I resisted getting a smartphone for years and still resent having one most days. It’s not that I am anti-technology. I’m not. I am grateful for the many ways technology makes our lives easier and more comfortable. My smartphone is much more than a phone. I use it every day to listen to audio books and sermons, study languages, read Scripture and digital books, and pray. I prefer doing most (all) of these things without a smartphone, but I can’t deny that having my entire Kindle library in my pocket, listening to hours of audio content while driving in the car, and being able to look up the Greek or Hebrew text of a passage without returning to my library is very convenient.
Technology can be a great blessing, but it has largely taken over most people’s lives. It wasn’t that long ago that communication required a physical letter or phone call. Now almost everyone has a cell phone in his pocket. Text messaging allows instant contact. Most people check their email repeatedly throughout the day and have it also on their smartphone. With social media feeds, direct messaging, and almost constant notifications, it is not surprising that most people keep their phone in their hand or closeby throughout the day.
Put down your phone and look around for a minute. Almost everyone is looking at their phones. Even if they ought to be focused on something else, chances are their phone has at least part of their attention. Every day I see people driving with one hand while holding their phone with the other, and not because they have it beside their ear. They are looking at it. Maybe some of them are looking at GPS. How many do you suppose are replying to a text message? I have. How many are viewing social media? How important will that Facegram post seem after you crash into another car, or worse, run over someone’s daughter? I tend to people watch when I take my wife to dinner. I ought to be paying attention to her; instead, I am fascinated by how many couples are sitting at the same table and separately looking at their phones. This is social interaction? How often will my attention be diverted if I keep my phone on my desk while trying to write or have my email open in another browser tab? This is focused, creative labor? When was the last time you spent an extended period of time without a phone, tablet, or electronic device? The phone screen is the last thing many people look at in bed at night and the first thing they look at when they wake up in the morning.
We need a more intelligent approach to technology, and that begins by assessing how we actually use it and how often it is using us instead. Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism is an excellent resource for thinking deliberately about technology, especially social media and smartphones. There is more I want to say on this topic in the near future, but here I want to offer a starting point and make a few suggestions.
1. Use Technology that Adds Value to Your Life, Reject Technology that Robs Value from Your Life
How many of the apps on your phone actually add value to your life? How many of them support your values, goals, work, and recreation? You might be surprised how few of those apps you use regularly. Most people have far more downloaded and installed than they frequently access. You may also be surprised how much time you spend on your social media apps, Internet browser, and YouTube. It’s not that much, you may say, but most smartphones have some kind of reporting option which might cause you to rethink that claim.
I don’t use social media, but when I had email, YouTube, and an Internet browser on my phone, I was constantly tempted to check it. If I was standing in line for a few minutes or waiting for a meeting to begin, it was easy to grab my phone and look for new emails or see what videos had been uploaded to the channels I follow. But how often is an email so urgent and so important that I have to read and respond to it immediately? You may think your email is far more important than a pastor’s could be, and that may be true. But do you really need your inbox to be accessible 24/7?
I decided almost a year ago to remove email and YouTube from my phone. There was a brief adjustment period, but I have never regretted it. I left a browser app because sometimes I need to look something up, especially when I am away from home. But I enabled a timer that shuts down the browser after thirty minutes of use each day. Internet on my phone is now a tool, not a toy. It serves me rather than entangling me so that I serve it. I always carry a book with me anyway, so now while I am waiting, I don’t have to decide whether to look at my phone or read a few pages. I have limited my options so that my behavior is more consistently drawn to those activities that best align with what I most value and enjoy.
Do an audit of the technology you use on a regular basis. How much is actually contributing value, and at what cost? Having a social media account may help you connect with friends in other places, but is having the app on your phone distracting you or consuming time that might be used more profitably? Is social media the best platform for the kinds of social connection you are seeking? Might your peace of mind, use of time, and personal growth be enhanced by having fewer technologies in your life and using the ones which you keep in a more deliberate way? This may mean only accessing social media from your computer and removing it from your phone, or it might mean eliminating certain types of media and technology altogether. You have to decide what kinds of technology will best serve you, and you cannot know how to decide that until you know how much of it you are consuming.
2. Erect Boundaries to Prevent Technology from Intruding on Contemplation, Creativity, Community, and Calm
Your smartphone has a “Do Not Disturb” and “Airplane Mode” feature. The former will silence all notifications, phone calls, and text messages except those you choose to allow when the setting is enabled. Your phone also can be turned off. Believe it or not, the world will not end, your family will not implode, and your work (probably) won’t be adversely affected if you shut off your phone, tablet, and laptop from time to time.
It isn’t necessary to entirely remove a particular technology or allow it 24/7 access to your life. God made human beings as image bearers to exercise dominion in created space. We exercise dominion by developing new technologies; we also exercise dominion by making it behave. It is your responsibility to decide how much freedom these technologies have in your domain. When you are constantly available whenever your phone beeps or chirps, you are not the master; you have become a slave. You can only be as distracted as you allow yourself to be. Your phone and Internet connection have no more power than you give them. Unfortunately, many people in the western world have surrendered most of their waking hours and much of their conscious attention to their smartphone and online platforms. These may be smart technologies, but our use of them is dumb.
Be intentional about creating zones in your daily schedule for contemplation (i.e. deliberate thinking), creativity (i.e. composition, music, crafts, cooking, or similar activities), community (i.e. social interaction with specific individuals), and calm (i.e. quiet time when you can escape noise and other demands). Once you have these zones scheduled, develop rules about what technologies you allow into these spaces. You may find that note-taking software or an app for capturing ideas or a music app (without ads) for soft background music is helpful during contemplation. Times for creativity may also be enhanced by music, or there may be specific technologies useful at such times such as a video on how to prepare a recipe or a language-learning app for study and practice. Community might include video chats through Google Hangouts, Skype, or Facetime, but social media posts and direct messages are not real personal engagement which should involve, whenever possible, tone of voice, facial expression, and body language cues. Calm will almost always mean turning off or leaving at home all electronic devices unless you find yourself so stressed that you need a white noise app or guided meditation to quiet your mind and detach from distraction. You have to decide for yourself what rules make sense in these areas, but the point is you should have rules in order to master technology and not be mastered by it.
3. Create Buffer Zones and Deliberate Delays in Communication without Sacrificing Accessibility in Emergencies
Most of us are now so accustomed to being available by phone and text message that we forget it wasn’t always so easy to get in touch with someone. It wasn’t that long ago that if you needed to make a call on the road, you had to pull over and find a payphone. Now we act as if the fate of the world depends on our checking a text message while navigating a car at 70 mph. Smartphones have made us dumb, in more ways that one.
You don’t have to be as available as modern technologies condition us to be. But what if there is an emergency? What if my wife or children need me? I understand the feeling. I am on-call at a local hospital for end of life issues, and as a pastor, it isn’t uncommon for me to be contacted by those in crisis. But none of these needs are new, only the means by which we are now constantly accessible. If we’re honest, most of us rarely have the kind of personal emergency calls that require us to be available at a moment’s notice, and even when we do, a delay of 15 minutes to a few hours would not make a significant difference most of the time.
Most phones have features that allow callers to break through a Do Not Disturb setting by calling back immediately if they do not get an answer. You can designate which caller’s text messages and phone calls will be instantly identified even if you have Do Not Disturb turned on. Others may choose to leave their phone in Airplane Mode or in another room most of the time or during specific hours of the day and only check it periodically for any missed calls or important text messages. These kinds of buffers are especially important if you want to do deep work and focus on particular tasks or knowledge work. (For more on deep work, I highly recommend Cal Newport’s book.)
How much more focused and calm might you be if you treated your smartphone like a landline or used it the way many of us formerly used a pager and payphones? What if you treated your email inbox more like your regular mailbox? Instead of leaving it constantly open, what if you only visited it once or twice or five times per day? Would your work really suffer if you checked email once an hour instead of every five minutes? Would the quality of your correspondence deteriorate if you composed replies in a word processor and sent longer replies one hour or four hours or one day later rather than sending an immediate response?
Your specific situation might require different guidelines for communication than someone else. You may have to communicate with other people about anticipated delays and recondition their expectations. But most of us would benefit from thinking and acting more intentionally when it comes to communication technology. How available do we really need to be, and how much better might our communication be if disciplined by responsible guidelines?
4. Think Carefully Before Adding New Technology to Your Life, and Consider Balancing Each Addition with a Corresponding Subtraction
We are regularly informed of new websites, new apps, and new services that promise to solve more of our problems and make our lives better in every way. The only problem is, these promises are not true. Sometimes a new technology really will improve the quality and efficiency of our lives. Much of the time they simply add more clutter and distraction.
When our young children find something they want or think they absolutely have to buy with their money, we put it on a waiting list. Depending on the nature of the item and how much it costs, they may have to wait seven or thirty days. If they change their mind or waver in their decision during the waiting period, the timer resets. This has often saved us from buying something that seemed indispensable at one moment and proved to be irrelevant just a few days later.
A similar method can be useful in evaluating new technologies. Put the new app or website or service you think you need on a waiting list. If it still seems essential or highly useful in a week or two, give it a test run. Try it out for a week or four and then re-evaluate. Is it adding value or clutter? Has it proven to actually improve your life and processes or only distract your attention and consume more of your time?
Most of us tend to collect and accumulate stuff. We purchase new shirts but never get rid of the old ones. We are given new items for the house, but none of the older household goods ever seem to go out the door. It is good to collect memories, friends, and books. Collecting useless, distracting, and expensive technologies is wasteful, foolish, and sometimes may even be harmful.
Why not instead eliminate one technology for every new one that is added? How many Internet browsers are on your smartphone? Most people have at least two, the one that came preloaded and another they prefer and downloaded. How many apps do you have installed that are designed to do the same thing? Applying this question to myself, I might ask, how many Greek New Testament apps does one pastor need? Sure, different apps and sites and services provide different features, even if they may be overlapping. But do you really need subscriptions to Netflix and Hulu and YouTube Premium and cable or satellite TV? Really? How much of your time do you want to spend watching videos? The answer for most people appears to be: a whole lot.
Most of us desire to have more and newer models and better features of whatever we enjoy. Our natural greed and materialism is the fuel which drives many industries and keeps us buying more stuff we don’t really need. But what if we thought carefully about what will best serve our goals and interests? What if we waited before acquiring? What if every addition we made was offset by a corresponding subtraction? There is no doubt that reducing stuff helps also reduce stress. Whether it is clutter in our home, on our calendar, or in our digital life, eliminating and simplifying can greatly enhance one’s peace of mind.
Conclusion
None of the aforementioned suggestions are meant to discourage use of technology. I am profoundly grateful for the comfort and convenience most of us take for granted and all of us enjoy thanks to technological developments in many sectors. Technology is a tool. It is amoral, neither inherently good or bad. The question is how we use it. Like every tool, it can be leveraged for good or evil. A screwdriver is great if you need to turn a screw, and it can serve admirably as an icepick. It’s not as good if used as a chisel, and it is basically useless if the task is painting a house. Technology is a tool, and therefore it requires an intelligent craftsman, someone who knows what it’s for and when, where, and how to use it most effectively. If the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, every problem tends to look like a nail. When the only tool in your pocket is a smartphone, don’t be surprised if you find your face stuck to it for much of the day. Put your phone on silent or consider turning it off, and carry a book with you instead. You may be surprised at how much more you learn and how much more peaceful you feel about your day. --JME
