I live just east of Nashville in the town of Mount Juliet, but my house is technically in the county, not the city. Thus, we live five minutes from a bustling mall, but that five minutes reveals a vastly different landscape than the taller buildings, shopping centers, and parking lots just down the road. It’s like driving into the country without having to leave the city.
Our neighborhood is surrounded by land protected for wildlife, so deer abound in herds all around us. They are beautiful to behold out in the fields, but not so much when they decide to run into the street—and doing so seems to be their favorite pastime. We’ve all heard the expression “a deer in the headlights,” but I live this reality every day of my life. Instead of running from oncoming traffic, the deer seem to want to frolic with it. Deer are pretty skittish animals, leaping away at a break-antler speed at the slightest hint of danger. Yet somehow, my truck doesn't make their list of dangerous things. Why is this? Because some deer have been conditioned by their environment in a way that makes them oblivious to their most ominous threats.
Deer don’t know they’re conditioned. Sometimes, neither do we.
Sophocles once said, "Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse." Technology is a vast force that has entered the life of mortals—and it brings many blessings. Our phones and computers connect us, inform us, and provide opportunities previous generations could only imagine. This is not an anti-tech or anti-phone conversation. Like my truck, our devices are inanimate objects, not inherently good or bad. They don’t possess a sense of morality or purpose in this world. Rather, they are tools that will mirror back our sense of morality and purpose.
So when we don’t understand and create boundaries for ourselves as technology passes straight through the middle of our everyday lives at such fast speeds, we can become conditioned into unhealthy patterns without us even realizing it. We become the deer in the headlights—or, in this case, the phone lights. Is it possible that the digital age is shaping us in ways we are unaware of?
Here are three key truths that can help us become more aware and more digitally healthy.
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For many of us, digital health isn’t something we think about regularly because our phones and screens have become simply part of life. But we must remember that our phones work for us—we don’t work for them. This means that we have to lead our phones not only to give us what we may want at the moment but also to leave us alone in other moments because we acknowledge that is what we need. We must pay attention to the warning signs of digital dependence.
-The average American checks their phone 205 times a day, or almost once every five minutes while we’re awake.
-80.6% check their phones within the first 10 minutes of waking up.
-78.2% feel uneasy leaving their phone at home.
-65.7% use their phone on the toilet.
-53.7% have texted someone in the same room.
-51.3% sleep with their phone at night.
-43.2% consider themselves “addicted” to their phones.
-48.3% have never gone longer than 24 hours without their cell phone.
-39.6% feel panic or anxiety when their phone battery goes below 20%.
-38.1% use or look at their phone while on a date.
-27% use or look at their phone while driving.
-Americans spend an average screen time of 5.4 hours on mobile phones daily.
-13% of Millennials spend over 12 hours on their phones daily.
-Baby Boomers spend 5 hours using their phones.
-More than half of people never turn off their phones.
-One in five people would rather go without shoes than their phones for a week.
-66% of all adults suffer from nomophobia—the fear of being without a mobile device.
-How often do you hide in the bathroom to check your phone (extending your stay)?
-Are you ever too tired for deep talk or intimacy, but you have no trouble lying in the bed for hours on Instagram or TikTok?
-Do you get honked at every time the light turns green?
-How often in a day do you put your phone down? Or do you start the day with it, take it to work, look at it during lunch, lay it beside your fork at dinner, and reach for it as the last thing you see before falling asleep?
-Do you have neck pain, a feeling of burning in your eyes, or constant headaches?
-Do you wish you had more time to work out or pursue your hobbies, but you somehow have more than five hours for your phone, much of it in a non-work capacity?
If you’re like me, my bet is the answer to at least some of these questions reveals many opportunities to become healthier, even though, like digital deer, staring at the phone lights feels oh so right in the moment. Again, the problem is not our access to technology; it’s our lack of boundaries with it.
Photo Credit:©Unsplash/Penghao Xiong
This dependence on technology, which usually comes through our phones, affects our brains and attention spans, but there’s even more to it than that. The constant influx of information and the kind of information we choose deeply affect our attitudes, moods, dispositions, and accepted ways of being in the world. We crave connection and information, but there is such a thing as TMI—too much information.
Trust me, I’m not advocating for ignorance or remaining blissfully uninformed about what is going on in the world. However, as a pastor, my path crosses people every day who are carrying incredibly heavy loads placed upon them by all they see going on in the world around them. Most of us wrestle with how much we should engage and how much we should try to be at peace with things we cannot directly change today. The line between a life of biblical contemplation and biblical activism can be tricky to find. When we don’t find it, we become weighed down by the information we are either engaging or choosing to do nothing about. We become confused. Worried. Guilty. Apathetic. Anxious. Desensitized.
The nuance here is important. As Christ-followers, we are indeed called to be informed so we can engage in the relief of the suffering of the people around us and around the world. God leads us to "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy (Proverbs 31:8-9 NIV). Isaiah implores us to "Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause" (1:17 ESV). And Paul instructs us to “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Ephesians 6:2 ESV).
I could include dozens more scriptures that clearly demonstrate both God’s empowerment and his expectation for us to be informed and engaged in caring for and directly supporting the causes of the poor, the refugee, the orphan, the immigrant, and the widow—and these topics in particular merit another article in the near future. But for the context of digital health, how can we bear these kinds of heavy burdens (Ephesians 6:2) without being pulled down into the quicksand of worry, despair, anxiety, and depression?
To remain in the correct level of concern and engagement without losing oneself in the sheer darkness and seeming futility of so many problems in the world, we must keep finding the courage to engage and the humility to follow Christ into rest. God created rest to be cyclical. It cannot just be attained and kept. It must be re-engaged daily. Sleep comes for us every night. The Sabbath comes every week. God designed us to carry burdens at certain times but to regularly lay them down, remembering our limitations so we can rest in the One who has no limitations. “When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, Your comfort delights my soul” (Psalm 94:19 NASB).
I am a perennial worrier (and Enneagram Type Six if you’re into that kind of thing). Going through a twelve-step recovery, I learned that worry is not responsibility; it is misplaced meditation. Meditation means different things to different people, but its simplest definition is dwelling on something so long that its truths (or its lies) begin to dwell in you.
When I spend hours on my phone, dwelling on all that is wrong in the world, I am meditating—and eventually, the weight of all that information will dwell in me. I need to be informed. I need to be engaged. But I also need to be reminded that I’m not in control of all that I see. And I need to be willing to put down all that I can see to focus my heart and mind on the only One who can restore my soul. After all,
“You alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.” - Psalm 4:8 NIV
I won’t be safe anywhere else, so when I venture out into a world of endless danger and information, I must create patterns and boundaries to come back to safety every single day, finding moments with God that restore and feed my weary, overburdened soul. Then, when I go back out to engage in helping the plight of the poor and the marginalized, I will humbly remember my limitations as a human and my right-now-eternal connection to the One who has no limitations.
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Thankfully, change is possible. Just as smoking was once normalized before people recognized the dangers, we can reshape how we engage with our handheld technology. Here are some practical steps to start reclaiming digital health.
1. We set screen limits for our kids. Set them for ourselves as well.
2. No devices at the dinner table.
3. Take a one-hour digital fast daily.
4. End your digital day an hour before bed.
5. Make eye contact when speaking to others as you avoid looking at your phone.
6. Remove social and news apps from your home screen.
7. Don’t check news or social apps before 10 AM or after 9 PM.
8. Try going to the bathroom without taking your phone—embrace the boredom!
9. Start carrying a book with you, just as you would a phone. When you have a moment where you would normally mindlessly scroll, mindfully read a few paragraphs instead.
10. Use your phone for contemplative practices. The Lectio 365 app (https://www.24-7prayer.com/resource/lectio-365/) is a great place to start.
We can be engaged with our world without being crushed by the weight of it. Why? Because “He upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3 ESV) and “In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind” (Job 12:10 NIV).
If God holds life and the very universe in his hands, we need not carry the weight of the world in ours… even if it has 5G and the best camera available. Let’s become more intentional about laying down our devices and taking up rest.
“God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.”
–The Serenity Prayer (attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr)
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