But let's try to fit in one other quick question here before we wrap up this episode. Comes from Vasilky. He says, "Do you think a college student should abstain from social media completely? Many students communicate with social media. Completely abstaining has made me feel like I'm missing out on opportunities to discuss homework.

When I miss a class, I can ask a friend over Messenger for notes. Even if I use only email, other people may feel discouraged to send you over email notes because they find Facebook or Discord more easy to scan with their phones. I don't live near the campus, so I can't interact with other students.

What do you advise to give a student to communicate to their peers that need to abstain from social media but to remain in the community?" Well short answer, long answer, short answer, separate communication tools from social media. What do I mean by social media here? I mean things where you post information to people you don't know or consume information posted by people you don't know.

Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. Don't do that. I mean you can, but I would say yeah, abstain from that. I think you have other things that are more important in college. That's a distraction. It's not giving you any benefit. But separate that from the fact that you use WhatsApp for your study group.

Separate communication tools from the social media. The key thing to keep in mind is that latter context, that the tools where you post information to people you don't know or read information from people you don't know, that's engineered to be distracting. That's what you want to stay away from.

Having a study group on WhatsApp or having a Facebook group that you're, you know, whatever club uses. If you've configured Facebook like I talk about in digital minimalisms, you go straight to the groups and have no news feed, that's fine. I don't care about communication tools. But don't use social media tools that are engaged, I mean that are engineered to distract.

That's what I would recommend. And in fact, in general, I think college students, there's so much intellectually, socially, just spiritually, philosophically to enjoy during that period of life that gets leeched away if you're looking at TikTok videos as just a default when you're bored. I mean, it's just life is really interesting and vibrant at that point.

And if you take that out of your life as a college student, what's left is in technicolor. It's just like a much more interesting period of time. My long answer is be wary of the justification game you're playing. I get this type of thing all the time, a little bait and switch.

You find this corner case of technology that there's no debate you need to use, then allow that to justify chaos. I hear this from students a lot like, "Look, Cal, my math teacher post our homework on the internet, so I need to use the internet to download my math homework.

So that's why I'm playing Fortnite till 3 a.m." These are two really separate things. And I'm seeing this in your answer here. You're like, "Maybe a friend doesn't want to share notes with me over email, so I'm going to be on TikTok all day." Remain specific. And I think that's at the core of my philosophy of digital minimalism.

Figure out the life you want, what's important to you. Figure out what technology will support that and what rules you want to use it to get the benefits and avoid the cost. And outside of those decisions, be comfortable missing out on everything else. So be specific. Don't just use the term social media and lump the fact that you ask a question over WhatsApp with the fact that you're on Instagram all day.

Be specific, work backwards from values. And yes, your main question, should you abstain from the social media that you can? Almost certainly the answer is probably yes. I think for almost any college student, that is going to make their college life richer. (upbeat music)