Is My Phone Changing Me? Digital Discipleship in a Secular Age
Back in 2016, popular journalist and writer Andrew Sullivan wrote a haunting article in the New York Magazine titled, “I Used to Be a Human Being.” In the article, Sullivan described his own damaging experience of living un-critically inside a digital world. At one point, tech use got so bad for Sullivan that he had to withdraw completely from the digital world he found himself in and spend some time at a unique retreat centre where he was able to recover and get away from the feeling of being “on a treadmill till death.” A fascinating read both for its style and societal critique, Sullivan’s solution may be surprising. For Sullivan, the antidote to this online chaos lay not in greater technology but in a kind of withdrawal from this world into a spiritual reality marked by silence, unhurried rhythms of life and unassuming sacred spaces. For Sullivan, the problem of society lies here, in this distracting online world. He writes towards the end of his piece, “this new epidemic of distraction is our civilization’s specific weakness…The threat is to our souls. At this rate, if the noise does not relent, we might even forget we have any.” Could he be right?
Since the publishing of this article many people have resonated with Sullivan’s experience. We feel distracted. We feel anxious. We feel hurried, nervous and plagued by feelings of loneliness and uncertainty. If un-critical digital consumption is the problem, what then is the solution?
A Lonely Digital Age?
We live in a digital age. Period. Most young adults use their phones for roughly five and a half hours each day. That’s nearly a third of our waking hours! Nearly half of smart phone users say that this technology is something they could not live without. In the Western world the average smart phone user checks their phone “once every six and a half minutes,” with 42 percent never turning their devices off. Ever.
According to the growing amount of research on the subject, we are a society that is deeply plagued by loneliness, despite our intense digital interconnectedness. In an article published in The Atlantic, titled “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?,” writer Stephen Marche writes that societal levels of loneliness have risen to such a proportionate level that one can now openly speak of this phenomena as a kind of societal “epidemic.” (And this was in 2012).
With the growing use of social media, and the multiplying of what are often merely surface level relationships, we have come to a point in history where we can be in the same room as other family members and yet still feel deeply alone. To use MIT professor Sherry Turkle’s phrase, we are uncomfortably “alone together.”
Surprising? Or just describing what, deep down, you already knew?
The Problem
There are many concerns about the flood of technology into the daily routines and habits of our lives. Whether it be the negative effects on our attention span, our ability to relate and empathise with others, or the wider societal problems caused by raising a generation on services that are fuelled by “individualized, continuously adjusted…behaviour modification,” there are deep concerns inherently related to our current relationship to our phones.
Furthermore, from a Christian point of view, there is another deeper concern that also arises from this. How might this technology be affecting our spiritual lives?
Christians are deeply interested in formation. Discipleship, the Christian journey of seeking to become more and more like Jesus, is arguably the very central teaching of Christianity. It is well documented how habits, regular daily routines, shape our choices and ultimately our lives. In terms of Christian discipleship, the significance of habits is further emphasised by recent work done by authors such as James K. A. Smith who has argued that these habits do more than just shape our monotonous routines: they actually have the ability to transform and shape our hearts.
Spiritual formation is all about habits. So, we need to think about the way that we use our phones and how this usage has the ability to shape and change us.
The Solution
I have heard some people suggest that the solution to re-capturing the attention and hearts of those who live inside a digital world, is to go and meet these people where they are: online. As a result of this intuition, a typical solution is often grouped under the idea of what is sometimes termed as a ‘digital ministry.’ Though I resonate with the concerns that lead to this position, I can’t help but think that the push to digital ministry is fundamentally misunderstanding the issue and missing the point.
Living in a world of distraction, Sullivan’s plea is for churches to recapture some of their history and mysticism in order to, in “darkness and silence…draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary” into peace and a greater appreciation of the sacred. The Christian writer Alan Jacobs seems to agree, urging churches to prioritise training their congregation giving them space to be silent and expectant before a Holy God.
So, rather than offering a digital ministry, which appears to only fight distraction with distraction, perhaps offering more “ancient” ways of being church, of being human, and of living in communion with a very present God is a better solution.
But what does this look like practically? How do I practically give my attention to God and live a spiritually healthy life inside an anxious digital world? Here are some of my suggestions.
1. Radically rethink the way you use your phone.
Most people that I talk to about this have little or no limit on the way they use their phones. Your phone, whether you realise it or not, is built on a business model. It’s designed to capture your attention and keep you using its services for as long as possible. However, there are some really easy things you can do to begin the journey of being more conscious about the relationship between the digital life and the spiritual. For example you could:
take certain apps off your phone;
turn off notifications;
go for walks without your phone;
prioritise face-to face conversation as much as possible;
buy an alarm clock so you don’t have to have your phone by your bedside at night;
even go full hipster and buy a brick phone (all things are possible for those who believe).
Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism is super practical and a great place to start a digital detox journey. John Mark Comer’s book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry also has some great ideas, specifically from a Christian perspective. The main thing is to be thoughtful and constantly be asking yourself, is my spiritual health really better off with this or that particular technology? Is this habit, of endlessly scrolling through TikTok or disappearing into the rabbit hole of YouTube before going to bed, really forming me into a more Christlike person?
2. Re-connect with the ancient Christian practices of spiritual formation and the well-worn paths of church tradition.
The Spiritual Disciplines are ancient practices of the church that help us to become more like Jesus. They are simply ways of co-operating with the Spirit’s work inside us to sanctify and transform our characters. Some of the most valuable ones I think for those of us living in today’s world are the practices of silence, solitude, and sabbath keeping. There’s loads of literature about these out there, but Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines is one of the best books on the subject if you’re wanting to really dive in deeper. Brother Lawrence’s little collection of writings in Practicing the Presence of God is also a masterful, very short, great book to read that speaks powerfully to our cultural inattentiveness. There’s also a podcast that discusses some of these things called ‘Device and Virtue’ if you want some more casual conversational material about this subject.
Prayer, discipline, and the spiritual life are things that require attention. They require intentional patience and slowness. And to do that faithfully might well mean changing the way you use your phone.
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Marcus Brooking is a pastoral leadership student at Carey Baptist College | Te Kareti Iriiri o Carey.