One of the marks of Christian maturity is an awareness of one’s destructive habits and the commitment to overcoming them. In this age we have many opportunities to develop bad habits, some of which don’t seem so bad because they just consume time. But in everything we do it is important to ask ourselves if we are abiding in Christ and walking in the Spirit. In other words, is this habit compatible with following Jesus? Is it healthy for our souls? Smartphone overuse has become a very common habit that harms our spiritual growth and interferes with our participation in the goodness of God.
Addiction is a word that is probably overused so I do not know if constantly using one’s smartphone is always an addiction or just a harmful habit. But the general idea of an addiction is that it interferes with a normal healthy life. It is certainly true that many people are so attached to their smartphones that it interferes with a healthy life and with a healthy spiritual life.
Cell phones and apps are designed to be habit-forming and smartphone overuse is rampant in our society (and in many societies). According to a Pew Research study from August 2018 four in ten teens say they feel anxious when they do not have their cell phone with them. (https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/08/22/how-teens-and-parents-navigate-screen-time-and-device-distractions/ .) Also, “56% of teens associate the absence of their cellphone with at least one of these three emotions: loneliness, being upset or feeling anxious.” Thirty-nine percent of the parents of teens say they lose focus at work because of cell phones sometimes or often. Seventy-two percent of parents say their teen is sometimes or often distracted by their phones during conversations with them. Sadly, fifty-one percent of teens say the same thing about their parents. I suspect that things have become worse since 2018.
Digital addictions are affection all of society. In Maya MacGuineau’s Atlantic article titled “Capitalism’s Addiction Problem” she asserts: “The new powers in the digital age have built their business models on strategies—enabled and turbocharged by self-improving algorithms—that actively undermine the principles that make capitalism a good deal for most people. Their aim is not merely to gain and retain customers, but to create a dependency on their products.”(https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/capitalisms-addiction-problem/606769/) Among other statistics she reports that “Seventy-five percent use [cell phone] in the bathroom.” She supports market-based capitalism as the freest and fairest way to allocate goods, but she concludes: “The capitalism that is taking shape in this century—predatory, manipulative, extremely effective at short-circuiting our rationality—is a different beast from the classical version taught in university classrooms. It cannot be regarded as beneficent and should not be given the benefit of the doubt. Profit motive and the means to create dependency is too dangerous a combination.” She quotes Nir Eyal a Silicon Valley figure who wrote Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and promotes the use of variable rewards because that “suppresses the areas of the brain associated with judgment and reason while activating the parts associated with wanting and desire.” I agree with her general idea that underregulated digital technology gives companies too much power to manipulate consumers and that it needs to be better regulated, perhaps with warnings and age restrictions (though this would not help adults.” We need to be aware that companies can make billions of dollars if they can find ways to addict us to their products.
But whether we see more regulation or not, as children of God being restored with the image of Christ, it is far below our dignity to find ourselves emotionally tethered to the pleasures of our smartphones. If we are constantly filling up quiet time with social media, online shopping or other browsing then we are damaging our lives. And I am not even taking into account porn addiction which is possibly the most destructive habit in American society and the world (porn use is rampant in China and India.)
Disturb Me Not reports that people “tap, swipe, and click an average of 2,617 times per day“ (https://disturbmenot.co/cell-phone-addiction-statistics/.) DIY Genius reports that the average user logs two hours and fifteen minutes on social media alone (https://www.diygenius.com/smartphone-addiction-factsheet/.) It also reports: “Human average attention spans have declined significantly in the 11 years since smartphones existed and are now lower than that of a goldfish.” Also, “6 out of 10 Americans wish their family members would unplug from technology more often.” Children are dramatically affected: “The amount of screen time young children have daily is correlated with increased body-mass index (BMI), fewer minutes of sleep per night, and delays in cognition, language, and social-emotional development.”
How is your smartphone use affecting your spiritual life?
Next week we will list some symptoms of smartphone addiction and at doing some self-examination for digital use.
