12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You

by Tony Reinke

The philosophical maxim, “I think, therefore I am,”15 has been replaced with a digital motto, “I connect, therefore I am,”16 leading to a status desire: “I am ‘liked,’ therefore I am.”17 But our digital connections and ticks of approval are flickering pixels that cannot ground the meaning of our lives. And yet, I seek to satisfy this desire every time I cozy up to the Facebook barstool, to be where every friend knows my name, where my presence can be affirmed and reaffirmed at virtual points throughout the day. I want anything to break the silence that makes me feel the weight of my mortality.

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

This “Nothing” strategy is “very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years, not in sweet sins, but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them . . . or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.”3

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?

Consider these twelve boundaries: 1. Turn off all nonessential push notifications. 2. Delete expired, nonessential, and time-wasting apps.17 3. At night, keep your phone out of the bedroom.

4. Use a real alarm clock, not your phone alarm, to keep the phone out of your hands in the morning. 5. Guard your morning disciplines and evening sleep patterns by using phone settings to mute notifications between one hour before bedtime to a time when you can reasonably expect to be finished with personal disciplines in the morning (9 p.m. to 7 a.m. for me). 6. Use self-restricting apps to help limit your smartphone functions and the amount of time you invest in various platforms. 7. Recognize that much of what you respond to quickly can wait. Respond at a later, more convenient time. 8. Even if you need to read emails on your smartphone, use strategic points during the day to respond to emails at a computer (thirty minutes each at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. for me). 9. Invite your spouse, your friends,

and your family members to offer feedback on your phone habits (more than 70 percent of Christians in my survey said nobody else knew how much time they spent online). 10. When eating with your family members or friends, leave your phone out of sight. 11. When spending time with family members or friends, or when you are at church, leave your phone in a drawer or in your car, or simply power it off. 12. At strategic moments in life, digitally detox your life and recalibrate your ultimate priorities. Step away from social media for frequent st...

Our phones have made us so physically oblivious to other people in public areas that “we have gone from holding the door out of courtesy to standing before it out of obliviousness.”20