Many people have the experience of visiting a content website for a specific purpose (…) and then find themselves thirty minutes later still mindlessly following trails of links (…) Every appealing headline clicked or intriguing link tabbed is another metaphorical pull of the slot machine handle.
Remember that early social media sites featured very little feedback—their operations focused instead on posting and finding information. It tends to be these early, pre-feedback-era features that people cite when explaining why social media is important to their life.
(…) more often than not, the cumulative cost of the noncrucial things we clutter our lives with can far outweigh the small benefits each individual piece of clutter promises.
„It’s social media, so aren’t people supposed to be socially connected?“ But the data was clear. The more time you spend „connecting“ on these services, the more isolated you’re likely to become.
If you begin decluttering the low-value digital distractions from your life before you’ve convincingly filled in the void they were helping you ignore, the experience will be unnecessarily unpleasant at best and a massive failure at worse.
The aggressiveness of your restrictions will naturally increase as they allow you to integrate more and more higher-quality pursuits into your life.
The big companies want „use“ to be a simple binary condition—either you engage with their foundational technology, or you’re a weirdo.
Autor: Cal Newport