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Our digital devices are many things to us: work necessities, conduits of information and entertainment — and sources of major stress. One of the more maddening aspects of owning computers and smartphones is how they generate clutter; step away from the computer to get a snack, and you’ve got 30 new emails by the time you return. Every time you look at your phone, you see apps you haven’t used in ages. When you prepare to take a photo, you wonder how soon your phone will sound the alert that you lack storage space for more pictures.

Digital clutter isn’t just an annoyance: Like physical clutter, it can generate anxiety and distress. Excess digital detritus can also bog down your devices, making them run sluggishly and causing additional frustration.

Amanda Jefferson, a digital decluttering and productivity coach and cohost of the podcast Good Enough-ish, is here to help. Trained in popular Marie Kondo methods for uncluttering physical spaces, she has some simple suggestions for bringing order — and even joy — to your jam-packed digital world.

Stress Sources

You’re overwhelmed. The clutter can seem so vast that you feel defeated before you begin. “It never seems to end,” says Jefferson. “As soon as you feel like you’re caught up with email, for example, it just starts coming again. When you’re going to declutter a basement, there’s a finite number of items. But digital clutter is a constant barrage, a black hole.”

You don’t know where to start. Given this overwhelm, it’s natural to have no idea what to prioritize. There’s the email inundation, the memory-eating apps, all the photos — and those are just the most obvious offenders.

You don’t know how to proceed once you’ve begun. Once you’ve started the decluttering process, there are other questions: Should you declutter every digital space, from music to photos to documents to apps? Are there areas of clutter you don’t even know about? And how much clutter is too much?

You worry about making the wrong decisions. What if you wind up needing something you jettison in your decluttering efforts?

You use the cloud as a procrastination tool. Jefferson calls the cloud “a never-ending basement, an almost-infinite storage unit that costs 99 cents a month.” If you have iCloud, Google Drive, or a similar service, it can be too easy to conclude that addressing the clutter is not a priority.

You lack an organizational strategy. Getting rid of unnecessary clutter is one thing; putting what you retain in order is quite another. How will you set things up to keep chaos at bay? 

You worry that you won’t be able to keep up the clutter-clearing habit. It can be dispiriting to realize that decluttering isn’t a one-and-done; it needs to be an ongoing task, one that may feel too daunting.

You don’t know how technology can help you. “We walk around with these expensive supercomputers in our hands and our bags,” says Jefferson, “and so many of us don’t know very much about what they can do, including help us declutter by providing options and information.”

Success Strategies

1) Do a decluttering “brain dump.”

This is when you sit down with a pen and paper and write down the issues you have with digital clutter, Jefferson says. “You need to clear out your emails, you need to figure out your passwords, whatever. Just list it all out and sketch out the priorities.”

2) Assess the reality of the situation.

“Is your Gmail yelling at you that you’re running out of storage? Does your phone keep saying you can’t take any more photos because you have to delete some?” she asks. Look into what’s behind those prompts to see what really needs your attention.

3) Consider your values.

A look at your digital storage can reveal whether it aligns with your needs and values. Do you really listen to music enough to justify all the songs you’ve saved?

In Marie Kondo style, Jefferson recommends asking yourself whether what you are keeping is giving you joy or just represents an obligation. “You should read that article. You should keep getting that worthy newsletter. But what newsletters do you look forward to and love reading? They’re the keepers.” 

4) Create a specific plan.

Jefferson suggests choosing a maximum of 10 things that are top priority, the things that are causing you the most stress. “These are the things you’ll tackle first,” she says. “Decide the specific action that you’ll take on that priority. For example, instead of ‘Organize all our photos,’ write down ‘Get a photo-organizing app on my phone.’ Instead of ‘Declutter my email,’ write ‘Make a folder for each kid’s school emails.’ Then look at your schedule for the next two weeks and decide exactly when you’ll take each specific step. Block out that time and keep that commitment. Repeat until you’re ready to move on to the next set of priorities.”  

5) Proceed patiently.

“I like the old adage ‘How do you eat an elephant? A little at a time,’” she says. “It’s all about dividing, splitting decluttering up into bite-sized pieces.”

6) Use the cloud wisely.

Although Jefferson notes that the cloud or other external storage source can be “a never-ending basement,” it’s also your best means of ensuring you won’t lose what is, or may be, valuable. “You can save everything [worthwhile] — from your most important papers, like tax returns and leases, to personal writings and recipes — to a cloud service. Just be sure to create clearly labeled folders so that you can find things easily when you want to retrieve them.”

7) Take advantage of organizational tools and resources that your devices offer.

Our devices themselves can help with decluttering. “For example, there’s a way in your email to click a whole bunch of promotional messages all at once and mark them to be deleted on arrival so you don’t have to go through the trouble of unsubscribing from them,” Jefferson says. Using a function to sort emails by size and subject can make organization and decluttering easier.

You can also set up an auto-delete function to get rid of old messages and hide phone apps that you don’t use regularly. “Digital decluttering is about less; it’s about fewer emails and files and photos, but it’s also about becoming really savvy in learning how to do things,” she adds.

The point is to learn about these resources, with the help of a professional like Jefferson or on your own with Google. “Google ‘How do I set up an auto-delete for X email system?’ Talk to Google as if you’re asking a human — be clear in your questions.”

8) Set a schedule and use “body doubling” to help you declutter regularly.

“There are people who say, ‘I’m going to work out,’ and then they go into their living room and work out,” says Jefferson. “I’m the type of person who needs to go to a class or have some sort of appointment, or I’m not showing up.”

Body-doubling — a productivity technique that involves working on a project or task in the presence of another person — can make it easier to declutter on a regular basis, she points out. The practice is often used by people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to help increase motivation and focus.

“I actually founded a club called the Get It Done Club. It’s an online coworking group where we set a timer for 50 minutes and everybody works on whatever they need to work on — like unsubscribing from emails.”

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Social media is an integral part of many adolescents’ lives today. In response to concerns from parents, educators, and healthcare professionals, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek ­Murthy, MD, MBA, is advocating for warning labels on social media ­platforms. In a mid-2024 guest ­essay in The New York Times, Murthy emphasizes that social media use significantly contributes to the mental health crisis among young people.

“Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social ­media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms, and the average daily use in this age group, as of the summer of 2023, was 4.8 hours,” Murthy writes. “Additionally, nearly half of adolescents report that social media makes them feel worse about their bodies.”

More than 90 percent of American teens report using at least one social media platform, with some reporting that they use YouTube and TikTok almost constantly, according to recent surveys. While these platforms offer opportunities for social interaction and self-expression, they also pose significant risks to mental and emo­tional well-being.

Psychologist Jean Twenge, PhD, has long expressed concerns about the impact of screen time on youth. She outlines the issue in her book iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood — and What That Means for the Rest of Us. Twenge’s research suggests a direct correlation between the rise in social media use and a decline in mental health among adolescents.

Parents often struggle with feelings of helplessness and isolation when contending with the toxic nature and hidden dangers of social media.

A recent study, published in Pediatric Research, found that adolescents take cues for social media usage from adults in their lives. High parental screen use and family mealtime screen use were associated with more overall problematic screen use among adolescents.

“It is important that parents act as role models for their children,” says study lead author Jason Nagata, MD. “Limiting screen use is a challenge for adults and children alike given notifications, addictive algorithms, and integration with communication and work. I do think it is important for parents to try to practice what they preach. For instance, if parents make a family rule not to use screens at mealtime, they should try to follow the rules also.”

A 2022 article in American Economic Review reports that 31 percent of the time people spend on social media is due to self-control problems; a study published in the journal ­CyberPsychology & Behavior compares addictive internet use with gambling disorder, the only formally diagnosable behavioral addiction.

Murthy explains that a surgeon general’s warning label “would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proven safe.”

In his Times essay, Murthy argues that legislation should protect young people from various online dangers. He advocates for laws to shield children from online harassment, abuse, and exploitation, and from exposure to extreme violence and sexual content.

4 Tips to Help Kids Cope With the Effects of Social Media Use and Sleep Better

Social media use can disrupt teens’ sleep patterns, two recent studies find, as many teenagers stay up late to scroll through their feeds. This lack of sleep may partly contribute to the negative effect that excessive screen time has on academic performance and overall physical health.

A study published in the journal Sleep Health in 2023 analyzed data on bedtime screen-use behaviors and sleep outcomes from 10,280 adolescents aged 10 to 14. The following tips are based on the study’s findings.

1. Keep screens outside the bedroom. A TV set or internet-connected device in the bedroom is associated with a higher risk of struggling to fall or stay asleep.
2. Turn off the ringer and notifications. Leaving the phone ringer on rather than off is associated with greater overall sleep disturbance.
3. Don’t use social media or other electronic devices before going to sleep. Using social media, chatting on the internet, playing video games, browsing the internet, and watching movies, videos, or TV shows before sleeping were associated with sleep disturbances.
4. If you wake up during the night, don’t use your phone or engage with social media. This habit is associated with a higher risk of sleep troubles.

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1) Start the Conversation.

Terri Griffith, PsyD, tells parents to invite children to open up about what they’re seeing online without judging their choices; kids are likely to shut down emotionally if they are shamed or forced off social media without a conversation.

“It’s about creating space for communication and education,” says Charlotte Markey, PhD. And communication must happen before you can set any effective boundaries.

2) Model Healthy Behavior.

Be willing to examine your own habits and consider what your kids are absorbing from your behavior, Griffith advises. Ask yourself if you are consuming lots of weight-loss advice or if you’re hyperfocused on diet.

“If so, being a better example for your children to model can be just as important as what you say to them,” she says.

3) Watch Your Language.

Most of us could stand to retool our language when discussing food and diet. “We need to stop saying, ‘This food is healthy and this food is not healthy,’” says Pamela Ramos, MD.

Instead, focus on moderation and balance, and use a calm tone and neutral language to talk about food choices. Fruit juice isn’t necessarily bad, for example, but ­Ramos argues that drinking 10 juice ­boxes in a row won’t make you feel good.

4) Teach Skepticism Early.

Talking with your kids about social media sooner rather than later is crucial, says Markey. When your child starts using their first phone or iPad, “it’s the optimal time to sit down with them and use ­social media while you’re supervising them and having a conversation,” she advises. “Ask your kids, ‘Do you think that’s good advice?’ or ‘Doesn’t that look like it’s fake?’ Model questioning from the get-go so they learn to approach ­social media with skepticism, and so they can see that while this may be entertaining, it might not be real or reliable.”

This was excerpted from “How Social Media Usage Can Influence Your Diet” which was published in Experience Life.

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Explore the steps to becoming a digital minimalist:

1) Define Your Tech Rules
2) Take a 30-Day Tech Break
3) Reintroduce Meaningful Tech

Smartphones, wireless internet, digital platforms that connect billions of people — these are triumphant innovations. Few people think we’d be better off retreating to an earlier technological age.

Still, many are also tired of feeling like prisoners to their devices.

Our relationship with digital tools is complicated by the fact that they mix harm with benefits. One can simultaneously cherish the ability to discover inspiring photos on Instagram and fret about the app’s capacity to invade the evening hours that were once spent reading or talking with friends. These contradictions create a jumbled emotional landscape.

The most common response to such complexities is to attempt modest hacks. Perhaps if you observe a digital Sabbath, keep your phone away from your bed at night, or turn off notifications and resolve to be more mindful, you can keep all the good things that attracted you to these technologies in the first place while minimizing their worst impacts.

I understand the appeal of this moderate approach. It relieves the need to make hard decisions about your digital life; you don’t have to quit anything, miss out on any benefits, or suffer any serious inconveniences. Nor do you have to explain your digital absence to friends who may find it alarming.

Yet it’s clear to those who have attempted these minor corrections that willpower and vague resolutions are often not enough to stop these new technologies from invading our cognitive landscapes. The addictiveness of their design and the cultural pressures supporting them are too strong for an ad hoc method to succeed.

As a professor of computer science who has given a great deal of thought to these issues — and written several books about them — I believe what we all need instead is a philosophy of technology use, rooted in our deep values.

There are many philosophies that might satisfy these goals, but one stands out. I call it digital minimalism, and it applies the belief that less can be more. The key to thriving, digital minimalists have learned, is to spend much less time using tech.

Digital Minimalism in Action

Meet Tyler. He once embraced the standard social-media services for the standard reasons: to help his career, keep connected, and provide entertainment. But he later found that his compulsive use of these tools offered minor benefits at best, and he saw that monitoring social media was not the best way to use tech to serve his goals. So, he quit all social media to pursue more direct ways to connect with others.

A year later, Tyler was involved in meaningful volunteer work, exercising regularly, and reading three to four books a month. He was also learning to play the ukulele and feeling much closer to his family.

With digital minimalism, one works backward from their most deeply held values when deciding how to live their life.

With his phone no longer glued to his hand, his increased focus also earned him a promotion at his job.

Tyler is quick to admit that he can’t completely attribute all these things to his specific decision to quit social media. His choice, however, was about more than a tweak to his digital habits: It was a symbolic ­gesture that reinforced his new commitment to a minimalist philosophy.

With digital minimalism, one works backward from their most deeply held values when deciding how to live their life. This is the essence of this approach — one you can embrace, too.

The Digital Declutter Plan

I believe aggressive action is necessary to transform your relationship with technology and reclaim your time and attention. My suggested method is the 30-day digital declutter (plus time for preparation and reintroduction before and after). The declutter acts as a jarring reset: You come into the process a frazzled maximalist and leave an intentional minimalist. This is how it works.

Step 1) Define Your Tech Rules

During your 30-day declutter, the plan is for you to take a break from “optional technologies.” The first step, therefore, is to define which technologies are optional for you.

When I say “technologies,” I’m not talking about your microwave, radio, or electric toothbrush. I’m referring to the class of things that may be considered new technologies — apps, websites, and related digital tools delivered through a computer screen or mobile phone — and are meant to entertain, inform, or connect. Text messaging, Instagram, and Reddit are examples of things you’ll evaluate when preparing for a digital declutter.

Start by identifying which technologies are most relevant for you, then decide which of them are optional enough that you can take a 30-day break from them.

Start by identifying which technologies are most relevant for you, then decide which of them are optional enough that you can take a 30-day break from them. My general guideline: Consider a technology optional unless its temporary removal would harm or significantly disrupt the daily operation of your professional or personal life.

If you stop checking your work email, for example, this will harm your career, so you can’t use this exercise as an excuse to shut down your inbox for a month. If your job occasionally requires you to monitor social media, or your daughter uses text messaging to let you know when she’s ready to be picked up from soccer, or your relationship with a spouse overseas depends on daily connections through FaceTime, then these would not be ­considered optional — but only when the technology is used for these specific purposes.

For borderline cases, I recommend developing some operating procedures. These will help you specify exactly how and when you will use a particular technology, allowing you to maintain some critical uses without having to default to unrestricted access. You could decide, for example, that you will text only with your daughter, and only when she is at soccer.

Keep in mind that just because something is convenient doesn’t mean it’s critical. A Facebook group that announces social events might be convenient, but choosing not to receive those messages won’t cause any critical damage to your social life in 30 days, and it might expose you to interesting alternative uses for your time.

Such inconveniences might even prove useful. Losing light contact with certain people can help clarify which relationships were real in the first place and strengthen your relationships with those who remain.

Key points:

• The digital declutter focuses primarily on apps, sites, and digital tools. According to participants in the original digital-declutter challenge that I hosted, video games and streaming video could be in this category, too.
• This will be a 30-day break from those technologies you determine are optional. In some cases, you’ll abstain altogether; in others, you may specify a set of operating procedures that dictate exactly how and when you’ll use the technology.
• Write down your list of banned technologies and relevant operating procedures. Put it somewhere you’ll see it every day. Clarity in what you’re allowed and not allowed to do during the declutter will prove key to its success.

Step 2) Take a 30-Day Tech Break

Now it’s time to make the break. You’re likely to find these days without optional tech challenging at first. Your mind has developed certain expectations about distractions and entertainment. Disrupting those expectations can feel unpleasant, like a detox.

Yet the detox experience is important; it will help you make smarter decisions about reintroducing some optional technologies when the break ends. Without the clarity that detox provides, the addictive pull of the technologies would bias your decisions.

For example, if you were to decide to reform your relationship with Instagram right this minute, your decision about what role it should play in your life would likely be much weaker than if you’d spent 30 days without it before choosing how to use it more deliberately.

It’s a mistake to think of a digital declutter as only a detox experience. The goal here is not simply to give yourself a break from tech, but to spark a permanent transformation of your digital life.

Still, it’s a mistake to think of a digital declutter as only a detox experience. The goal here is not simply to give yourself a break from tech, but to spark a permanent transformation of your digital life.

To achieve real transformation, you must also spend this period rediscovering what’s important to you in your analog life. You’re more likely to successfully reduce the role of your digital tools if you cultivate high-quality alternatives to their easy distractions.

Many people find that their compulsive phone use covers a void created by the lack of a well-developed leisure life, for example. But reducing phone use without also filling the void with enjoyable things can feel unpleasantly stale, and that will undermine any transition to digital minimalism.

Here’s the good news: Participants in the declutter experiment found it easier than they had expected to reconnect to the activities they’d enjoyed before they were subverted by their screens.

Unaiza is a graduate student who used to spend her evenings browsing Reddit. During her declutter, she redirected this time toward reading books she borrowed from the library. “I finished eight and a half books that month,” she told me. “I could never have thought about doing that before.”

An insurance agent named Melissa finished “only” three books during her 30 days, but she also organized her wardrobe, set up dinners with friends, and scheduled more face-to-face conversations with her brother.

Kushboo finished five books during his declutter — the first he’d voluntarily read in three years. Caleb’s search for analog activities led him to start journaling before bed each night. He also started listening to records on a record player, from beginning to end, with no earbuds in his ears or skip buttons to tap when antsy — which turned out to be a much richer experience than his normal habit of firing up Spotify and seeking out the perfect track.

Key points:

• The first week or two, you’ll probably find yourself fighting urges to check your optional technologies. This struggle will pass, though, and it will help you make better decisions at the end of the declutter.
• The goal is not simply to enjoy time away from technologies; it’s to explore higher-quality pursuits to fill the time the technologies currently take up. This period should be one of vigorous activity and experimentation.
• Aim to arrive at the end of the declutter having discovered the activities that generate real satisfaction, and feeling enabled to confidently craft a better life — one where technology serves a supporting role for more meaningful ends.

Step 3) Reintroduce Meaningful Tech

After your 30-day break comes the final step: reintroduction. This step is more demanding than you might think.

The goal is to start from a blank slate created by the 30-day declutter and let back into your life only those technologies that pass your strict minimalist standards. The care you take here will determine whether this process sparks lasting change.

For each technology, ask yourself some screening questions. The first:

Does this directly support something I really value? This is the most important factor for deciding whether you should let it back into your life.

The fact that a tool may offer some value is irrelevant — the digital minimalist deploys technology to serve their specific values and is happy to miss out on everything else. For example, you may learn that browsing Twitter doesn’t provide value, but following your cousin’s baby photos on Instagram does support the value you place on family.

If a technology passes this first question, it must now face a more difficult standard:

Is this technology the best way to support this value?

We often justify technologies that tyrannize our time and attention with some tangential connection to something we care about. Consider, for example, following your cousin on Instagram. Although a follow might initially be justified by your deep value of family, the next question asks if Instagram is the best way to support this value. Probably not. Something as simple as a monthly phone call with this cousin may be much better for your bond.

If a technology makes it through both screening questions, there’s one more to ask:

How will I now use this technology to maximize its value and minimize its harms?

Many attention-economy companies want you to think about their services in a binary way: Either you use them or you don’t. This allows them to entice you into their ecosystem with some feature you find important; then, once you’re a user, they deploy attention engineering to overwhelm you with options, trying to keep you engaging with their service well beyond your original purpose.

Digital minimalists avoid this trap by maintaining standard operating procedures that dictate when and how they use their digital tools. Instead of saying, “I use Facebook because it helps my social life,” they would offer something more specific: “I check Facebook each Saturday on my computer to see what my close friends and family are up to; I don’t have the app on my phone; I culled my list of friends down to just meaningful relationships.”

Here are some ways declutter participants meaningfully reintroduced tech: A digital advertiser named Ilona set up a regular schedule for calling and texting her friends. This supported her relationships by replacing lightweight check-ins with more intentional communications.

Abby, who works in the travel industry, removed the web browser from her phone. “I figured I didn’t need to know the answer to everything instantly,” she said. She also bought a paper notebook to jot down ideas when she’s bored on the train.

Caleb set a curfew for his phone; he can’t use it between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. A computer engineer named Ron allows himself only two websites to check routinely — a big improvement over the 40 or so sites he used to cycle through.

Key points:

• Your monthlong break from optional technologies resets your digital life. You can now rebuild it from scratch in a much more intentional and minimalist manner. To do so, apply a three-step technology filter to any tool you might reintroduce. The tool must . . .

1. 1. Serve something you deeply value. (Offering some benefit is not enough.)
   2. Be the best way to serve this value. (If not, choose something better.)
   3. Have a role in your life that is constrained by some standard operating procedure that specifies when and how you use it.

• This process will help you cultivate a digital life in which optional technologies serve your deeply held values instead of subverting them. Careful reintroduction will help you make the intentional decisions that will define you as a digital minimalist.

This article is reprinted from Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport with permission from Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2019 by Calvin C. Newport.

This article originally appeared as “The Great Digital Declutter” in the March 2023 issue of Experience Life.

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