With a whole slew of digital communication tools at our disposal, it’s easy for life to become a never-ending stream of noise. But what if carefully selected technologies could support us instead of enslave us? What if we could converse comfortably with others rather than simply connect to them via social media? Cal Newport holds out hope that we can get our autonomy back and relearn how to live life in the real world and hold face-to-face conversations.

We really had no idea what we were in for when the iPhone and “thefacebook.com” were introduced in the early 2000s.When thefacebook.com launched in 2004, it was marketed as an online directory that would allow people to see photos of friends and acquaintances. No one expected it to become a website and then an app around which people would orient their social lives.

When Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone in 2007, he was most excited about the touchscreen features and the fact that it was an iPod (remember those?) that could also make calls and send texts. In 2007, there was no App store, social media had not been integrated, and far fewer people were impulsively checking their phones during meals and parties.

The point is that the original promises of and expectations for electronic communications like Facebook and the iPhone were far more modest than what they are now. Even their makers did not anticipate how drastically they would rearrange our social patterns. Facebook and the iPhone were exciting novelties, but their domains were considered limited. But far from supplements to enhance life, for many people, they have become the content of life itself.    

These changes have happened quickly—too quickly for most of us to know what we were signing up for. People wanted change and novelty for the sake of change and novelty—without considering the toll it might be taking. It just happened and the masses have been swept up in its mighty, pervasive current.

Technophiles routinely dismissed the concerns of conscientious objectors as alarmist and paranoid and emphasized technology’s usefulness. But technophiles missed the heart of the matter. Technology can be useful and we can still be its slaves. Examples of technology’s utility usually highlight a heartwarming story of an artist gaining a following through social media, or grandparents seeing photos of their grandkids on the other side of the country.

But the micro-scale Kodak moments are less the issue than the big picture realities (i.e. digital communication’s net effect on society). The broad brushstrokes of the electronic world swaying our moods and behavior, luring us away from the things that, deep down, we care more about, removing us from the simple pleasures of the present, and creating an urge to document and post that is tough to resist even if we want to: it paints a disconcerting picture.

What’s encouraging, however, is that people are starting to have more honest conversations about how technology is minimizing our autonomy. To be clear, the desire to minimize digital technology is not about pushing an anti-technology agenda, but about increasing quality of life.

TV personality Bill Maher usually ends his Real Time appearances with a final reflection, usually politically charged. But on May of 2017, Maher put social media in his crosshairs. He submitted that the cool, nerdy social media czars in hoodies and T-shirts need to start acknowledging that they’re the new tobacco farmers, that checking “likes” is the new smoking, and that they’re selling their product to children.

A month before Maher’s frank denunciation, Anderson Cooper interviewed Tristan Harris, a Silicon Valley wizard turned whistleblower. He had started his own tech company and played an integral role in building out gmail when Google hired him in 2011. This was a critical moment for Harris, when he saw that the work he was doing was impacting hundreds of millions of individuals and their behavior. He found this troubling, so what did he do?

Naturally, he wrote a 144-slide treatise called, “A Call to Minimize Distraction and Respect Users’ Attention.” He sent his manifesto to a few colleagues, and it made its rounds to thousands at Google—including CEO Larry Page. Page christened Harris “the product philosopher,” and tailor-made a position that would allow Harris to continue building out his ideas.

But here’s the thing: nothing changed. Harris laid out the dilemma in a 2016 piece he wrote for The Atlantic examining how respecting the users’ attention and minimizing distractions meant profit loss for companies. Google, like everyone else in the Silicon Valley, was in a “race to the brainstem.” In other words, whoever can tap into the most primordial portions of the brain, the parts that control reflexive responses, will corner the market. Already, companies are tapping more and more deeply into the brain’s basic mechanisms, like the portions that respond to novelty, unpredictable reward, and social belonging. We thought we were consuming programmed products; turns out we ourselves are being programmed.

Tristan Harris contends that the platitude often thrown around about technology’s neutrality is ridiculous. Thanks to people like Harris and NYU’s Adam Alter, “behavioral addiction” is now listed in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and awareness is growing of digital technology’s deep intrusion and the companies trying to deepen it.

Bill Maher was actually on to something when he concluded his anti-social media diatribe by saying, “Philip Morris just wanted your lungs. The App Store wants your soul.”

It’s become increasingly clear that there is, in fact, a battle on between technology and autonomy. If we want to reclaim those pieces of our humanity that we surrendered, we need a concrete strategy. Digital minimalism is the game plan proposed here that can enable those tired of behavioral addictions to build a life that selectively harnesses the technologies that support our highest aims in life.

Small-scale changes and life hacks are not enough to end behavioral addiction or even re-establish a healthy relationship with technology. This is because electronic technologies have become too intertwined with everyday culture. We need to take a step back and have a serious DTR with technology.

Defining your relationship with technology is an opportunity to clarify your values. The New York Times op-ed writer who jubilantly reflects on his freedom after silencing notifications on his 112 apps doesn’t ask the deeper question of why he believed he needed 112 apps to begin with. We need to develop a philosophy of technology use in which articulate which tools we are willing to use, the reasons for their use, and under what circumstances we use them.

Here is what Digital Minimalism proposes:

“A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.”

When values and philosophy are clarified, the technologies we’ve selected can support us instead of distract us. The minimalist approach comes hard against the maximalist philosophy we’ve internalized, namely, that “more is better.” All it is, really, is technological FOMO (fear of missing out). People are scandalized by the thought of someone never having a Facebook profile, but when pressed to explain their surprise, they will usually say something to the effect of, “but you might be missing out on something.”

If Digital Minimalism can make us masters of our tools instead of their slaves, then maybe the “more is better” philosophy doesn’t actually give us more. The Digital Minimalist eliminates clutter that doesn’t provide huge and unmistakable benefits. Less is more.

Cultural commentators have warned against and lamented technology’s encroachment on our peace and solitude throughout modernity. The poet Henry David Thoreau was far less enthusiastic about the telegraph’s invention than the general public. In the 1980s, some sociologists saw the invention of car phones as emblematic of technology’s continued disruption of our need for silence and solitude. Now, well into the twenty-first century, digital technologies present new threats. For the first time in humanity’s history, solitude is not only harder to find, but is slipping away all together. Whether we realize it or not, many people are suffering from “solitude deprivation.”

The three main benefits of solitude are new ideas, deepening knowledge of self, and truer intimacy with others.

We are naturally social, and relationships are certainly important, but we function best when we strike a balance between togetherness and separateness. Many have reflected on how the togetherness is often richer when it is punctuated with periods of solitude. The essayist May Sarton wrote that she tastes the fullness of life only when it is punctuated by moments away from others and life’s happenings. Author and artist Wendell Berry believed that it was actually in solitude that we shed our loneliness.

Without solitude, we cannot readily discern what we ourselves believe, come up with our own ideas, know what we think of ourselves (how many of us rely on “likes” and comments from others to find out), and we have difficulty fully entering into togetherness.

Aristotle was on the mark when he referred to humans as social animals. Thousands of years later, the neuroscience literature is repeatedly confirming an ancient insight. More than interesting trivia, however, this basic fact of life matters for the digital minimalist.

For millions of years, our species was built for face-to-face, in-the-flesh interactions with small, local communities. In twenty years, digital communications have damaged the face-to-face, flesh-and-blood, and locality aspects that were central to human flourishing for millennia. Modern technology is showing us the tremendous extent to which we are wired for deep and full social interaction—and how Snapchats and “likes” don’t give us what we need.

In a kind of paradox, social media makes us feel both connected and lonely, happy and depressed. There are plenty of studies out there, and depending on which researcher examines the findings, there are divergent conclusions drawn. Some insist that digital communications strengthen relationships and others claim just the opposite. Part of the reason for the paradox is that those who interpret data more favorably look at specific behaviors in the moment, whereas negative interpretations consider consumption of social media more generally. The more our interactions are online and removed, the fewer face-to-face interactions we have—which tends to lead to loneliness, whatever small dopamine lift we might get from a new notification. Digital communications like text and social media are relational fast food. They deliver an initial buzz, but nothing that sustains us.

There is a crucial difference between connection and conversation. To borrow MIT professor Sherry Turkle’s phrase, we must “reclaim conversation.” It’s far more consistent with the way we’re wired.

Aristotle believed that leisure was an essential part of the good life. With digital distractions minimized, you’ll probably find that you have more time on your hands. So what should you do with the extra time? Digital minimalism does not prescribe a specific set of activities, but history teaches—and now science confirms—that some activities tend to be more meaningful than others.

The value of face-to-face conversations has already been discussed. Here are a few others.

Prioritize active and demanding activities over passive consumption. It might seem counterintuitive, but we are usually more refreshed when we use our leisure time doing something rather than nothing. The narrative of peaceful relaxation is far less enriching than many think, and doing something active—even strenuous—with your free hours will invigorate your work hours more than many would suspect.

Hone skills that will help you create something valuable in the physical world. Crafts aren’t just for kids. Crafting anything, whether turning pallets into a garden bed or table, undertaking a home renovation, or knitting a scarf, you’re creating something meaningful and learning patience, perseverance, and focus. Our species is better at making things with our hands than any other on the planet, so think of ways you can make the most of it. Even cultivating a high-quality behavior like regular pick-up basketball, learning to play an instrument, and having regular board game nights (they’re making a comeback) deliver the same satisfaction.

All of the suggestions above are analog in nature. They require the use of our bodies and encourage tactile experience in the real world and the cultivation of powers of concentration, whether that’s working on a car, building a shelf, or kayaking down the river. We can relearn how to take our cues about what life is like from the world around us, from skills rather than screens.

In the mid-1800s, there was a painter named Samuel Morse whose life’s trajectory changed during a conversation with a Harvard professor about potential uses for electricity. They were fellow passengers on a ship traveling back to the United States from Europe. Morse had toured Europe hoping his art would gain some attention.

For the 14 years that followed his conversation, Morse slaved over an invention that would become the telegraph. His official demonstration in 1844 stunned a body of judges and legislators in the Supreme Court when he sent a message to a friend 40 miles away in Baltimore. It was a series of beeps that someone on the receiving end would hear and interpret. It was later called “Morse Code” in honor of its inventor.

“What hath God wrought?” was the message that Morse sent to his fellow demonstrator a city away. This Bible verse, taken from Numbers 23:23, captured the wonder with which Morse saw the world. It was also an eerie foreshadowing of the electronic communications revolution that Morse and his colleagues could simply not have anticipated.

The poet Henry David Thoreau said of the newly patented telegraph and its capabilities that we’re so eager to connect Maine to Texas, that we had not asked why it was so important that they should be connected at all. Obviously, Thoreau knew nothing of smartphones and the internet, but his question remains a reasonable one. While it turns out that there are some good reasons for Maine and Texas to communicate, each of us can reclaim more of our humanness by finding the best reasons to do so.