It doesn't even need to be a middle ground. Even the least effort is enough.
Think about smoking, drinking and other risky behaviour.
I make a similar plea and argument in Digital Vegan [1] as is made in the blog post. Like plenty of other thinkers now (Newport, Doctorow, Kingsnorth, Vaidhyanathan, Kardaras, Tufekci, Rushkoff, Lanier, Véliz and Oddell) I framed surveillance capitalism, social media and smartphone addiction as a public health issue. This is now the dominant emerging frame.
People who use drugs and alcohol use the same sunk-cost fallacy:
"Hey, I've been doing this for years now, what's the point in quitting?"
The point is that ANY reduction offers an immediate health benefit. You don't have to become an Olympic athlete to eat a little healthier and exercise a tiny bit more.
By the same token, any improvement to your digital lifestyle is worth making - whether that's refusing to give personal data, not participating in the "cashless" society, buying quality, durable digital goods that reduce e-waste, getting a dumb phone or quitting social media... they all count.
That's why I think the diet metaphor is very powerful.
