James 1:25, Mark 4:19, Hebrews 2:1, Isaiah 55:2-3, Ecclesiastes 5:1
We say we turn to our phones when we’re “bored.” And we often find ourselves bored because we have become accustomed to a constant feed of connection, information, and entertainment. We are forever el...
Tony Reinke does a great job capturing the deep ambivalence many of us feel about our smartphones in this short excerpt: This blasted smartphone! Pesk of productivity. Tenfold plague of beeps and ...
Adolescents have been offered a license to post without any accompanying ethical framework. Is it fair to blame teens for misusing tools that didn’t exist in our childhood? If I had been given a phone...
A Time of Disruption Imagine your church somehow existed back in the 16 th century, at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. You would be surrounded by major changes in society, in religious...
Studies of conversation both in laboratory and in natural settings show that when two people are talking, the mere presence of a phone on the table between them or in the periphery of their vision cha...
Genesis 16:13, Exodus 33:14, Isaiah 49:15–16, Matthew 18:3–4, Luke 15:20–24, Psalm 139:1–3
We’re little children wandering the aisles of the internet because we’ve lost the presence of our loving parent. We are desperate for the attention of a good Father who sees us. We have no idea how to...
Addiction isn’t just measured in time spent connected to screens but also in how it dulls our spiritual sensibilities. We use social media to blunt the edges of overwhelm, to find something to thrill ...
Social media addiction also changes our neurochemistry: our slumped posture produces cortisol; the backlit phone and blue light can suppress melatonin (needed for sleep); and a recent study with “hard...
As the speed and choices of the digital age send us hurling toward impatience and shallowness, they culminate in its most damaging consequence: isolation. Social media, in particular, lures us in unde...
1 Corinthians 6:12, 1 Peter 5:8, Matthew 6:22-33, Proverbs 4:23, 1 Corinthians 10:13
We don’t necessarily need to wade through research studies or the expert opinions of psychologists to prove that devices and social media apps are designed to become invasive, habit-forming and compul...
In His book When Narcissism Comes to Church, Chuck DeGroat describes a common tool employed on social media, gaslighting: Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse that draws its name from a 1938 Bri...
In a television commercial for Facebook, a large, gregarious family sits down to a meal. It is a Norman Rockwell moment. In our positive associations to family dinner, myth and science come together. ...
Romans 12:15, John 16:33, Matthew 5:4, Psalm 34:18, Ecclesiastes 3:4
After surveying an incredibly diverse cross section of college students across America, Donna Freitas found “the most pressing social media issues students face: the importance of appearing happy”—and...
In this excerpt from Jay Y. Kim’s book, Analog Church , the author shares about an experience at a local restaurant after being convicted of his own smartphone use at home, keeping him from being p...
In the short term, online communication makes us feel more in charge of our time and self-presentation. If we text rather than talk, we can have each other in amounts we can control. And texting and e...
When I talk with parents of adolescents, the conversation often turns to smartphones, social media, and video games. The stories parents tell me tend to fall into a few common patterns. One is the “co...
Something deep within us is unsettled, and we want to appear to the world as better, more dignified, or more desirable—someone more beautiful or clever than the mope we see in the mirror.
A common question I’m hearing from folks these days is whether it is beneficial (or a moral imperative) to pay attention to the news. The Catholic nun and social activist Dorothy Day asked the same qu...
When people long for some kind of escape, it’s worth asking: What would “back to the land” mean if we understood the land to be where we are right now? Could “augmented reality” simply mean putting yo...
A simple refusal motivates my argument: refusal to believe that the present time and place, and the people who are here with us, are somehow not enough. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram act li...
Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addic...
Exodus 18:13–27, Ecclesiastes 2:22–23 , Isaiah 40:28–31 , Luke 10:38–42, Matthew 11:28–30, Psalm 127:1–2
The picture shows cartoon villain Cruella de Vil, bloodshot eyes staring straight ahead, hands clutching the wheel of her infamous coupe, black-and-white hair waving wildly in the wind, oversi...
1 Samuel 16:7, Matthew 6:1, John 12:43, Galatians 1:10, Philippians 2:3
In his excellent book, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World , Mike Cosper shares a short vignette about the comedian Louis C.K.* Louis CK tells fans he meets in pu...
So in the last three years, in order to reorient myself and head back onto the narrow way, I’ve given up social media and/or the internet for Lent. At first it’s agonizing. I’m like a caffeine or nico...
Selfies have been proven to be far more than a threat to civility and sacred spaces. They can undermine our health and well-being. Selfies can be dangerous. A Spanish man was gored to death when he tr...
In my life the noonday demon of sloth has a voice. It sounds like the chime that tells me I have a new email message or that a fresh post from one of my friends has just appeared on social media.