The Duty to Promote Digital Minimalism in Ourselves

Abstract

In the 1950s, duties to the self became unpopular in mainstream moral philosophy. We explain why some ethicists became skeptical of them, and we present Kant’s position on duties to oneself. Kantian moral philosophers have long maintained the existence of duties to oneself. After presenting this historical backdrop, we then provide our definition of digital minimalism; we understand this as a virtue—a robust disposition to do what is morally required. Given the conclusions of the last two chapters (viz. that autonomy matters morally and that mobile devices undermine autonomy), we argue that you have a moral duty to protect your autonomy from this threat. We define digital minimalism as the disposition to use mobile devices for a reasonable amount of time in light of your chosen ends. We conclude by showing how this duty fits in within the broader taxonomy of Kant’s ethical duties. In our view, the duty to be a digital minimalist is an imperfect duty because it is a duty to promote an obligatory end (one’s own perfection).

“So far from these duties being the lowest, they [duties to oneself] actually take first place, and are the most important of all; for even without first explaining what self-regarding duty is, we may ask, if a man degrades his own person, how can anything else be demanded of him? He who violates duties toward himself, throws away his humanity, and is no longer in a position to perform duties to others.”

—Kant (Collins 27:341)

For many people, these distractions can get out of hand, leaving us with a feeling that our decisions are not our own. The fact is, in this day and age, if you are not equipped to manage distraction, your brain will be manipulated by time-wasting diversions … The good news is that we have the unique ability to adapt to such threats. We can take steps right now to retrain and regain our brains. To be blunt, what other choice do we have? We don’t have time to wait for regulators to do something, and if you hold your breath waiting for corporations to make their products less distracting, well, you’re going to suffocate.

—Nir Eyal, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

4.1 Introduction

Our aim in this chapter is to defend the existence of a moral duty to rebuild our relationship with technology and to be more intentional about how we use it. This is a duty that you owe to yourself. We realize that this suggestion might provoke immediate resistance. To some readers, the very idea of duties to oneself will seem quite odd—maybe even paradoxical. We typically think of moral obligations as things that we owe to each other. It may sound absurd to suggest that you owe something to yourself. After all, we can waive debts when others owe us something, so we should be able to waive whatever obligations we have to ourselves. But we tend to think that moral obligations are not something that we can release ourselves from, and this implies that there cannot be any duties to oneself.

An argument along those lines was put forward by Marcus Singer (1959), and many ethicists found it so convincing that, by the end of the twentieth century, duties to oneself had “largely disappeared from the radar of academic philosophers” (Cholbi 2015, 852). The basic idea behind Singer’s argument is that duties to oneself rest on a paradox involving three claims. First, duties involve rights. If Iris has a duty to refrain from punching Ray, then Ray has a right not to be punched by Iris. Second, if Ray has a right against Iris, then Ray can waive that right and release Iris from the obligation. For instance, Ray might agree to enter the boxing ring and thus consent to being punched by Iris. The third claim in the inconsistent triad is that no one can release themselves from an obligation. In order to resist the paradox, one of those three claims has to be rejected.

Within the last decade there has been some pushback against Singer’s influential argument. Perhaps the most popular approach for resisting the paradox is to reject the claim that duties to oneself are necessarily connected to waivable rights.¹ One way to do this would be to reject the first claim; we could deny that all duties entail rights. This may be true of some moral duties, but not all of them. Alternatively, it could be argued that the second claim is false, that some rights simply cannot be waived.² For instance, you might have a moral obligation to refrain from smoking because smoking harms your future self, and you cannot possibly consent to harming yourself in this way. We could imagine that your future self (who has lung cancer) wants you to quit smoking right now. And you cannot release yourself from this obligation because you do not presently inhabit the perspective of your future self (Schofield 2015). Other moral philosophers have argued for the surprising conclusion that the third claim is false, that we may be able, in some cases, to release ourselves from a moral obligation (Muñoz 2020, 2021).

But there is at least one ethical tradition in which duties to oneself never went out of fashion.³ Far from relegating such duties to a second-class status, Immanuel Kant goes so far as to suggest that duties to oneself deserve pride of place, grounding all of our moral duties. As Kant sees it, if there were no duties to oneself, “then there would be no duties whatsoever” (MS 6:417).⁴ Kant even outlined something similar to the paradox of self-release in the Metaphysics of Morals about 162 years before Marcus Singer. But unlike Singer, Kant was not troubled by the apparent contradiction.⁵ According to Kant’s view, our rational agency burdens us with obligations that we must respect whether we want to or not. Kant thinks that the value of our autonomy is something that we cannot relinquish, and there is nothing in the world that would permit us to forfeit our rational agency.

As we explained in Chap. 2, we can understand these moral duties in terms of our obligation to respect humanity. We showed why Kant believes that there is something morally significant about the capacity to set and pursue one’s own ends. Kant argues that it is morally wrong to undermine someone’s capacities, to disrespect their humanity, or to treat them as a mere means. In this chapter, we show how the duty to respect humanity in your own person entails a duty to be a digital minimalist. The empirical evidence from the previous chapter gives us good reason to think that problematic smartphone use undermines autonomy. So if you have an obligation to cultivate your autonomy and protect it from things that threaten to undermine it, then you have a duty to refrain from using mobile devices in such a way. Of course, more needs to be said about the precise content of the duty. What exactly does it mean to be a digital minimalist? We begin in the next section by answering that question. In short, digital minimalism requires us to be thoughtful about how we use mobile devices and to use them in ways that do not interfere with our capacity to set and pursue our own ends. We think of digital minimalism as an end that we ought to pursue. We regard it as a virtue—a robust disposition to what is morally right.

In Sect. 4.3 we provide the Kantian credentials of the duty and we show how it fits in within his broader taxonomy of duties. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant identifies exactly two ends that we are morally obligated to pursue: our own perfection and the happiness of others. We discuss the latter (e.g., the duty of beneficence) in Chap. 5, but your duty to be a digital minimalist is rooted in the duty to perfect humanity (rational agency) in your own person. As we explain in greater detail below, this means that the obligation should be understood as an imperfect duty rather than a perfect duty. But before we get to that, we must begin with an explanation of digital minimalism.

4.2 Digital Minimalism

To begin our argument, it will be helpful to have a solid grip on the concept of digital minimalism as we understand it. It is easily misunderstood. Cal Newport, who coined the term, defines digital minimalism as follows:

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, and then happily miss out on everything else. (Newport 2019, 28)

He says that a philosophy of technology is a personal philosophy of technology use that “provides clear answers to the questions of what tools you should use and how you should use them” (Newport 2019, xiv). Newport’s understanding of digital minimalism outlines an ambitious ideal, but our understanding of the term will differ from his statement in several key ways.

Despite being philosophers, we will avoid understanding digital minimalism as involving a philosophy. Instead, we will understand it as a practice. That is, we will be less concerned with advocating that users develop clear answers to questions about technology use. Instead, we think it sufficient that users avoid problematic use (i.e., use that conflicts with their ends). So, we will think of digital minimalism in behavioral (in contrast to intellectual) terms. Some users might find that developing a philosophy is an effective means for sticking with the practice. Indeed, this seems to be what Newport himself thinks. His book is, after all, a work of self-help and not philosophy.

What we then have in mind when we advocate for digital minimalism is a virtue, which—following Aristotle—we conceive of as a habit or stable character trait.⁶ The focus on virtue (and Aristotle, for that matter) might seem odd in a book of Kantian ethics, but, as Allen Wood notes, “virtue is at least as important to Kant’s ethical theory as it is to any ‘virtue ethics’” (Wood 1999, 31). Traditionally, Kant’s ethics has been thought of in strictly deontological terms. Most students come away understanding Kant as being focused solely on duties, obligations, and rules. This paints a stark contrast with Mill, who grounds ethics in consequences, and Aristotle, who is principally concerned with character traits that lead to (and are partially constitutive of) flourishing (eudaimonia). Recent work has shown how this picture is misleading. As we explained above, Kant did care about consequences, and a number of scholars have recently highlighted the many ways that Kant’s moral theory is related to virtue ethics.⁷

This development in the literature is a welcome improvement in our understanding of Kant’s ethics. Older interpretations were often overly influenced by the Groundwork. Many readers treated Kant’s first mature work on moral philosophy as if it were the sole or primary text, definitive of his ethical thought.⁸ Recent work has given increased attention to Kant’s later moral writings such as the Metaphysics of Morals and Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. In the Religion, Kant defines virtue as “the firmly grounded disposition to fulfill one’s duty strictly” (Rel. 6:23). This understanding of virtue is helpful for our argument. The duty at stake in our book is grounded in our obligation to respect humanity as an end in itself. As Kant explains, this requires us to cultivate our capacities and to protect them from threats that would undermine our autonomy. In this way, digital minimalism should be thought of as a virtue. It is a stable disposition to fulfill our moral duty.

Understanding digital minimalism as a practice that does not involve developing a philosophy is not our only departure from Newport’s official statement. We also take a less demanding approach to digital minimalism than he does. Specifically, our arguments will not require that you “focus your online time on a small number of … optimized activities” (Newport 2019, 28 emphasis added). We are happy to take a more relaxed approach, where we will understand the underlying duty as one to focus your online time on a reasonable number (or amount) of activities (or time) in light of your ends. This, of course, might in some cases require that one follow a more demanding regimen. Perhaps some users need to treat mobile devices or their applications like many of us treat cigarettes or Oreos. Some products simply lend themselves to excessive use.⁹

Putting this all together, we will understand digital minimalism as,

Using mobile devices for a number of activities or amount of time that is reasonable, in light of your ends.

Our relaxed conception of digital minimalism might raise the question of whether the view has a right to call itself “minimalism.”

In response to this last thought, it will be helpful to contrast digital minimalism with two other habits that run in two opposite directions.¹⁰ We can call one extreme digital eliminativism:

Using mobile devices for a number of activities or amount of time significantly less than is reasonable, in light of your ends.

And the other—which we take to be the default—digital maximalism:

Using mobile devices for a number of activities or amount of time significantly more than is reasonable, in light of your ends.

The common thread between our conception of digital minimalism and Newport’s is the idea that we should take care to use mobile devices in ways that support what we value (or, perhaps, should value). This is compatible with using mobile devices to a great degree. Indeed, much of this very book was written on laptops and discussed over video chat, phone, email, and text exchanges in ways that—we think—were perfectly in alignment with our ends. We are not advocating for the elimination of mobile device use. But that is not a reason to think we are not minimalists; that is a reason to think we are not eliminativists.

Here it is important to note that, as Kantians, we have a particular gloss on what constitutes our ends. Most of our ends are entirely optional. We could commit ourselves to marathon running (or not), baking (or not), and so on. But others are not. For instance, as we have already argued, we are morally required to value autonomy. We will continue to spell out what this entails in what follows. For now, what is important is that minimalism is not eliminativism, and our brand of minimalism comes with a certain degree of latitude.

This is especially important in light of the fact that mobile devices are an important lifeline for certain vulnerable populations. For instance, despite the fact that mobile devices seem to have particularly negative effects on the young, members of some subgroups might benefit from using them. A recent New York Times article—written in response to the surgeon general’s warning that “there are ample indicators that social media can … have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents”—notes that social media might have the opposite effect for some LGBTQ+ youth (Miller 2023).¹¹ Indeed, Wagaman et al. (2020) found that online activity had a positive effect on how underserved, Southern LGBTQ+ youth feel about their identities. According to one co-author on that study, LGBTQ+ youth frequently describe social media networks in positive terms: “‘It’s my home,’ ‘It’s my family,’ ‘It’s kept me alive’” (Miller 2023). This must be kept in mind when we make blanket statements, such as the surgeon general’s, about the average effect of, say, screens on broader populations (e.g., all youth taken together).

There are members of other populations who likewise receive distinctive benefits from using mobile devices. Indeed, Android and iOS—the two most common operating systems on smartphones—have a suite of features that benefit users with disabilities. They feature screen readers (which, among other things, convert text to audio) and these capabilities can assist the visually impaired in a variety of ways. It has been shown experimentally that these features can be leveraged to assist people with sensory disabilities (such as blindness and hearing loss) in performing daily activities (see, e.g., Lancioni et al. 2017). This, of course, can be a major boon to people for whom completing daily activities is a challenge, as being unable to complete the activities can, among other things, affect one’s self-confidence and social status (Lancioni et al. 2017).¹²

These two cases help us to highlight the flexibility of digital minimalism. It also helps us foreshadow issues that will arise in the next chapter. Although LGBTQ+ youth may benefit from social media use and certain people with disabilities benefit from using smartphones, this is not the only implication to consider. This point also underscores the need of making these products less harmful. That an LGBTQ+ adolescent needs their social media network is an additional reason to think that the developers of those sites should not leverage that need in order to, say, distract them in excess to what is useful for them. Indeed, as we will soon show, we not only have a duty to ourselves to be digital minimalists, we have duties to lessen the negative effects of mobile device use on others as well.¹³

This point about the positive effects of mobile devices extends beyond these domains as well. We do not want to overstate our position. We are not suggesting that mobile devices are always bad for autonomy or that they undermine autonomy in every respect. Although the problematic use of these devices threatens our rational agency, thoughtful use of them can actually enhance our capacity to pursue ends. Smartphones have navigation tools that make it easier for us to arrive at our destinations, communication platforms that help us stay in contact with loved ones, weather alerts that keep us prepared for the day, and so on. By using these tools and incorporating them into our agency, we become more capable of pursuing certain ends. Ironically, we can even harness their addictive powers for good. For instance, a user who has an autonomous desire to exercise or study German might download an app that uses notifications prompting her to do the activity in question. The app might remind her of a successful streak—harnessing a manipulative tactic to help her pursue an autonomously chosen end.

The danger here is that it is very difficult to avoid the slippery slope. Our relationships with these devices are often decided on terms that are not our own, even when we are pursuing an autonomous end. Someone might begin using social media in order to stay in touch with old friends. This end (and the means to pursue it) was chosen autonomously; it was a product of her rational agency. Over time, however, this autonomous usage might give way to more problematic behavior as she starts to check the app compulsively to see the status of her posts. She begins to use it far more often than she would like to use it. Like Esther, she opens the app while she’s trying to read, when she’s in class, or even while she’s driving. She has fallen prey to manipulative design tactics, and now her relationship with the technology is built on the developers’ terms rather than her own.

It is important to remember that the developers’ aims are not always consistent with our own. There is an alignment problem here.¹⁴ This applies even in cases where we reflectively endorse our reasons for using the technology in question. Language-learning apps are extremely popular, but critics routinely point out how they almost always fail at developing fluency or even proficiency in the target language.¹⁵ Many of these apps are free, which means that they rely entirely on ad revenue. This, in turn, means that they must dedicate enormous effort to making their apps as addictive as possible. Our aim of learning the language is not perfectly aligned with the company’s aim of maximizing our screen time.

After many hours of using Duolingo to learn Italian, journalist David Freedman was unsettled to find just how little he could say or understand in Italy. Freedman then interviewed Luis von Ahn, the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, and von Ahn was incredibly forthright about these issues. Their aim is to get us hooked: “The biggest problem that people trying to learn a language by themselves face is the motivation to stay with it…That’s why we spend a lot of our energy just trying to keep people hooked” (Freedman 2018). Freedman points out how there might be ways of accelerating the learning process and that it could be useful to make the lessons more difficult. But this would be at odds with the aim of getting users to come back for more. And von Ahn admits this to Freeman as well: “We prefer to be more on the addictive side than the fast-learning side…” (Ibid.)

This is not to say that language-learning apps are not helpful in any way. That would overstate the point. Research shows that they are good at building vocabulary, for instance.¹⁶ The point here is simply that we should be cautious about our engagement with addictive technology. Even when we are using it to pursue our autonomously chosen ends, we must be careful to avoid slipping into the kind of compulsive usage that would weaken our ability to set and pursue ends. We must cultivate a robust disposition to use technology in ways that make us more autonomous and refrain from using it in ways that undermine our autonomy. And that is precisely what it means to be a digital minimalist.

4.3 The Kantian Grounds of the Duty

Now that we have a stronger grasp of what it means to be a digital minimalist, we are in a better position to advance our argument. In this section, we will explain why we think there is a moral obligation to be a digital minimalist and what kind of duty this is. At first glance, it may appear that this has already been established or that it follows as a trivial consequence of what was said earlier. In Chap. 2 we defended Kant’s claim that autonomy is morally significant. We then showed why Kantians (and other moral theorists) believe that this requires us to refrain from doing things that undermine people’s autonomy. For Kant, this is understood in terms of a duty to respect humanity as an end in itself and never treat it as a mere means. Given the empirical evidence presented in Chap. 3, there appears to be a straightforward entailment of the moral obligation to refrain from problematic smartphone use (i.e., to be a digital minimalist).

But the matter is not quite so simple. First, the fundamental obligation to respect humanity leads to different kinds of duties. And they are not equally strict. As Kant sees it, some duties are commanded in all circumstances, and you are forbidden from disrespecting the autonomy of rational agents in certain ways. Iago’s deceitful manipulation of Othello is a good example of an action that is strictly forbidden. You have a perfect duty to refrain from such behavior. Kant thinks that it is always wrong to perform such an action. He says that perfect duties “admit of no exception in favor of inclination” (G 4:421).

In other instances, there are actions that Kant thinks you are morally required to perform, but they are not required in every circumstance. These are imperfect duties. Determining when you should perform these actions is a matter of discretion. For instance, Kant claims that we are required to promote the happiness of others—the duty of beneficence. But it is up to each individual to determine whose happiness to promote and to what extent. It would be nice of you to buy a birthday present for your close friend who has been feeling down, but you are not required to buy a birthday present for every person you know. At times you might even wonder whether you should buy a birthday present or donate the money to a charity that fights malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. You must use your moral judgment to decide how to fulfill the duty of beneficence.

This is just one of several important distinctions when it comes to understanding our moral duties concerning our relationship with technology. Thus, in order to get a clearer picture of the duty to be a digital minimalist, it would be helpful to provide more details about Kant’s ethical theory and his taxonomy of duties. Kant presents the distinction between imperfect and perfect duties in the Groundwork (1785), but he does not put forward a complete division of duties until the publication of the Metaphysics of Morals in 1797.

The most fundamental distinction in the Metaphysics of Morals is between duties of right and duties of virtue. Duties of right are ones that can justifiably be enforced, whereas duties of virtue cannot. Not only are we morally obligated to refrain from murder and theft, the state can rightly deploy its coercive power to prevent these actions. We discuss duties of right in greater detail in Chap. 6, so we will set them aside for now.

Duties of virtue are then divided between duties to oneself and duties to others. We explore duties to others in Chap. 5 (with a particular emphasis on the duty of beneficence). This brings us, at last, to the topic of this chapter: duties to oneself. As previously discussed, these duties are either perfect or imperfect. Finally, they are subdivided once more into duties to ourselves as “rational beings” and duties to ourselves as “animal beings.” Duties pertaining to our rational nature require us to pursue “moral perfection” and duties to our animal nature require us to pursue “natural perfection.” The entire taxonomy can be represented by Fig. 4.1.¹⁷

Fig. 4.1

Kant’s taxonomy of duties

In order to explain the placement of digital minimalism in the taxonomy, we must say more about these last two distinctions.

First, there is the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. From what was said above, it should already be clear that perfect duties require you to refrain from or perform an action in all circumstances without any exceptions. Imperfect duties are not so strict. You are not called to perform such actions in every possible moment. But even with this understanding, more needs to be said about what grounds the distinction. How can we distinguish imperfect duties from perfect duties? At first, it would appear that we can tell the two apart by using the formula of universal law and finding different kinds of contradictions. In the Groundwork, Kant identifies one perfect duty to the self (refraining from suicide) and one imperfect duty (cultivating talents). He also explains one perfect duty to others (refraining from making a false promise to the banker)¹⁸ and one imperfect duty (beneficence).

He first derives the duties by means of the formula of universal law and he then returns to them once more to show how they can be derived from the formula of humanity. For both duties, when using the formula of universal law, Kant shows why it would be impossible to will these maxims as universal laws. We can show why these actions are impermissible by demonstrating how this leads to a contradiction. If you cannot will the maxim to be a universal law, then you are acknowledging that you are making an exception of yourself when you act that way. You want everyone else to abide by one set of rules while you abide by another. This would be like the child in Chap. 2 who takes from others while insisting that no one take her toys. This behavior demonstrates an inconsistency, and Kant thinks this allows us to see why such actions are morally wrong.

But the formula leads to different kinds of contradictions. When we try to imagine a world where everyone makes false promises about repaying loans, we can immediately see why this leads to a contradiction. In such a world, there would be no banks at all. Banks depend on people repaying loans. Indeed, the very institution of promise-making depends on the other person accepting the promise and believing that you will fulfill your commitment. In a world where no one keeps their promises, there would be no promises at all. So we are trying to imagine what it would be like to make a promise in a world where there are no promises. This is a contradiction in conception. Such a world is inconceivable.¹⁹

He contrasts this with the kind of contradiction that results when we try to universalize the maxim of non-beneficence. Can we imagine a world where no one ever helps anyone who is in need? Kant thinks we can. So it does not lead to a contradiction in conception. Instead, Kant suggests that there is a “contradiction in the will.” Although we can imagine such a world existing, we cannot coherently will to live in such a world. In the case of beneficence, Kant suggests that there are times where everyone finds themselves in need of help from others. And if this is true, then you cannot coherently will to live in a world where no one helps anyone else.²⁰

When it comes to understanding the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties, this is a good place to start. By using the formula of universal law, we can see how perfect duties arise from contradictions in conception and imperfect ones stem from contradictions in the will. But this is not the end of the story.²¹ In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant elaborates considerably on the distinction. One thing that is particularly distinctive about Kant’s treatment of duties in the doctrine of virtue is his discussion of “ends that are also duties.” Indeed, Kant frames the entire section in terms of this idea. As we noted earlier, Kant says that there are only two such ends: one’s own perfection and the happiness of others.

This opens up a new way of understanding the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. You fulfill an imperfect duty whenever your action promotes an end that you have a duty to set (such as the happiness of others). For instance, you act on an imperfect duty when you buy your friend a birthday present or when you make a donation to a charity that treats malaria. You are morally obligated to adopt the end of the happiness of others, and such actions clearly promote that aim. You violate a perfect duty, however, when you set an end that is fundamentally inconsistent with an end that you are required to adopt. So although you are not morally required to get your least favorite colleague a birthday present, it would be strictly forbidden to play a prank on him by putting a snapping mousetrap in his mailbox.

Allen Wood summarizes the distinction in the following way:

A duty d is a duty toward (gegen) S if and only if S is a finite rational being and the requirement to comply with d is grounded on the requirement to respect humanity in the person of S. A duty is wide or imperfect (or, if toward others, a duty of love) if the action promotes a duty of virtue (that is, an end it is a duty to set); an act is required by a strict, narrow or perfect duty (or a duty of respect to others) if the failure to perform it would amount to a failure to set this obligatory end at all, or a failure to respect humanity as an end in someone’s person. An act violates a perfect duty (or duty of respect) if it sets an end contrary to one of the ends it is our duty to set, or if it shows disrespect toward humanity in someone’s person (as by using the person as a mere means). (Wood 2009, 233)

When you put a mousetrap in the mailbox, the aim of your action is your colleague’s suffering. You have set an end that is inconsistent with an end that you are obligated to set (viz. the happiness of others).

Wood’s interpretation is a helpful conceptual tool for understanding the duty to be a digital minimalist. According to our view, digital minimalism is a disposition that you have an imperfect duty to cultivate because it promotes an end that you are morally required to adopt. Digital minimalism falls under the umbrella of the duty to promote your own natural perfection.

Kant singled out only a single obligatory end for duties to oneself: one’s own perfection. But he believes that we owe different things to ourselves insofar as we are both rational and animal beings. As rational beings, the duty of perfection manifests itself as the requirement to be morally perfect. This requires total purity in our motives. Kant tells us that we should act from the motive of duty; we must do what is right simply because it is right and not because it serves our own self-interest. The command here is to “be holy” (MS 6:446). We are also required to be in total compliance with every moral duty. Kant says this is the command to “be perfect” (Ibid.). Of course, Kant recognizes that it is impossible for any human being to live up to this standard. Given the nature of human frailty, we can never expect to be morally perfect (in this life)²² or to have entirely pure motives. We can only “strive for this perfection,” so he says that this duty consists “only in continual progress” (Ibid.). It requires us to know ourselves deeply and to subject our actions and motives to the relentless scrutiny of conscience.

As animal beings, Kant understands perfection as the ability to pursue whatever ends we might set for ourselves. He says, “Natural perfection is the cultivation of any capacities whatever for furthering ends set forth by reason” (MS 6:391). Here again he defines humanity as the capacity to “set oneself an end” and he says that this is what separates us from non-human animals. He then argues that we ought to make ourselves worthy of this capacity by respecting it as the precious treasure that it is. If we let our talents rust and refuse to cultivate any of our abilities, we would express disrespect for humanity in our own person. What is the point of having the ability to set ends through reason if we render ourselves incapable of pursuing any of those ends? We would end up like Tantalus, forever doomed to desire things that are just out of reach.

In order to demonstrate respect for your capacity to set and pursue ends, Kant thinks that you must make yourself capable of pursuing “all sorts of possible ends” (MS 6:444):

Hence there is also bound up with the end of humanity in our own person the rational will, and so the duty, to make ourselves worthy of humanity by culture in general, by procuring or promoting the capacity to realize all sorts of possible ends, so far as this is to be found in the human being himself. In other words, the human being has a duty to cultivate the crude predispositions of his nature, by which the animal is first raised into the human being. It is therefore a duty in itself. (MS 6:392)

As he explains later, this requires us to cultivate the “powers of spirit” and the “powers of the soul.” He says that the latter includes “memory, imagination and the like” (MS 6:445).²³ As we argued in Chap. 2, humanity (understood as the capacity to set and pursue our own ends) is something that matters morally. Kant’s ethics requires us to express respect for this capacity in both ourselves and in others. We disrespect the humanity of others by manipulating them, deceiving them, or making them incapable of pursuing their own ends. But we disrespect our own humanity if we neglect to cultivate our own capacities or if we fail to protect them from threats that could undermine our autonomy.²⁴

With all of this in mind, we are in a much better position to understand how digital minimalism fits in within the broader framework of Kant’s ethics. Digital minimalism can be understood as a virtue insofar as it promotes the end of our natural perfection. By refraining from compulsive, heteronomous use of mobile devices and social media, you are protecting your ability to be the author of your own life story. As a digital minimalist, you are refusing to let developers and tech companies determine how much time you spend looking at screens because you value your memory, attention, executive function, self-esteem, and authenticity.

But this is not the only way of understanding the duty. Stefano Lo Re argues for a similar conclusion, which, in our terms, can be understood as a negative duty to refrain from what we above call digital maximalism. In his response to our first paper on this topic,²⁵ Lo Re argues against our conception of digital minimalism as an imperfect duty, and he defends the existence of a perfect duty against “screen overexposure” (2022, 501).²⁶ He also characterizes it as a duty to promote one’s own natural perfection, but he sees it as a duty of strict omission on the grounds that screen overexposure is inconsistent with the duty to make ourselves capable of pursuing a variety of ends. In spite of this apparent contradiction, we believe that his view is actually compatible with ours.

Allen Wood’s interpretation of the distinction makes it possible for us to understand how the duty in question could be seen as perfect (“refrain from maximalism”) or imperfect (“engage in minimalism”). For every obligatory end (one’s own perfection or the happiness of others) there are both perfect and imperfect duties. In our view, the duty to be a digital minimalist is understood as an obligation to cultivate a disposition that promotes an end that we are morally required to adopt. In those terms, it should be characterized as an imperfect duty. If, however, the duty is described as a duty to refrain from setting an end that is contrary to our obligatory end (as Lo Re has done by describing it as a duty to refrain from screen overexposure), then it should be understood as a perfect duty.

These are nearly two sides of the same coin; there are only minor differences in the details. The negative duty to refrain from screen overexposure (or digital maximalism) is perfect and thus can never be violated. In this sense, it might seem more demanding than what we focus on here. However, our imperfect duty is positive, and, perhaps, in asking us to do something, it asks more of us in other respects. In any event, there will be more convergence than divergence between these two accounts. Both recommend that we refrain from being on our screens too much because it is in tension with our duty to set our natural perfection as one of our ends. Lo Re is climbing the same mountain we are, even if he is on a different path to the summit.

4.4 Conclusion

Before moving on to other arguments about technology (duties to others, duties of right, etc.) it would be a good idea to take stock of everything that has been said in this chapter and summarize the argument. The first premise of the argument was established in Chap. 2. We argued for the moral significance of autonomy, and we defended Kant’s claim that humanity (the rational capacity to set and pursue your own ends) has a distinctive kind of value—dignity. We then explained Kant’s view about the moral requirements that stem from our recognition of the value of humanity. We ought to respect it as an end and never treat it as a mere means.

In Chap. 3, we discussed the empirical research that gives us reasons to believe that having an unhealthy relationship with our mobile devices is bad for our autonomy. In this chapter, we explained the concept of digital minimalism, and we showed how it fits within the broader framework of Kant’s ethics. If we value our rational agency, then we must adopt the end of our own natural perfection. One component of fulfilling that project involves a robust disposition to use technology intentionally and in ways that do not conflict with our ability to set and pursue our own ends.

• In sum, the argument can be summarized as follows:

• P1_a Humanity (i.e., the rational capacity to set and pursue one’s own ends) has an objective, unconditional, non-fungible value––dignity.

• P2_a Anything that has dignity ought to be respected as an end and never treated as a mere means.

• P3_a If humanity ought to be respected as an end and never treated as a mere means, then we ought to adopt the end of our own natural perfection.

• Therefore,

• C1_a We ought to adopt the end of our own natural perfection (i.e., we should make ourselves capable of pursuing a variety of ends and we should protect our rational agency from things that threaten to undermine it).

• P4_a Mobile device use threatens to undermine our capacities of rational agency and our authenticity. The compulsive use of such devices is inconsistent with the end of natural perfection.

• P5_a If P4_a and C1_a are true, then we ought to cultivate a disposition to use mobile devices intentionally and in ways that do not undermine our capacities (i.e., we ought to be digital minimalists).

• Therefore,

• C2_a We ought to be digital minimalists.

It might go without saying, but it should be noted that the “oughts” in the argument are moral “oughts.” They are not merely prudential. The empirical literature on mobile devices seems more than sufficient to generate prudential reasons for being more intentional about our relationships with these devices. There is already an overabundant self-help literature, teeming with books about the prudential reasons we have to “detox” from these devices and strategies for accomplishing this aim.²⁷ We share many of their concerns; we agree that people could promote their self-interest by unplugging from their mobile devices. But Kantian ethics offers even more compelling reasons to adopt the end of digital minimalism.²⁸ If autonomy matters morally, as we believe it does, then we also have moral reasons to be digital minimalists.

In Chap. 2, we briefly explained why other moral theories are also committed to the moral significance of autonomy. Consequentialists may see autonomy as partially constitutive of well-being (or as instrumentally valuable for promoting it). Virtue ethicists and perfectionist theories are likely to include autonomy as a component of human flourishing (as would many ethical egoists). Contractualists ground their moral framework in the idea that we must respect the equal moral status of autonomous agents. And so on. In general, we think that any plausible moral theory will make some room for the importance of autonomy.

Any ethical theory that assigns moral weight to autonomy is therefore capable of concluding that there are moral reasons to be a digital minimalist. Of course, the accounts will vary. For instance, the consequentialists who include autonomy in their theory of the good must weigh the promotion of this good against other effects. They will consider digital minimalism a duty if and only if this action (or set of actions) is optimific (i.e., it produces better consequences than any of the alternatives). But we have tried to characterize digital minimalism as a disposition that is variable enough to accommodate this concern. It is not “one size fits all.” The application of the duty will vary from person to person, as the aim is to maximize each person’s ability to pursue her own ends effectively. Every individual must find the appropriate balance so that they are using mobile devices in ways that promote their ends while refraining from usage that is antithetical to them (e.g., causes depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, self-esteem issues, etc.). Given that the duty is framed in this way, we believe it is likely to maximize the good (as consequentialists understand it).

Even consequentialists who do not value autonomy can find moral reasons to be a digital minimalist. Those who hold monistic theories of value—like hedonism—are likely to acknowledge that our current relationship with mobile devices does not seem to be maximizing overall or aggregate pleasure. By letting ourselves default into a relationship with technology that was not built on our own terms, many people are using them in ways that are not maximizing their well-being.

Naturally, Kantian ethics is stricter about the priority of certain values. If we were to translate Kant’s ethics into consequentialist language, we would say that the value of rational agency (humanity) is lexically prior to values like pleasure.²⁹ So even a user who derives pleasure from a device would have a moral reason to restructure her relationship with it if she discovers that it is undermining her rational agency.³⁰

Although we could have chosen other moral theories to advance our arguments about mobile devices, we believe that Kantian ethics offers the most perspicuous account of what is troubling about this relationship with technology. By foregrounding the concern with autonomy, we can bring the issue into clearer focus. As Kant sees it, humanity is the most precious commodity in our possession. It is in virtue of our humanity that we are capable of morality, the very thing that gives value and meaning to our lives.³¹ To wantonly forfeit some of our agency by falling prey to technological heteronomy is to demonstrate a failure to respect this precious capacity as the treasure that it is.