Join Analog Social Media - Cal Newport 🔗
Join Analog Social Media - Cal Newport 🔗
When you take an activity like social media, for example, and zoom in close, you isolate behaviors like commenting on a friend’s picture, or encountering an interesting link, that seem mildly positive. What harm could there possibly be in clicking a heart icon?
When you zoom out, however, the cumulative effect of all this swiping and tapping seems to add up to something distinctly negative. Few are happy, for example, after allowing yet another movie night to devolve into side-by-side iPad idling.
Yeah, that last part was a little uncomfortable to read.
I think you can also argue that reverse tends to be true of analog social media. The initial energy it requires can be great and the rewards can be small, but overtime the effect is magnified.
I learnt that in Spain where I’d put off meeting up with friends or going out due to feeling tired and knowing that an evening spent speaking Spanish would leave me further drained. And yet every time I did go out, I’d be more energetic in the long run.