Social media users are like gamblers whenever they post.

Something about unpredictability releases more dopamine.

Rewards delivered unpredictably are far more enticing than those delivered with a known pattern.

Intermittent positive reinforcement and the drive for social approval are two primary ways tech companies encourage behavioral addiction.

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.

Because, let’s face it, checking your “likes” is the new smoking. 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.

People don’t succumb to screens because they’re lazy, but instead because billions of dollars have been invested to make this outcome inevitable.

Increasingly, they dictate how we behave and how we feel, and somehow coerce us to use them more than we think is healthy, often at the expense of other activities we find more valuable.

Smartphones have reshaped people’s experience of the world by providing an always-present connection to a humming matrix of chatter and distraction.

The best activities are often physical (something you can touch), creative (challenges your mind) and social (done collectively with friends).

Engage in more high quality leisure activities.

Email, text and basically all forms of social media is not conversation, but connection.

There is no substitute for face-to-face communication.Solitude encourages your ability to clarify hard problems, to regulate your emotions, to build moral courage, and to strengthen relationships. Digital minimalism is a philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value.These companies profit by maximizing the amount of time users engage with their services. Social media has been engineered to be addicting.In Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport outlines his prescription for a healthier and more productive relationship with technology where greater focus is placed on defining how we use these digital products and services to intentionally enhance the things in life that we value most. Most of us enjoy the benefits of these free internet innovations without giving serious consideration to mitigating the risks they pose to our social and mental wellbeing. Over the last two decades, social media companies have made trillions profiting off our time and attention.

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