Smartphones haven’t been around for fifty years, so we don’t know the results of long-term use, but numerous books have been written on the affects of the internet on our attention spans, sleep cycles, memory, brain circuits, and more.
And none of it is good.
Catherine Price writes “If you wanted to invent a device that could rewire our minds, if you wanted to create a society of people who were perpetually distracted, isolated, and overtired, if you wanted to weaken our memories and damage our capacity for focus and deep thought, if you wanted to reduce empathy, encourage self-absorption, and redraw the lines of social etiquette, you’d likely end up with a smart phone.” How To Break Up With Your Phone
In Irresistible, Adam Alter states that statistics show that the average user is on her phone almost three hours every day and picks up her phone almost 40 times daily.
If you do the math, that is 20 hours a week. You don’t want to know what that comes to in a month. Or a year. Or a lifetime.
When I installed a tracker on my phone, I was horrified that my phone use fit into those hourly norms. (Though I justified myself by saying that my children use my phone frequently.)
What could we be doing, what should we be doing, with all that time?
Social media has no cues for when you are full—when you have been online long enough. In fact, whistle blowers inside the industry, such as Tristan Harris, tell us that social media has been deliberately designed to make you crave more, to keep you from being ever satisfied.
The more time you spend on social media, the more you click and comment and share, the more money they make. Facebook, which also owns Instagram and Whatsapp, is worth hundreds of billions of dollars—made from selling our attention to advertisers.
Several thousand years ago, the writer of Proverbs wrote that human eyes are never satisfied. (Proverbs 27:20) In contrast, Psalms proclaims that those that seek God and praise Him are satisfied. (Psalm 22:26, 36:8, 63:5, 65:4)
Satisfaction won’t be found in social media, but it can be found in God.
Today’s Challenge: If you installed a phone tracker a few days ago, check the results. Are you surprised? What apps are you spending the most time on? (If it is your Bible app, you don’t have anything to worry about.) Do you wish you were spending your time in a different way?
Much of my time I noticed was on my Bible app or ordering groceries but I definitely spent too much time texting. I also spent too much time on Instagram. I deleted Gardenscapes as I noticed that became a total time waster. This phone challenge is interesting. I look forward each morning to what the daily challenge for the day is.
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