Chapter 36: Exercises — Digital Minimalism

Reflection Exercises

Exercise 1: Technology Inventory Make a complete list of every app on your phone and every platform you use on your computer. For each one, write: (a) why you originally started using it, (b) what you actually use it for today, and (c) whether it actively serves a deeply held value or is present through inertia. Notice how many you cannot clearly justify.

Exercise 2: Values Clarification Before applying minimalism, clarify what you value. Write a one-paragraph description of how you want to spend your time — what activities, relationships, and pursuits constitute a good life by your own definition. Then return to your technology inventory and ask: which technologies support this picture? Which compete with it?

Exercise 3: Usage Honest Assessment Check your phone's screen time data for the past week. Write down: total daily average, top five apps by time, number of pickups per day, and time of first and last phone use. Most people are surprised by what they find. Describe your reaction honestly.

Exercise 4: The Phantom Limb Test For a single morning (before noon), leave your phone in another room. Record every moment you feel the urge to check it, what triggered the urge (boredom, anxiety, habit, curiosity), and what you did instead. This exercise reveals the emotional functions your phone serves.

Exercise 5: Newport's Value Filter Choose three apps you use regularly. Apply Newport's filter: "Does this technology provide enough value to justify the costs it imposes on me and my values?" Write your honest assessment for each. Note whether your analysis differs from your actual behavior.

Behavioral Experiments

Exercise 6: The 24-Hour Social Media Fast Go one full day without any social media use. Keep a journal throughout the day. Note: moments of discomfort, unexpected discoveries, what you did with freed time, and whether your social relationships suffered in any observable way.

Exercise 7: Notification Audit Go to your phone's notification settings and review every app authorized to send notifications. Disable all non-essential notifications for one week. At the end of the week, evaluate: what did you miss? What didn't you miss at all? Which notifications do you actually want to restore?

Exercise 8: The Bedroom Experiment For one week, charge your phone outside your bedroom. Record your sleep quality each morning (using a scale of 1-10) and note what you do in the first fifteen minutes after waking. Compare sleep quality and morning mood to the previous week.

Exercise 9: Grayscale Day Set your phone to grayscale mode for a full day. Record: how it affects your desire to pick up the phone, how it affects your use of specific apps, and any subjective changes in how you feel about your phone during the day.

Exercise 10: The 30-Minute Social Media Limit Replicate Hunt et al.'s experiment for yourself. Set a combined social media limit of 30 minutes per day for two weeks. Keep a brief daily journal noting mood, anxiety, sleep quality, and time availability. Compare your beginning and end scores on a simple wellbeing measure.

Exercise 11: The App Removal Test Remove one social media app from your phone (keep the account). Access it only via browser for two weeks. Track how often you actually seek it out via browser versus how often you would have tapped it reflexively. Calculate your estimated usage reduction.

Exercise 12: Scheduled Checking Windows Designate three specific times per day when you will check social media. Outside those windows, do not check. Practice this for one week. Note: what feelings arise when you'd normally check but can't? Does the designated window change how you use the time when you do check?

Analysis and Research Exercises

Exercise 13: Reading Hunt et al. Find and read the Hunt et al. (2018) study "No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression." Write a one-page critical summary covering: methodology, key findings, effect sizes, limitations, and what you think the study does and does not establish.

Exercise 14: The Newport Philosophy Assessment Read the core chapters of Newport's Digital Minimalism (or a substantial excerpt). Identify three philosophical claims Newport makes that are well-supported and three that seem to rest primarily on Newport's personal experience or ideological preferences. Evaluate the evidence quality for each claim.

Exercise 15: Comparing Experimental Studies Locate and briefly summarize three randomized experiments on social media reduction (Hunt 2018, Tromholt 2016, and Allcott et al. 2020 are good starting points). Compare their methodologies and findings. What do the differences between studies tell you about the conditions under which social media reduction produces benefits?

Exercise 16: The Privilege Audit Evaluate Newport's digital minimalism prescriptions through an equity lens. For each major prescription (30-day declutter, phone-free bedroom, analog social activities), identify: who can realistically practice this, what assumptions it requires, and how it would need to be modified for someone with fewer resources or less professional autonomy.

Exercise 17: Social Coordination Mapping Map your social life onto platforms. Create a diagram showing: which relationships are maintained primarily through which platforms, which social activities are organized through which platforms, and where the costs of opting out would be concentrated. Where would individual minimalism be hardest?

Application Exercises

Exercise 18: Design Your Operating Rules Following Newport's "operating procedures" model, write explicit rules for each technology you decide to keep. Rules should specify: when you use it (scheduled windows or triggers), what you use it for (specific purposes only), where you use it (device or location restrictions), and what you won't use it for.

Exercise 19: The Environmental Redesign List three specific environmental changes you could make to your physical or digital environment that would reduce impulsive phone use without relying on continuous willpower. Implement two of them this week. Report on the results.

Exercise 20: Analog Substitution Experiment Identify one thing you typically use social media for (entertainment, connection, information). For two weeks, substitute an analog alternative (book, phone call, newspaper). Track whether the substitute satisfies the same need and how the experiences compare.

Exercise 21: The Social Coordination Solution Identify one social group (friends, family, team) where you're dependent on a platform you'd prefer to use less. Propose an alternative coordination method to the group. Track: is the group willing to try it? What happens to coordination quality?

Exercise 22: Your 7-Day Minimalism Experiment Design a 7-day minimalism experiment tailored to your specific situation. Write out: what you'll change, what you'll measure, what your hypotheses are about the outcomes, and what would constitute success. Then run the experiment and write a brief report of findings.

Critical Thinking Exercises

Exercise 23: The Critique Response Newport's digital minimalism has been criticized for romanticizing pre-digital life and being impractical for most people. Write a 500-word response to this critique that takes the criticism seriously while defending what is genuinely valuable in the minimalism approach.

Exercise 24: Individual vs. Structural Change Write a 600-word essay arguing for the following position: "Individual behavior change is not only insufficient but potentially counterproductive for addressing social media harms, because it allows platforms to avoid accountability." Then write a 300-word response to your own essay. Which argument do you find more persuasive?

Exercise 25: The Willpower Question The chapter claims that willpower-only approaches to social media reduction tend to fail. Critically evaluate this claim. Are there conditions under which willpower is sufficient? Are there individuals for whom willpower-based approaches succeed? What would good evidence for or against this claim look like?

Exercise 26: Digital Minimalism for Whom? Consider two people: a freelance writer with flexible hours and no dependents, and a single parent working two jobs who uses social media to stay connected with family and access community resources. What would digital minimalism look like for each? Write a tailored set of recommendations for each, being honest about the tradeoffs each faces.

Exercise 27: The Platforms' Response Imagine you work on the growth team at a major social media company and you hear that "digital minimalism" is growing in popularity. What product or design responses might the platform consider? This exercise reveals the adversarial nature of the relationship between users seeking to reduce use and platforms seeking to maximize it.

Research and Writing Exercises

Exercise 28: Screen Time Research Review Search for peer-reviewed research on screen time reduction published since 2020. Find at least three studies. Write a 500-word literature review updating what we know about social media reduction interventions, noting where findings confirm or complicate the Hunt et al. results.

Exercise 29: The App Audit Report Conduct a systematic analysis of the "digital wellness" apps (Forest, Flipd, Freedom, etc.). For three such apps: describe their design philosophy, evaluate what evidence (if any) supports their effectiveness, identify their limitations, and assess the irony of using apps to reduce app use. Write a 400-word evaluation.

Exercise 30: Personal Technology Philosophy Drawing on Newport's three principles (clutter is costly, optimization matters, intentionality is satisfying), write your own personal technology philosophy — a 400-word statement of how you want to relate to technology and why. This is not a set of rules; it's a statement of values that informs rules.

Discussion and Group Exercises

Exercise 31: Group Digital Fast Coordinate with a group of three to five peers to collectively avoid social media for 48 hours. Debrief together afterward. What did you notice individually? What was easier or harder about doing it collectively? Did the group experience the social coordination problem differently than solo attempts?

Exercise 32: The Debate: Individual vs. Structural Solutions Divide into two groups. One argues that individual behavior change (digital minimalism, screen time limits, notification management) is the most effective path to reducing social media harms. The other argues that structural change (regulation, platform redesign) is necessary and that individual solutions are a distraction. After the debate, discuss where the real answer lies.

Exercise 33: Platform Interview Interview three people from different age groups (ideally spanning at least twenty years) about their technology use. Ask: what would they be willing to change, what they feel they can't change, and what obstacles they identify. Write a summary of the structural patterns you observe across interviews.

Exercise 34: The 30-Day Declutter Design Design a 30-day digital declutter protocol for a specific demographic — high school students, working parents, or elderly adults who have recently adopted smartphones. Account for the specific social, professional, and practical constraints that demographic faces. Present your protocol to the class.

Exercise 35: Letter to a Platform Write a 500-word letter to the CEO of a social media platform explaining why digital minimalism is a symptom of a platform design problem. Argue that the widespread adoption of minimalism tactics by users is evidence that the platform is not serving users' actual values. Propose three specific design changes that would reduce the need for users to defend themselves against their own platform.