12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You

by Tony Reinke

our phones make our lives vulnerable to the immediacy of the moment in a way unknown to every earlier generation and culture. Social media and mobile web access on our phones all drive the immediacy of events around the world into our lives. As a result, we suffer from neomania, an addiction to anything new within the last five minutes.

Whether our greatest problem is the glut of information or the hyperpalatability of content, we must not shrug our shoulders (passivism), bend over our own reflections (narcissism), or fall into the pit of existential despair by disregarding our past and future (nihilism).

First, in all the noise, Christians must identify and cherish wisdom. Before warning his son about the endless making of books and the weariness of much study, he wrote: “The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these” (Eccles. 12:11–12a). We must assign a value judgment to all information we take in. We don’t engage with digital content simply to keep up, to be informed, or to connect. Instead, we plug our ears to the noise of novelty so that we can identify meaning and embrace truth, goodness, and beauty. We now live in the golden age of quality and edifying online content, made available free of charge. But do we slow down and absorb these sites with the value they represent, or do we lose the value of these sites in the clamor of immediacy, the rapidity of some invisible expiration date, and the hyperpalatability of all the other digital noise?

Second, in all the noise, Christians must strive for fearful obedience over frivolous information. After his statement about the endlessness of books, Solomon wrote: “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Eccles. 12:13). More important than information access, more valuable than social-media prominence, is Godward obedience.

Third, in all the noise, we must embrace our freedom in Christ, as we step back from the onslaught of online publishing and the proliferation of digital sages. By grace, we are free to close our news sources, close our life-hacking apps, and power down our phones in order to simply feast in the presence of friends and enjoy our spouses and families in the mystery, majesty, and “thickness” of human existence.13

In this digital age of overwhelming content, we must not relinquish ourselves to passivity or to egoism. And we certainly must not drown in a sea of irrelevant news and gossip. Instead, we must learn to treasure what is most valuable in the universe—God.

So our phones and social media serve as a real-time refresh of our comparisons with the lives of others, constantly feeding our “fear of missing out” (FOMO). FOMO and social media go hand in hand.

We can boil down our core online fears to two anxieties, says theologian Kevin Vanhoozer: “status anxiety (what will people think of me?), and disconnection anxiety (‘I connect, therefore I am’).”

“The sobering question for the disciple is whether our attention is being drawn to something worthwhile. Spectacles are ephemeral, which is why those who suffer from FOMO are always on the lookout for The Next Big Thing. Disciples who are awake to reality have their attention fixed on the only breaking news that ultimately matters, namely, the news that the kingdom of God has broken into our world in Jesus Christ. This breaking news demands our sustained attention, and a wide-awake imagination.”

Our hyperconnection is fueled by our FOMO. We hate being left out, so we focus on every Next Big Thing, such as the upcoming blockbuster film. And we forget about big, glorious realities like the inbreaking new creation of God.

Every day, we are faced with the lives that we cannot live, the lives that only others can live, and the lives that God has explicitly forbidden us to live. By insisting that we, God’s creatures, are missing out, the lies of FOMO make us easy targets for advertisers; sharpen the sting of our quarterlife and midlife crises; and sour the elderly years, when the reality of cultural “missing out” becomes most obvious.

The fear of missing out on eternal life is the one FOMO worth losing sleep over—for ourselves, our friends, our family members, and our neighbors.

FOMO-plagued sinners embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he promises us no eternal loss. All that we lose will be found in him. All that we miss will be summed up in him. Eternity will make up for every other pinch and loss that we suffer in this momentary life. The doctrine of heaven proves it. The new creation is the restoration of everything broken by sin in this life; the reparation of everything we lose in this world; the reimbursement of everything we miss out on in our social-media feeds.

We go online to compare one another. We chide one another. We become jealous of one another. And when we get dirt on one another, we fall into perfectly orchestrated judgment against one another.

Sins and failures should be handled face to face between the wrongdoer and the person wronged, along with the witnesses, all under the discretion of a local church.

There’s a very real temptation for those who are not called into a certain situation to attempt to judge cases remotely, make premature conclusions, and then attract an online groundswell of support. But crowdsourcing verdicts and spreading unfounded conclusions online can destroy the reputation of a Christian. This is when the script goes satanically wrong.

James 4 In a chapter loaded with wisdom on how Christians are to handle the dirt they have on one another, we find slander: a sin that “violates the early Christian commandment because of its uncharitableness, rather than its falsity.”8 That’s the key. Tim Keller and David Powlison define slander as “not necessarily a false report, just an ‘against-report.’ The intent is to belittle another. To pour out contempt. To mock. To hurt. To harm. To destroy. To rejoice in purported evil.”

many believers use truth as a license to righteously diminish others’ reputations.”12 What is done in the name of “exposing truth,” with the single goal of undermining someone’s character, is an expression of slander.

As the Westminster Larger Catechism explains it, this is a call for “a charitable esteem of our neighbors; loving, desiring, and rejoicing in their good name; sorrowing for, and covering of their infirmities; freely acknowledging of their gifts and graces, defending of their innocence; a ready receiving of a good report, and unwillingness to admit of an evil report, concerning them; discouraging talebearers, flatterers, and slanderers.”15 Again, it restrains us from spouting guesses about the motives and intentions of others.16 Extreme caution and self-restraint are called for with the dirt of our online neighbors.

God wants us to practice the discipline of covering the sins of others in love17 as we give them space for discipline (when needed) and for personal repentance.18 We acknowledge the often unseen and invisible work of the Holy Spirit in the world to bring conviction of sin. And so we walk by faith, knowing that God is at work in his children.

“The easiest work in the world is to find fault.”

Faultfinding is an ancient hobby, meant to prop up a façade of self-importance, even among Christians. Faultfinding destroys our love for others. Faultfinding runs contrary to Calvary. In Christ, our pardoned sins are plunged into a grave—but the slanderer keeps going at night to exhume his neighbor’s sins in order to drag those decomposing offenses back into the light of the city square.

When handling serious personal sin and false teaching, we see two distinct scenarios in Scripture: sins inside a local church and heresies outside a local church.

The convenience of social media means I must be diligent to avoid overprioritizing the world’s power structures,27 careful not to ignore the supernatural power of two or three “called” Christians in a situation, and zealous to operate from pure motives. I must pray for God’s help to be peaceable, gentle, open to reason, eager to offer mercy, and impartial in every complex situation.

Churches and church leaders will sin seriously at times, and when they do, the important work of gathering facts, dispelling myths, adjudicating accusations, confronting sinners, and caring for victims is too important, too complex, and too sensitive to be rendered “convenient” by the techniques of social media.

In situations where we are not called to intervene, we are silent. In situations where we are called, we speak and confront in order to foster repentance in private. In all situations, at all times, as representatives of Christ, we are eager to resolve conflicts and be peacemakers. We aim to “outdo one another in showing honor” (Rom. 12:10). When we find ourselves insulted, we bless; when slandered, we entreat; when verbally persecuted, we endure.34 At all costs, we do not become irreconcilable. We do not become men or women who ignite controversies in the church with no intention of pursuing healing and timely reconciliation.

No generation in the history of the world has been more capable of welcoming distractions into daily life, more likely to be pulled in various directions, and more prone to communicating in multiple simultaneous conversations.

But in the digital age, those seasons come at us too quickly, and because they hit and leave so soon, we seldom feel the weight of our emotions. Behind the safety of our phone screens, we can more easily shield ourselves “from direct contact with the pain, the fears and the joys of others, and the complexity of their personal experiences.”

We grow emotionally distant with our expressions. We become content to “LOL” with our thumbs or to cry emoticon tears to express our sorrow because we cannot (and will not) take the time to genuinely invest ourselves in real tears of sorrow. We use our phones to multitask our emotions. In the age of the smartphone, we are both trying to escape emotion and trying to “plug the need for contact with the drug of perpetual attention.”3 This juxtaposition, by necessity, makes us broadly connected but emotionally shallow.

Am I entitled to feed on the fragmented trivialities online? In other words, am I entitled to spend hours every month simply browsing odd curiosities? I get the distinct sense in Scripture that the answer is no. I am not my own. I am owned by my Lord. I have been bought with a price, which means I must glorify Christ with my thumbs, my ears, my eyes, and my time.4 And that leads me to my point: I do not have “time to kill”—I have time to redeem.

All of this forgetting and fragmenting is why we must never stop returning to our identity in Christ. In him, the powers of sin have been broken. We are no longer bound to obey our eye lust, bound to seek the approval of man, bound to find our relevance in viral memes, or addicted to what’s trending on Reddit. My appetite for diversions and new daily curiosities has been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer the old me that lives online, but Christ living in me, and the life I now live online I live by faith in Christ, who loved me so much that he shed his blood for me.9 All of this has a historical point, because in Christ I have a past, a present, and a future, and I now find my identity as one “on whom the end of the ages has come”

Run with diligence. Cast off everything that distracts, unfetter your life from the chains that trip your ankles, and bolt with freedom and joy as you follow Christ. It is here, now, that the Spirit works tirelessly. It is here, now, that the work of Christ proves triumphant in the world. It is here, now, that the powers and principalities, defeated at Calvary, are being flaunted in defeat by the unity of the church.11 The race is on—our race! We have one shot, one event—one life. We must shake off every sinful habit and every ounce of unnecessary distraction. We must run.

Remembering is a key verb of the Christian life. We recall our past, we correct our nearsightedness, we take heart, we regain mental strength, we find peace in the eternal Word. Remembering is one of the key spiritual disciplines we must guard with vigilance amid the mind-fragmenting and past-forgetting temptations of the digital age.

In the last twelve chapters, I have warned against twelve corresponding ways in which our smartphones are changing us and undermining our spiritual health: Our phones amplify our addiction to distractions (chapter 1) and thereby splinter our perception of our place in time (12). Our phones push us to evade the limits of embodiment (2) and thereby cause us to treat one another harshly (11). Our phones feed our craving for immediate approval (3) and promise to hedge against our fear of missing out (10). Our phones undermine key literary skills (4) and, because of our lack of discipline, make it increasingly difficult for us to identify ultimate meaning (9). Our phones offer us a buffet of produced media (5) and tempt us to indulge in visual vices (8). Our phones overtake and distort our identity (6) and tempt us toward unhealthy isolation and loneliness (7).

We minimize unnecessary distractions in life to hear from God (chapter 1) and to find our place in God’s unfolding history (12). We embrace our flesh-and-blood embodiment (2) and handle one another with grace and gentleness (11). We aim at God’s ultimate approval (3) and find that, in Christ, we have no ultimate regrets to fear (10). We treasure the gift of literacy (4) and prioritize God’s Word (9). We listen to God’s voice in creation (5) and find a fountain of delight in the unseen Christ (8). We treasure Christ to be molded into his image (6) and seek to serve the legitimate needs of our neighbors (7).

What I am coming to understand is that this impulse to pull the lever of a random slot machine of viral content is the age-old tactic of Satan. C. S. Lewis called it the “Nothing” strategy in his Screwtape Letters. It is the strategy that eventually leaves a man at the end of his life looking back in lament: “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.”

Routines of nothingness. Habits unnecessary to our calling. A hamster wheel of what will never satisfy our souls. Lewis’s warning about the “dreary flickering” in front of our eyes is a loud prophetic alarm to the digital age. We are always busy, but always distracted—diabolically lured away from what is truly essential and truly gratifying. Led by our unchecked digital appetites, we manage to transgress both commands that promise to bring focus to our lives. We fail to enjoy God. We fail to love our neighbor.

In our love of mechanisms, techniques, and power, we lose our way—and we lose our worship and our prayer, because God has grown secondary to our technology. But God is the sovereign King who will not bow to our gadget mastery. Apps can help me stay focused on my Bible reading plans and help me organize my prayer life, but no app can breathe life into my communion with God.

In an act of courageous self-criticism, I must ask three questions: Ends: Do my smartphone behaviors move me toward God or away from him? Influence: Do my smartphone behaviors edify me and others, or do they build nothing of lasting value? Servitude: Do my smartphone behaviors expose my freedom in Christ or my bondage to technique?

Simply calling all Christians to ditch their smartphones is no magical solution, because without genuine humility, true confession of sin, and supernatural heart change, we will not be free from the banal distractions and endless cotton candy allurements offline

The key to balancing ourselves in the smartphone age is awareness. Digital technology is most useful to us when we limit its reach into our lives. The world will always expect technology to save humanity from its darkest fears, and to that end, it will submit more and more of itself to breaking innovations. But by avoiding the overreach of these misdirected longings for techno-redemption, we can simply embrace technology for what it is—an often helpful and functional tool to serve a legitimate need in our lives. Every technology requires limits, and the smartphone is no exception.

Study after study has shown that too much time on our phones has profound effects on our physical health, including (but not limited to) inactivity and obesity, stress and anxiety, sleeplessness and restlessness, bad posture and sore necks, eye strain and headaches, and hypertension and stress-induced shallow breathing patterns. The physical consequences of our unwise smartphone habits often go unnoticed, because in the matrix of the digital world, we simply lose a sense of our bodies, our posture, our breathing, and our heart rates.

My life will be governed by one of two perspectives: God-centered awe, in a world soaked with his glory and governed by his sovereign presence, or technological atheism, buffered from God, with faith in the right techniques and controls to govern the reality of a disenchanted and mechanistically driven world.10 This is the decision we face each time we pick up our phones.

When we use our smartphones rightly, their shining screens radiate with the treasure of God’s glory in Christ, and in that glory-glow, we get a sneak peek into a greater age to come.