Ep. 355: Quit Social Media (For Real This Time)

Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Cal Newport

Technology, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A common complaint about social media skepticism is that we’re falling into a classic moral panic. We’ve been concerned about many past mass media technologies, and ultimately came to realize that they’re not so bad. So why would we expect anything different about social media? In this episode, Cal tackles this complaint, drawing on an unexpected analogy to find clarity. He then answers listener questions and discusses the books he read in May, but not before first confronting a truly bizarre (or, perhaps, brilliant) piece of art work created by a fan of the show.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, the show about cultivating depth in a distracted world.
0:22.8	So I'm here in my deep work, HQ.
0:24.9	Joined as always by my producer, Jesse.
0:27.1	Jesse, you noticed I changed up our slogan there a little bit?
0:29.6	Yeah, I did.
0:30.1	I thought you misspoke.
0:30.9	I didn't misspeak.
0:32.2	It's been irritating me for years.
0:36.2	Writers hate repetition.
0:39.4	And all the writers in the listing items right now will understand this.
0:44.1	The deep questions that show about cultivating a deep life that repetitious deep can't have deep in two sentences in a row.
0:51.3	So I'm trying out depth to try to avoid the excess repetition.
0:54.9	Anyone's ever been through a copy editing process knows REP period.
0:57.9	They put REP period being like repeated use of a word.
1:01.5	So what is it?
1:03.1	Tell me if this makes sense.
1:04.3	Cultivating depth in a distracted world.
1:08.8	Seems to make sense to me, but you have better grammar than I do.
1:12.2	All right.
1:12.5	No repetition.
1:13.9	Let us know, you can complain to Jesse.
1:16.5	We got some feedback about last week's episode.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 4 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Cal Newport, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Cal Newport and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.