If there’s one thing that’d convince someone to be mindful about their news consumption, it’s becoming the maligned subject of a political scandal at 24 years old. So when Google began offering news alerts in 2003, Monica Lewinsky made the deliberate decision not to partake. “In the first handful of years, when there was still legal stuff happening, I would panic if I was away from my phone and I had a lot of missed calls,” Lewinsky says. “I would think, Oh, I’ve been indicted, or something’s happened.’’ It’s not surprising, then, that Lewinsky has “never been a notifications person.” Now a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and the host of the podcast Reclaiming With Monica Lewinsky, she tells WIRED how her drafts folder helps with impulse control and why an iPad is key to surviving LA traffic.
I have always been an iPhone girl, and I probably always will be an iPhone girl.
I also have an iPad Air. Anybody in LA knows if you have to cross the 405 in either direction, you don’t want to have to go back and forth during the day. So I probably mostly use my iPad when I know I’m going to be out for the day. I have a little iPad holder stand doohickey so that I can do my Zooms from the car.
I’m not someone who pays attention to those numbers. The only notifications I get are for text messages. I don’t do any for social media. I never accept a “Can we send you alerts?” I’d say 75 percent of the time I’m on my phone it’s because I need to be. If I’m spending too much time doomscrolling, or otherwise-scrolling, I usually notice it and try to be mindful of, like, “OK, am I trying to escape something?” I give myself permission to a lot. Especially these days. Very early on, when you could have Google notifications for news things, I very consciously chose not to do that. That relationship with technology and my nervous system started to become really clear to me before I even understood anything about being mindful of our nervous system.
I’d say in the last year and a half, most of the podcasts I’m listening to are part of the research I do for my own [podcast] interviews. I like to listen to people before I have a conversation with them. I often do that, or listen to a book that someone’s written, on double speed—that’s where I think my ADHD comes in handy: “Oh, I can process really quickly.” I also tend to take a lot of my calls in the car in LA, or if I’m walking when I’m in New York. I try to walk everywhere. I tend to do calls rather than having downtime to listen to music.
I think it was at 40,000 at some point. I wish I were an inbox-zero person. I would love to be that.
They’re 7 and 10. When I lived in New York and they were in LA, I would read to them over FaceTime very often. I would get two copies of every book so they could follow along.
I was at a bar mitzvah. One of the young people from the Amanda Knox show that I executive produced was there with her new girlfriend, and I stole a picture. They were holding hands, and I thought it was cute.
Their algorithm is good, for what it serves up—even the ads. The visual conversations that happen on Instagram are more interesting than the kinds of conversations that are happening now on Twitter. I use Twitter on occasion, but the algorithm changed in a way that my experience on there is a lot more unpleasant, with the kinds of comments I see or where my posts get exposed. And I like Threads, but visually it doesn’t work for me. They could use a redesign. What’s nice about Threads is that it feels like a much more cohesive community. You just feel sort of safe to open any conversation there. It might be echo chamber-y, but at least you don’t worry about tech assaults.
I’m not an early adopter of anything. I have a friend who’s an IP attorney, and I remember having dinner with him in 2005. I was leaving for graduate school and I was like, “Oh, what are you working on?” And he said, “Oh, protecting videos and things on phones.” And I’m like, “Who would watch anything on a phone? What an idiot!”
I don’t go to a specific outlet every day for news. I sort of rely on the curation, whether I’m getting my news from The New York Times or Vanity Fair or The Atlantic.
Every time I hear somebody from the Reddit community speak somewhere about Reddit, I think, “Oh, I should be using it more.” But then also there’s not enough time in the day.
It connects to my iPad for use with my therapist on Zoom.
Number of burner accounts: 2
Technology you’re most nostalgic for: old Google algorithm
I miss the old Google. The ability to search was a lot easier.
Where you fall on the tech hygiene spectrum:
I am most mindful of trying to protect my mental health and being sensitive to a problem with ADHD of, “Everybody’s mad at me.” I wish that there were easier ways than just a wink or something else for someone to be like, “I’m in sarcasm mode.” I joke about this a lot, but my drafts folder—I try to be really mindful of what I put out into the world. There are times when I really want to respond in a snarky way back to someone, and I have to try a little to practice what I preach and be mindful about what we put on the internet. I think that’s the thing that we tend to forget so easily with the distance of a screen: We’re in connection and in conversation with people through technological devices.
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