Emily Martin Cochran

I began writing blog posts intermittently during my college and post-grad years. I thought I would do more while in graduate school, but that was extremely wishful thinking! However, I think I am at a better stage in life to write consistently. I am more settled and less overextended after finishing my Ph.D., and I’m also adopting a digital minimalism mindset to channel the time and energy I have spent on social media into a deeper and more meaningful form of communication.

What is digital minimalism? 

As termed by author Cal Newport in his book, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, 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 the things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.”

I’ve read Cal Newport’s work for a long time. His advice for college students helped me turn around my undergraduate GPA and be successful in graduate school. I initially read Digital Minimalism when it came out in 2019 and was interested in his ideas of reducing how much time I spent online.

I periodically took breaks from social media over the last seven years or so (mainly during Lent), but the COVID-19 pandemic brought into stark relief how much my mental health was tied to the media I consumed. I experienced anxiety and panic attacks more frequently and acutely during this period, especially as I had so many life changes in two years. Planning and re-planning a wedding, moving to a new state, getting married, finishing a dissertation remotely, buying a house, moving again, and starting a new job all happened between February 2020 and August 2021. I was fully burnt out. I knew something needed to change, so Garner and I completed “The Digital Declutter” that Newport recommends in Digital Minimalism – 30 days of no optional technologies – in September 2021. 

We decided, for us, that meant no internet outside of what we needed for work. Television was okay, but we could only use one screen at a time, so no scrolling on our iPads in front of the TV. We also said no news (online newspapers, news websites, etc.) except for the evening news on the broadcast networks. Digital e-books, magazines, and podcasts were okay, too, as those technologies did not feel distracting. Our personal devices were also put away at the end of the workday (in our offices).

I initially thought it would be really tough, but it was liberating! The month was more like a digital detox for me. I often felt like I was back in high school (but in a good way), as I had the mental energy to focus on the tasks at hand. I realized that when I got my own laptop in college and later a smartphone, the amount of time I was online increased exponentially. Reducing the online noise around me allowed me to get back into healthier habits that helped boost my mental health and brought some recovery from burnout.

After 30 days, Newport suggests adding back in technologies that are satisfying and provide meaning. We kept a lot of the practices from the declutter like only using one screen at a time, getting a print subscription to our daily local newspaper for our news source, and deleting social media apps off our phones. We also set screen time limits with a password set by the other person for websites we still want to visit but don’t want to spend all day on. For me, I only checked in on social media (I did completely stop Twitter) on the weekends.

We completed the digital declutter during the Congressional hearing when a former Facebook employee testified that the company knew about the detrimental effects of Instagram on teenagers but chose to not do anything about it. It seemed like more people were having a conversation about the negative aspects of social media. I talked to several people who had watched the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, which highlights the fact that the users of social media are the product for advertisers. I decided I did not need to be on social media apps and websites regularly, but I was not sure how I would communicate with all my family and friends. I like social media’s original function – keeping in touch with people – but it has more costs than benefits for me right now.

After doing some thinking, I felt like the best option to keep family and friends updated with what’s going on in our lives would be to resurrect my old blog for several reasons:

• There’s no word or character limit, so I can share more than I could on social media.
• I don’t want to contribute to anyone’s social media addiction to Instagram, Facebook, etc. Also, Meta (Facebook’s parent company) doesn’t get to make lots of money off of me anymore.
• As writing is part of my career as a historian, I want to keep my writing skills sharp. This is great practice.
• This blog can also be an online portfolio of sorts for me. I plan to write about history and share some of my past and current projects.
• I’ve been a fan of blogs since they became a popular medium; there are several that I’ve followed since 2010ish in my blog reader feed that I check every day. Instead of just consuming, why not contribute something? *I don’t have any designs of becoming an “influencer” whatsoever!*

So how do I actually share this blog with my friends and family?

My plan right now is when I post to the blog, I will create a post on Instagram that will automatically cross-post to Facebook because that’s where many of my extended family members are still active. Personally, I have come to really dislike Facebook, and after doing the digital declutter, I feel that checking multiple social media platforms just eats up time, so I won’t engage with comments on that platform. I encourage people to comment on the blog if they want me to see it. I will still use Instagram occasionally as there are accounts there that I genuinely enjoy, but it has become significantly less of a presence in my life.

So welcome back to this digital space! I’m excited to share more about our lives in what I hope is a more authentic way!