Digital Minimalism: On Living Better with Less Technology

by Cal Newport

The tycoons of social media have to stop pretending that they’re friendly nerd gods building a better world and admit they’re just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children.5 Because, let’s face it, checking your “likes” is the new smoking.

Addiction is a condition in which a person engages in use of a substance or in a behavior for which the rewarding effects provide a compelling incentive to repeatedly pursue the behavior despite detrimental consequences.

“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 cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”