Many people are dissatisfied with their technology usage and software tools have been created to help them. Most of these tools block apps and websites and promise more productivity. We qualitatively analyze the self-promotion material of such tools to investigate their positioning in terms of whether they want users to assist in long-term change towards healthy technology usage or merely act as short-term digital detox support. Furthermore, we explore how they handle their position as apps used in reaction to other apps. We aim to contribute to research on behavior change through technology, on the role of software businesses in an attention economy, and on digital detox.
not fundamentally opposed to using IT. Since digital tools are typically flexible, they have the potential for customization, making them ideal for tailoring them exactly to a user’s needs in line with digital minimalism. Thus, software tools could be a good choice to support digital minimalism.
However, there is the inherent tension of using the poison as the cure, fighting apps with apps. It seems counterintuitive to use more tools to use less tools. For users showing habitual or even addictive behaviour, it might be counterproductive to use one digital tool to reduce the use of others. For instance, the habit could simply transfer from one tool to another. I aim to start exploring this paradoxical situation in this project.
We look at software tools for digital minimalism to investigate how they are presented and motivated, similar to how Stark and Gregg analyzed productivity tools [15]. We want to answer the following questions: How do tools for digital minimalism present themselves? What use cases and results are implied?
In order to gather a sample of tools, we identified a set of eight listicles recommending tools for digital minimalism. All listicles are presented in Table 1. We considered all listed tools (62 in total) and excluded those that were not geared towards reducing or improving time spent with technology (24). The improvement claimed had to go beyond being a more productive tool. Among those excluded were meditation apps, password managers, and note-taking apps for example. Two more apps were excluded since they have been retired. We then gathered self-promotion material from app or extension stores and websites for the remaining sample of 36 tools. We analyzed the texts through open coding of the material [16] with QualCoder [17]. An overview of the tools can be found in Table 2.
Preliminary results are presented in Table 3. They show a large focus on app or website blocking intended to avoid distraction and time waste, and improve focus and productivity. Other smaller categories are email management, file management, reader apps, or phone launchers. Apart from “No Distractions” for YouTube, Clean Twitter, News Feed Eradicator, Unhook Instapaper, Inoreader
DropIt, Everything, File Juggler, Flow Launcher Flipd Daywise
Smartphone Launchers and Home Screen Customizers
Before Launcher, Letters icon pack, Minimalist Launcher, minimalist phone, Olauncher Web Browsers
Zen Browser productivity, notable hopes connected with the use of these tools are balance, gaining control, better mental health, and more mindfulness.
Many apps use gamification and social accountability to be more efective, other design features are minimalist design, special audio or visual design (such as lo-fi music or nature scenes), goal setting, monetary stakes, and delays. To convince users, the providers employ testimonials and praise the efectiveness by referencing the success other users had. Few tools use environmentalism, which is a notable motivation for many lifestyle minimalists [13, 18]. Some providers claim their apps are based on research and one provider references a scientific paper studying their app [19].
When motivating their tools, providers tend to emphasize the lost time while scrolling and speak of the addictive design of many apps. Only few actively acknowledge the positives of technology use, positioning their app as an enabler of positive use cases and disabler of negative ones. Some more speak of more healthy technology usage and balance, indirectly acknowledging that a lot of technology usage is immensely useful.
Overall, many tools position themselves as mere enforcers of digital detox, while some see themselves as tools assisting in long-term change processes. These tools often claim to change or disrupt technology use habits. Habits are automatic responses to triggers that result from repeated performance of a behavior with the reward of achieving a goal [12, 8, 10]. The tools disrupt these habits by either removing the trigger (for example, no icons on the screen) or inhibiting the reward or goal achievement (for example, immediate opening of an app).
While habits are not necessarily harmful [10]—indeed the tools’ providers speak of establishing better habits—the habitual use of technology is often a factor in people’s feeling of not-being-in-control [11]. This is due to the automatic nature of habit execution, which makes them dificult to control, even when they conflict with intentions [10].
Others mention how they want to keep users motivated through gamification or other other design features mentioned above. Lastly, some providers contrast their tools with others and claim they can ifnally solve users’ problems by tackling them at their root, compared to approaches that only combat the symptoms.
However, none of the tools explicitly align themselves with digital minimalism, they only allude to
uses gamification (16), social accountability (
We plan to do a second round of coding, focusing more on the short-term vs. long-term distinction and notions of control. Whether these tools fulfil their claims or lead to diferent efects when users apply them, or whether users apply them diferently [ 20], needs more investigation. Future steps could be to analyse online user responses in app store reviews and forum posts, analyse whether these tools follow strategies supporting behaviour change [21], interview existing users, and finally analyse interventions using such tools. We also plan to gather monetization data to investigate possible conflicts of interest. These would arise if providers claim to want long-term change for users while ofering subscriptions, where providers would have an interest in users feeling no improvement.
Further extensions could be to look at non-software tools for digital minimalism such as smartphone safes or dumb phones, which I excluded in my analysis to focus on the possible conflict between tools operating on the same level (only software).
We hope to be able to contribute to research on behavior change through technology [22], to the role of software businesses in an attention economy, and research on digital detox [4, 5]. Understanding existing tools for digital minimalism might help us understand how satisfactory use of IT might look like and help us create tools (software or otherwise) that assist users in shaping a better relationship with technology long-term.
Declaration on Generative AI The authors have not employed any Generative AI tools. [14] A. V. Wilson, S. Bellezza, Consumer minimalism, Journal of Consumer Research 48 (2021) 796–816.
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