31-Day Phone Challenge - Day 7

 

If I asked you why you are using social media, you’ll probably say it is to connect with family and friends. That is a valid reason. I love the ease in communication with friends around the globe.

But we can be connected to hundreds of people on social media and still be lonely. Connection online doesn’t always result in community.

Gary Miller in Surviving the Tech Tsunami writes, “Just as our hunger for physical nourishment can be falsely satisfied, so can our relational appetite. That normal need for relationship begins to gnaw deep inside, and out comes our electronic device . . . We are falsely satisfying our inner need for healthy dialogue and relationship with virtual interaction—relational candy. Keeping up with friends online can create a false sense of intimacy and temporarily quench that inner desire for face-to-face interaction.”

God gave us a desire to belong, and He designed the Church to fill that need. But today many of us are using social media as a substitute for the local Church and real relationships in the Body of Christ.

For hundreds of years, human interaction consisted of the people that lived within walking distance—the neighbor you could talk to over the backyard fence or meet when walking to the village well.

Today I can find my “community” anywhere in the world. I can seek out those with the same hobbies, interests, beliefs, and dreams. If I have a passion of knitting scarves with llama motifs, I can probably find a community of llama-motif-scarf knitters. There are communities for special-needs children, scrapbookers, runners, and every other conceivable category.

This can be a blessing. I love the support networks of the online community, especially for believers who don’t live near a local church. But in seeking out those who are like me, I can lose the interaction with those who are different than me, maybe those of a different age or with different interests.

I can talk for hours with a sourdough-baking, book-loving, gardening, homeschool mom. But I learn a lot from my single nurse friend who has been battling Covid in a nursing home. Or the elderly, or urban-dwellers, or adoptive moms—those with life experiences that I’ve never had.

If I only surround myself with those who think and act just like me, I could get a warped view of the Body of Christ. And this problem is magnified online, where categories and interests easily separate us. I might not even realize that there are vast numbers of people with very different views because I’ve chosen my own bubble.

From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. Ephesians 4:16 NIV

We need each other. The Body of Christ is incomplete without each of us working together. That fact should make us rejoice in the diversity and variety of women in our local church.

Today’s Challenge: Set a goal to have a real conversation (not texting) with a friend today (or this week.) Set a date and time to meet for coffee or Facetime or simply talk on the phone. And maybe even call or meet with someone outside your normal circle of friends, someone older or younger, someone with different interests and goals, who can broaden your view of the Body of Christ.

31-Day Phone Challenge - Day 6

 

The smart phone has been compared to the slot machine.

The slot machine was designed to encourage compulsive use and is considered the most addictive device ever invented.

Most of us wouldn’t dream of gambling, but the phone was designed to give us the same addictive hormone triggers as the slot machine. When I check my phone, I may find a fun email or a text from a friend. This reward gives a boost of dopamine – the happy hormone which reinforces the reward.

We are “addicted to our phones because we crave immediate approval and affirmation.” Tony Reinke in 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You

The contrasting hormone to dopamine is cortisol, the stress hormone. Some psychologists claim that our phones promote anxiety because we worry that we are missing something.

Social media sites were purposely designed to be endless. You will never come to the end of Google. Or Instagram. Or Youtube. There are 500 hours of video uploaded onto Youtube every minute. Every minute! There is always another post, another link, another video. When we lay down our phones, we know that we will miss something.

With dopamine rewarding us with notifications and cortisol plaguing us every time we shut off our phones, no wonder we are glutting ourselves with phone time.

“The urge to check Twitter or refresh Reddit becomes a nervous twitch that shatters uninterrupted time into shards too small to support the presence necessary for an intentional life.” Cal Newport in Digital Minimalism

Mark 4:18-19 describes the setting of our world today. “And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the Word, and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the Word, and it becometh unfruitful.”

Today’s challenge: Turn off most, if not all, notifications on your phone. You can always turn them back on if you find you need them, but rarely are social media notifications an emergency.

When my phone would ding with a WhatsApp message, all my children would rush to my phone. And, to be honest, I’d be tempted to stop what I was doing, too. Checking a short WhatsApp message not only interrupted my task, but often turned into twenty minutes on my phone. Turning off the notifications has significantly cut down phone distractions for me.

As with all these challenges, adjust them to fit your needs. Your life may require you to be more connected. Some apps can be set to allow only calls and notification from specific numbers. So if you want to allow calls from your husband and children, but not the rest of the world, you can.

31-Day Phone Challenge - Day 5

 

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?

31-Day Phone Challenge - Day 4

 

As daughters of God, we want to love the Lord with all our heart soul, mind and strength. But, would it be too strong to state that the default setting on our phones is to draw our hearts away from God?

Colossians 3:1-2 says, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”

Our phones are a tool. But a tool like a knife, though it can do harm, is not programmed to do evil. You don’t fear that, as you are chopping carrots for dinner, your paring knife will suddenly attack you.

Phones are different. Yes, you can choose to control your phone and do good with your phone, but your phone has been intentionally designed to prompt addictive behavior. It has been manipulated to be a conduit of lies against God and source of evil entertainment to your home.

It is easy for me to justify myself. I’m not tempted by porn, or gaming, or movies. There is so much good on my phone—podcasts, books, worship music, messages from godly friends. But yet, the good can distract from the best.

“It is difficult to serve God with our heart, soul, strength and mind when we are diverted and distracted and multi-tasking everything.” - Douglass Groothuis

Today’s Challenge: Ask yourself, What do I love about current technology? What do I not love? What changes do I notice in myself when I spend a lot of time on my phone? What changes would improve my relationship with my phone?

31-Day Phone Challenge - Day 3

 

For many years, 2 Peter 1:3 has been one of my favorite verses.

According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:

I love knowing that God isn’t stingy. He offers a victorious life. He prepares a banquet to supply my soul’s nutritional needs.

But our enemy is enticing us with fake food. He tries to tell us to feed our emotional needs with likes and friends. We can be so busy and distracted that we fail to notice that we’ve lost our hunger for God and our soul is starving. We can keep our phones within constant reach so we are never bored. But, according to statistics, people today are becoming more lonely and depressed—and those stats were before the isolation brought on by the coronovirus. We fill our soul needs with more entertainment, more games, more friends, more time on the screen, only to become more empty.

“True freedom from the bondage of technology comes not mainly from throwing away the smartphone, but from filling the void with the glories of Jesus that you are trying to fill with the pleasures of the device.” John Piper from 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You

Today’s challenge: For the coming week, when you pick up your phone, ask yourself “Why am I picking this up? What triggered me to pick up my phone? What emotion do I feel? What do I hope to gain from picking this up?

31-Day Phone Challenge - Day 2

 

Many people today don’t see anything wrong with spending eight hours a day playing computer games.

If this life is all there is, why not have as much fun as possible? Why not watch/view/read whatever brings you pleasure?

We need an eternal view to be deliberate about our phone use.

While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:18

We were created in the image of God to reflect Christ to the world. What we desire becomes our idol. What we worship becomes our model. When we worship Christ, we become like Christ. To use a Facebook term, we become what we “like.”

Can our phone cravings become idolatry?

Idolatry isn’t just bowing down to a golden idol. Idolatry is finding ultimate meaning in the created instead of the Creator.

“We idolize our phones when we lose our ability to ask if they help us (or hurt us) in reaching our spiritual goals.” from 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You by Tony Reinke

In the next weeks we’ll be considering how technology and our phones are affecting us. But ultimately we need to ask God to give us a vision for our media use. Unless our hearts change, even smashing our phone won’t bring victory. Maybe God wants you to use your phone less, or maybe He wants you to use your online time in a better way—to encourage or evangelize—becoming a producer instead of a consumer.

Today’s challenge: Install a tracking app on your phone, if your phone doesn’t already have one. I use Your Hour, but there are many other options. In a few days, we’ll look at the results.

31-Day Phone Challenge - Day 1

 

For the last few years, I shared a blog series in January. Usually the focus was spending time in God’s Word.

I’ve talked to numerous women, old and young, who admit that technology has had a negative effect on their priorities. Most of us know we need to spend more time in prayer and Bible study, yet we find ourselves spending far too much time on our phones.

I’m grateful for the role technology has played in my life. The ability to blog and connect with many of you is a gift. I love the convenience of online communication. But do the benefits outweigh the dangers? What have I lost with a smart phone in my purse?

For the month of January, I plan to share a 31-Day Phone Challenge. I’ll be sharing things I’ve learned, Scripture for meditation, questions to ponder, and practical ideas on controlling our phone use.

I’m not sharing this phone challenge because I’ve got it figured out, but because I have needed consider changes in my life. I hope to learn even more from you, so please share your insights in the comments during this month-long challenge.

Today’s challenge: Pray the words of Psalms 139:23-24. Focus on the last phrase

“Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Do my daily phone habits help me see the glory of God? Or does it kill my desire for God?

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