ago.

Truth suffers on social media. We tend to trust and be influenced by our peer groups. But on social media our extended peer group may contain a lot of fake people,calculated to manipulate us, to influence us without even realizing it. Every moment, on Facebook, algorithms calculate the chances that a person will act in a particular way and then it directs our behaviour in the sneakiest way possible.

In our eagerness to “connect” with people we are giving up our own freedom. There is a shift, from being free people, we are becoming resources for the attention economy conglomerates which with our voluntary assistance, are harvesting personal views and preference, in order to use or sell the information. 

In his new book Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport talks-in such a powerful way-about how costly it is for us to spend a big part of our lives in digital platforms, social media and all kind of media use.

There are certainly benefits in using social media, but Cal Newport guards us against the pitfalls of letting these technologies get the best of us. If you value your life, you need to try to make every minute meaningful. A life well lived requires activities that serve no other purpose than the satisfaction that the activity itself generates, said Aristotle. Becoming a slave to the attention economy of conglomerates is not a meaningful way to spend your life. If your personal brand requires engagement with services like social media, it’s important to approach these activities with a sense of zero-sum antagonism, Cal Newport suggests. Look carefully at these technologies and decide, consciously, how you are going to use them in order to avoid exploitation.

Today my social media presence is limited and strictly controlled. I have my personal blog and a Twitter account where I follow a selected number of people, focusing on my interests, a curated list of journalists, academics, authors and high-quality thinkers. I don't spend more than ten minutes a day on social media. If something catch my attention I keep a note to investigate it further or read it later. I found that this is a very effective time way of achieving the balance. Being connected and informed but also the director of my own time and life.