Exercises — Chapter 39: Technology, Social Media, and the Digital Self

A Note Before You Begin

These exercises require honesty about behavior you may prefer not to examine closely. Most people significantly underestimate their phone and social media use. The data, when you collect it, is often unwelcome.

The goal is not to induce guilt about digital behavior but to produce clarity: Are you using digital technology in ways that serve what you actually care about? If not, what would you do differently? The exercises build from diagnosis to design to practice.

Part A: Digital Behavior Audit

Exercise 39.1 — The Screen Time Reality Check

Before theorizing about your digital behavior, collect the actual data.

For one full week, collect the following:

1. Daily screen time: Use your phone's built-in screen time tracking (iOS Screen Time or Android Digital Wellbeing). Record total daily screen time, breakdown by app category, and number of pickups per day.
2. Social media time: Record separately by platform. Note the percentage of total screen time spent on social media.
3. Notification count: Most screen time apps record notification counts by app. Record your daily notification total.
4. First and last use: Note what time you first pick up your phone each morning and what time you last use it at night.
5. Longest uninterrupted phone-free period: Record the longest stretch each day when you didn't use your phone.

After one week of data, answer: 1. How does the data compare to what you would have estimated before collecting it? 2. Which specific apps are consuming the most time? 3. How does your pickup count compare to the number of times you consciously intended to use your phone? 4. What is the relationship between your screen time data and your values (Chapter 11)?

Exercise 39.2 — The Notification Audit

Gloria Mark's research established that each interruption requires approximately 23 minutes of recovery time. This exercise calculates your notification cost.

1. Count the number of app notifications you receive per day (from your screen time data).
2. Identify the notifications that (a) required immediate action and (b) could have waited without meaningful consequence.
3. For each notification that could have waited: Estimate the cognitive cost of the interruption (disrupted work task, conversation interrupted, attention fragmented).
4. Calculate the total potential recovery time cost: (number of disruptive notifications) × 23 minutes.

The practical question: What would change if you turned off all push notifications from non-urgent apps? What information would you lose, and would that loss be meaningful or trivial?

Exercise 39.3 — Passive vs. Active Use Inventory

The research consistently finds that passive social media use (scrolling, viewing) is more associated with negative wellbeing outcomes than active use (messaging, commenting, creating).

For each social media platform you use, categorize your typical use:

Reflection questions: 1. Which platforms do you use primarily passively? Actively? 2. After passive use sessions, what is your typical emotional state? (Better, worse, neutral, anxious, satisfied, envious, inspired?) 3. After active use sessions (messaging, creating, commenting with intent)? 4. Is there a difference? Does this difference map onto the research pattern?

Part B: Social Comparison and the Digital Self

Exercise 39.4 — Social Comparison Mapping

The chapter describes social media as producing a unique comparison environment: global, curated, quantified, and algorithmically amplified. This exercise maps your specific experience.

Review your social media follows/subscriptions across all platforms.

Categorize each account into one of the following: - Genuine connection: People you have a real relationship with - Aspirational: People/accounts you follow because they represent something you aspire to - Informational: Sources of information you genuinely value - Habitual: Accounts you follow out of inertia rather than active interest - Negative comparison: Accounts that consistently produce envy, inadequacy, or comparison

Analysis: 1. What percentage of your follows fall into each category? 2. For "aspirational" follows: Do they inspire genuine action, or do they produce comparison without corresponding movement? 3. For "negative comparison" follows: Why are you still following them? 4. What would you unfollow today if you made the decision purely on the basis of how the account affects your wellbeing?

Exercise 39.5 — The Curated Self Examination

Social media encourages presentation of a curated self. This exercise examines what you present and what it costs.

Review your most recent 10 posts or shared content across your active platforms.

For each: 1. What image of yourself does this present? 2. What is left out of this image? 3. How anxious were you about how it would be received? (1 = not at all, 10 = very) 4. How much did the response (or anticipated response) affect your mood?

Reflection: 1. Is there a significant gap between your presented self and your experienced self? 2. Is that gap costly — does maintaining the presentation require energy or produce stress? 3. Is there content you want to share but don't, and why not?

Exercise 39.6 — FOMO Inventory

FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is the fear that others are having more rewarding experiences than you. This exercise maps its operation in your life.

For one week, keep a FOMO log: Any time you experience something that might be FOMO — checking social media to see what's happening, feeling anxious about not being at an event, scrolling to see what others are doing — note: 1. The trigger (what prompted the feeling) 2. The specific content of the fear (what specifically do you fear missing?) 3. The underlying need it points to (relatedness? status? connection? belonging?) 4. What you actually did as a result (scrolled more? reached out to a specific person? did something else?)

After one week: 1. What underlying needs drive most of your FOMO experiences? 2. Are those needs being genuinely addressed by social media use, or is it producing a substitute experience that cycles back to FOMO? 3. What would more directly address those underlying needs?

Part C: Filter Bubbles and Information

Exercise 39.7 — Information Environment Audit

The chapter describes how recommendation algorithms produce personalized information environments that can reinforce existing beliefs. This exercise examines yours.

Map your information sources for news and current events: 1. List the specific sources you regularly use (apps, websites, social media, podcasts, TV, conversations) 2. For each: Does this source primarily confirm or challenge your existing views? 3. Overall: Are you getting more confirming or more challenging information? 4. When did you last encounter a well-argued position substantially different from your own that you had to genuinely grapple with?

Reflection questions: 1. How did you come to have the information diet you currently have? Was it chosen deliberately? 2. What would you lose if you added one high-quality source that regularly challenges your assumptions? 3. Is there a position you hold that you find difficult to argue against because you haven't engaged the best version of the opposing view?

Exercise 39.8 — Outrage Content Experiment

The chapter describes how outrage-generating content spreads faster and receives more algorithmic amplification than accurate but emotionally neutral content. This exercise builds recognition of the mechanism.

For one week, pay explicit attention to outrage signals in your information environment.

Each day, note: 1. How many pieces of content produced a strong moral-emotional response (indignation, contempt, moral condemnation)? 2. For each: What was the full context? Was the outrage justified, or was it amplified by framing? 3. Did the content motivate you to share it? If so, what drove that impulse? 4. After sharing or engaging with outrage content, what was your emotional state?

Reflection: The research suggests that moral outrage content spreads because it feels important and urgent. But sustained consumption of outrage content is associated with higher anxiety, more negative mood, and more polarized views. Does your experience confirm this pattern?

Part D: Designing Your Digital Life

Exercise 39.9 — Digital Behavior Design

The chapter's practical section described several evidence-based approaches to managing digital behavior. This exercise builds a personalized digital behavior design.

First, identify your top three digital behavior concerns (from your audit data): 1. 2. 3.

For each concern, design a specific structural intervention:

Use implementation intentions (Chapter 29) for at least one change: "When [specific trigger], I will [specific alternative behavior] instead of [current behavior]."

Exercise 39.10 — Values-Digital Alignment Assessment

The chapter's deepest question: Is your digital behavior serving what you actually value?

Retrieve your core values from Chapter 11's work.

For each value, evaluate your current digital behavior: | Value | How digital behavior serves this value | How digital behavior conflicts with this value | Net score (+/-) | |-------|----------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------|-----------------| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

Reflection: 1. Where is your digital behavior most aligned with your values? 2. Where is the greatest misalignment? 3. What one change to your digital behavior would produce the most significant improvement in values alignment?

Exercise 39.11 — The 30-Day Declutter Consideration

Newport's digital minimalism approach proposes a 30-day declutter as a reset mechanism. This exercise helps you decide whether that approach is relevant for you.

Answer the following honestly: 1. Have you ever gone 24 hours without social media? 72 hours? One week? What was that experience like? 2. Which digital tools could you remove for 30 days without meaningful loss? Which could you not? 3. What activities would you do with the time and attention recovered? (Be specific — "read more" is less useful than "finish the three books on my shelf that I've been intending to read for two years.") 4. What would you be afraid of missing if you were off social media for a month? Are those fears based on genuine needs or FOMO? 5. What is the cost of not trying this?

Decision: Based on your honest answers, would a 30-day declutter be worthwhile for you? If yes, set a start date. If not, identify a more moderate intervention that would produce meaningful improvement.

Part E: Integration

Exercise 39.12 — The Genuine Connection Inventory

The research consistently finds that the conditions most associated with wellbeing — strong social relationships, meaningful activity, competence, autonomy — are not reliably produced by the digital environment.

Complete the following inventory:

1. Genuine relationships: List 5 people you feel genuinely close to and who know you well. How many of those relationships are primarily maintained through in-person or direct (phone/video) contact? How many primarily through social media?

2. Meaningful activity: What activities give you a genuine sense of engagement and competence? How much of your week are you spending on those activities? How much on digital activities?

3. Presence: In your last 5 significant conversations (with people you care about), what percentage of the conversation were you fully present? Was your phone nearby?

4. Recovery: What activities genuinely restore your attention and energy? How much time do you spend on those activities vs. on digital activities?

Reflection: The digital environment is often a substitute for these goods. Where specifically is substitution happening in your life? What would direct investment in the original goods — genuine relationships, meaningful activity, genuine presence — look like?

The digital environment is not going away, and the goal is not to reject it entirely but to inhabit it more deliberately. The person who uses digital tools for specific purposes that serve their genuine values, who has rebuilt the capacity for sustained attention and genuine presence, and who is not being driven by notification triggers and variable-ratio reinforcement to spend time in ways they wouldn't endorse on reflection — that person is using the digital environment rather than being used by it.

Next: Quiz 39 — Test Your Knowledge of Technology, Social Media, and the Digital Self