Boys,

Cal Newport is one of my favorite writers. One of his key points is about the importance of managing screen time. But he’s not old-fashioned or anti-technology; he’s actually a computer science professor. But his point is that we need to make technology work for us instead of letting it mindlessly consume our time.

He has a good article called “The Reverse Flynn Effect” in which he talks about a downward trend in IQ that’s been observed in recent years—see the chart below. He calls this the Reverse Flynn Effect because, for many years, IQs had been rising, and that was known as the Flynn Effect.

Newport acknowledges that we can’t definitively blame smartphones and social media for this trend, but it’s definitely a prime suspect.

His recommendation? Try reading more published work—books, articles, magazines—even if they’re online. Here’s why:

“Print requires us to make a logical case for a subject. A really significant feature of books is that if you make a case in print, you have to make it logically add up. You can’t just assert things in the way you can on TikTok or on YouTube…”

If you’d like some reading material for yontif, just let me know 🙂 I have several of Cal Newport’s books on my shelf.

Have a good week.

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