Note: This article is the third in a multi-part series that covers Cal Newport’s new book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. The first two articles can be found here and here, covering in greater detail the four key areas of focus according to Newport: 1) Spend Time Alone, 2) Don’t Click Like, 3) Reclaim Leisure and 4) Join the Attention Resistance. Today I’ll be focusing on the concept of reclaiming leisure.

Newport’s thesis on digital minimalism:

Our current relationship with the technologies of our hyper-connected world is unsustainable and is leading us closer to the quiet desperation that Thoreau observed so many years ago. But as Thoreau reminds us, ‘the sun rose clear’ and we still have the ability to change this state of affairs. To do so, however, we cannot passively allow the wild tangle of tools, entertainments, and distractions provided by the internet age to dictate how we spend our time or how we feel. We must indeed take steps to extract the good from these technologies while sidestepping what’s bad. We require a philosophy that puts our aspirations and values once again in charge of our daily experience, all the while dethroning primal whims and the business models of Silicon Valley from their current dominance of this role; a philosophy that accepts new technologies, but not if the price is the dehumanization Andrew Sullivan warned us about; a philosophy that prioritizes long-term meaning over short-term satisfaction. A philosophy, in other words, like digital minimalism.

The idea of ‘don’t click like’ is a byproduct of how the technology has been engineered to not only grab our attention, but also tailor the content in a way that is supposed to benefit us, but in reality is designed to create addictive patterns that keep us checking the various social media apps over and over. A prime example of how social media is engineered to cause addictive patterns is the ‘like’ button.

In fact, the co-inventor of the ‘like’ button, Facebook’s Leah Perlman, said in an interview that she had become addicted to the feedback that the like button provided:

“When I need validation- I go to check Facebook…I’m feeling lonely, ‘let me check my phone.’ I’m feeling insecure, ‘Let me check my phone…I noticed that I would post something that I used to post and the ‘like’ count would be way lower than it used to be. Suddenly, I thought I’m actually also kind of addicted to the feedback.”

If I could remove the ‘like’ button from the bottom of this post, I would, but the Squarespace template doesn’t allow it. Actually, it probably does, but at this point I’m not technical enough to figure it out. I’d remove the like button because in the past I’ve found myself in the same pattern, checking my Facebook ‘likes’ and wondering why one post, picture, or comment got more ‘likes’ than another post, picture, or comment etc. I wasn’t alone, because according to Facebook founding president Sean Parker, applications like Facebook are designed to consume as much user time as possible, claiming that it was “exploiting vulnerability in human psychology”.

According to the Guardian, Parker explained that when Facebook was being developed the objective was: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” It was this mindset that led to the creation of features such as the “like” button that would give users “a little dopamine hit” to encourage them to upload more content.

From Parker:

“It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

The ‘like’ button exploits a psychological weak spot that compels us to addictively check our social media over and over by injecting the concept intermittent reinforcement. The little dopamine hit we get when we see that someone liked one of our posts motivates us to continually come back and see who else liked it.

It is the engineering of social approval. The more likes your post or picture gets, the more others get to see it and like it, creating more social validation. On the surface, this may not be a bad thing, because it can help promote interesting content. Unfortunately the addictive nature of constantly receiving validation for ‘likes’ has a slot machine like effect on our brains. Former Google employee Tristan Harris has compared the impact of the ‘like’ button and the infinite scrolling mechanism of the Facebook and Instagram news feeds to slot machines.

“You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing,” Harris wrote. “We cannot know when we will be rewarded, and more often than not we don’t find anything interesting or gratifying, much like gambling. But that’s precisely what keeps us coming back.”

Think of it this way. If everything you posted immediately received a comparable number of ‘likes’ you wouldn’t find yourself addictively checking your social media to see how many likes you have. It’s the unpredictable nature that creates a pattern where we are constantly checking our screens. This unpredictability is literally engineered into the system to keep us scrolling, keep us coming back to check our ‘likes’.

For an adult who grew up prior to social media this may not be a problem. Where it is a problem is with the generation that grew up on social media and is literally basing their self-worth and social validation on how many likes their selfie received on Instagram.

According to Science Focus this is all part of the design of the platforms:

There’s no shortage of dopamine triggers baked into the design of the social media apps. ‘Like’ buttons take advantage of both our desire for social validation and our love of seeing our ‘score’. Gamification elements, such as Snapchat’s ‘streaks’ feature, which publicly keeps track of how many days in a row you’ve used the app, make users feel compelled to check their apps every day in order to keep up their rating. Our phones and apps also take advantage of our inherent social impulses and anxieties, including our fear of missing out (FOMO) and the impression that we need to reciprocate when we feel someone has done something for us.

Beyond the addictive nature of the apps there is something bigger though, the fact that likes and retweets are most likely contributing to the current state of media. The clickbait headlines and ‘viral’ fake news stories that we all dislike can be traced back to the impact of social media rating the value of content. The creators of content understand the patterns of what makes a story successful, thus are motivated to create more content based on the amount of social traction they feel it will receive. The success of clickbait headlines creates more clickbait headlines, effectively dumbing down the content that we all see. More broadly, these tools also curate the content of what we like and don’t like, effectively not showing us content that the algorithm tells them we won’t find interesting.

Does this contribute to the current ‘outrage of the day’ aspect of our society? Of course it does.

Does this curated content effectively stop us from seeing opposing political viewpoints, effectively creating mass confirmation bias? Probably.

So avoid the ‘like’ button if you can. More broadly, make an effort to not base your value on the social acceptance of the content you create. In regards to social media, log onto a computer when you access it. Open up the web browser on your laptop and check Facebook every couple of days to see how your friends are doing and to look at their vacation photos. Avoid using the app on your phone as much as possible. Think about turning off your Facebook notifications so you’re not constantly checking the notification log to see who ‘liked’ your post or picture.

And while you’re at it, click like on this article :)

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