My first smartphone was a T-Mobile MyTouch 3G Slide. I loved that phone. It was so simple to use. Had a touch screen, a slide out keyboard, android OS and a blazing fast 3G connection (7 Mbps max). It was all I ever needed to stay in touch with the world. It had text messaging, email, web browser, camera for capturing all those life moments AND it was free due to a promotion. I was living in the smartphone age and life could not be more perfect.

Except then the iPhone began to dominate the mobile OS space and I envied all it was capable of. Apps for Facebook, apps for Twitter, apps for everything. So I became a iPhone baby. And an iPad baby. And after the M1s launched I became a Mac baby. I love Apple products because they are just simple to use. I don't want to tinker with my phone. I want to just use it. Similarly, I want my tablet to just work. Same with my work machines. I don't want to tinker with you when I need to get work done or keep in touch. Keep it simple.

Unfortunately, technology won't stay simple forever, especially when there's an app for everything that is vying for your attention. 

And once that app has gotten your attention, you realize that tweet or video wasn't enough to satisfy your dopamine. So you scroll to the next thing, then the next thing and before you know it you've now spent an hour watching videos and any joy you had prior to scrolling mindlessly is now completely gone. You feel a little depressed over your choices in life and now you have no motivation to get the things done you feel guilty about not doing. So what do you do? Go back to watching videos again. 

It's endless! And vicious. These application algorithms are designed to work very similar to how casinos keep poor pensioners glued to their chairs. Just a little hit of dopamine every now and again. Keep scrolling, you're going to get that hit. Keep pulling the lever, you'll get a small win that makes this all worth it. The anticipation and sunk cost fallacy will keep you glued to doing anything else. 

Or maybe you're like me and addicted to online personalities. I always prided myself into thinking I was above the fray cause I don't care about the Royal Family or celebrities, but I had my own cast of characters I was invested in through X. Right-wing personalities, left-wing personalities, techno personalities. They were all talking about things I was interested in but they weren't actually having conversations. The goal of any tweet on X isn't to have a discussion - it's to get likes, replies and make sure you are dunking on your enemies. So I would see the same posts getting repeated over and over again and the algorithm would feed it back to me cause "you stared at it for 30 seconds the last time someone posted this, maybe you'll like seeing it again".

The truth is I didn't like any of it. It fed an anger inside me that was impotent against having actual dialogue with people. I tried, in some cases I would tweet at someone civilly and it would sometimes go negatively and other times not. I always persisted at trying to find common ground but I always got turned off when I realize the other person didn't have the same goal as me. I wanted to understand. They wanted to dunk on me with snappy tweets.

All this mindless scrolling and attempts at trying to communicate with others was fruitless. Nothing positive was being felt from it and it was depressing me. Things I wanted to do, I wouldn't do cause I was too drained to even try. Fortunate for me, I had identified the problem. Social media was draining my time and energy. So I needed to get rid of it, right?

Yes. And no. I definitely needed to make it less easy to mindlessly scroll, but at the same time I needed to be able to get to these sites when it was appropriate to do so. I setup rules for how I would interact with social media sites:

* No apps. Apps make it easy to browse. Social media companies make their mobile browser version painful to use. I use this to my advantage.
* Only go to the site with a purpose. Check on a friend's profile, clicking on a link.

Simple rules. Now I just need to follow them. Deleting TikTok was a major decision. As of today, it is not downloadable through the app store so that one is gone. Facebook, X, Threads, Bluesky, Reddit - all gone. The first few days of living like this are weird. You pick up your phone and quickly realize you had no real reason to be on the phone. So you put it down. I averaged 180 pickups of my phone two weeks ago. I'm now down to 130. Those pickups are now meaningful. I'm checking my messages, replying to people, looking up something. I'm back to using my smart phone for smart purposes.

Some of the ideas I got on this came from a book called Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. Newport's approach involves several steps leading to many lifestyle changes that can be beneficial to people who feel like technology is running their life. While it's only been a few weeks for me in experimenting this new approach, I have found my joy by simplifying in a few basic ways. I bought a newspaper subscription to stay aware of current events. I do the crossword puzzle and other games. I read the comics. I draw, I paint, I play music. I do all the things I wanted to but couldn't be arsed because I drained myself on social media.

Digital minimalism is an incredibly simple prescription to the problem of information overload. Human beings were not meant to know the opinions of thousands of people all at once. We were meant to have one on one conversations, meaningful interactions. Social media robbed us of the ability to have those interactions and the only solution is to break out of their loops. Make your own loop. Find the joy in things you like to do again.