Note: This article is the fourth in a four-part series that covers the key themes in Cal Newport’s new book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. The first three articles can be found here , 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 joining the attention resistance.

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 fourth key component of digital minimalism, according to Newport, is the idea of joining the attention resistance. The key to the attention resistance is understanding that social media, smartphones and their associated apps are designed to capture and keep your attention while creating addictive patterns. Newport makes the point that these apps are free for a reason. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram make money by monetizing advertising and user data. The more clicks and views the they receive, the more revenue they make. For this reason they are motivated to create addictive patterns in the user base.