The iPhone, Digital Minimalism, and Social Media

When I was at university the second time, as a mature student I estimated that my social network was around 600 people deep. In light of this it seems absurd that I hooked on to Facebook and Twitter at the same time. Why would it make sense to hook on to both of these technologies when I was already surrounded by people.

It’s even more surprising, given that Twitter came out in 2006, and I had already been at uni for at least two years. Of course it helped that I was at uni when Facebook was still new and exciting because I was in the prime social situation for it to be relevant. If I had been in the world of work instead, then it’s likely I would have ignored FB and Twitter.

I learned of Twitter after someone introduced me to the idea of podcasts, if I remember correctly, but when we had ipods and iTunes, rather than smartphones. At the time you would subscribe to podcasts, download them to an ipod, and then listen to them as you walked, took the tube and more. I was in London, hence “taking the tube”.

For a long time social networks were online, but we had to sit at a computer, plugged into the uni network, or school network. We didn’t have wifi. It’s only later that wifi became more common.

Only blackberry users were truly mobile, as were Nokia phone users. Everyone else was offline when not at a computer. We grew up with digital minimalism. because the iPhone, but more importantly, affordable data plans were not a thing yet.

We often think that the iPhone was revolutionary, but it wasn’t. The Nokia N95 8GB, Blackberry devices and more, connected people, but we were limited because mobile operators saw no value in providing people with data plans.

Remember, for a long time we paid per minute, and per SMS. At the time we had one or two gigabytes of data per month on the uni’s broadband connection. We were data poor, and sites were much lighter.

We went from Social Networks to Social media over time, and luckily for Apple, we became passionate about social networks at the same time as people got iPhones. At the time I got an ipod touch because I didn’t want an iPhone, for budget reasons, if I remember correctly. I also wanted to support European companies like Nokia.

As I read Digital Minimalism I question how late he arrived to social media, because his descriptions imply that he was a mid to late adopter, when Twitter and Facebook had been re-defined by utilitarian venture capitalists, rather than social network users, who, with time switched to social media.

If I had heard the discourse, by Cal Newport, and others, back then, then my use of antisocial media would have been quite different. If I had heard their point of view then I’d be like mid to late adopters, rather than tech evangelists. I’d have completely ignored social media.

Digital Minimalism, the book, was published three years after social media became a term to describe social online networks so it is written with the blinkers of someone who was not there at the beginning. It was written when people had given social media the wrong purpose. He heard what the utlitarianists wanted social media to be, rather than human beings.

In an era of thirty to one and a half hour commutes, in the era of people living increasingly alone, in the era of spending time stuck at desktops with few conversations to be had in person, digital minimalism, does more harm than good, for those that use social media to connect with others rather than waste time.

If you’re sitting on a throne watching reels, then you’re wasting time. If you’re playing Candy crush and Clash of Clans then you’re wasting time. If you’re looking for conversations, in the hope to meet people in person, when friendships strengthen, then digital maximalism is about breaking solitude and isolation.

The Guardian today has a question about loneliness at the moment, asking for reader contributions. If utilitarians had not ruined social media then lonely people would have remained in contact with friends on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and kept doing things together today.

Digital Minimalism only made sense within the context of a utilitarian approach to social media, rather than a humanist use of social media. That’s why it has taken me half a decade to read the book. Now that social media is dead, I can read the book, because it has been replaced by social running, cycling, reading and other communities via sites that are social networks, once more.