It is not all that uncommon for some blogger, podcaster or other user of social media to go through some kind of media fast, only to come back and report to us his experience. Here’s another. My “fast” was not, on its face, all that challenging. I simply made the decision that for Sunday my phone would be only that, a phone. I kept it within earshot should anyone call, but did not carry it about with me. What, I wondered, would happen to my state of mind, if I didn’t have my phone by my side, if I couldn’t check social media or even the news?
My state of mind was at one and the same time at peace and agitated. It was at peace because of what I wasn’t reading. It was agitated as I was going through withdrawal. Which made me think my brief fast was a good thing. The day after I used my phone to navigate me to a meeting. I used it to do a Sudoku or two. I used it to read up on the Steeler’s draft picks. In other words, I went back to my normal habits. I haven’t reached any grand conclusions. I’m not advocating that anyone follow my lead. I’m not hanging up my blog or my podcast.
I will, however, likely do Dumb Phone Sunday next Sunday. I will likely take up and re-read, as I did last Sunday, more of CS Lewis wonderful collection of essays, God in the Dock. I will likely reach the same level of peace and a lower level of agitation. Perhaps in a few weeks I may move to Dumb Phone Weekends. And who knows what from there?
When I was a younger man I saw any questioning of the goodness of any technology as inherently leftist, an assault on the blessings of liberty. As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to understand that sometimes in our liberty we allow technology to diminish our liberty. It’s true enough that as a technology the smart phone is morally neutral. How it is used is what matters. One of the ways it is often used, however, is as a ball and chain we put on ourselves. One way to test if we’ve fallen into that trap is to disconnect for a time. Paul reminds us both of the moral neutrality of many things, and the danger of being ensnared, “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any” (I Cor. 6:12).
The Lord came to set us free. Those He frees are free indeed.
I may be one of the last remaining people in the western world, that does not have a cell phone (I use my wife’s cell, who passed away, but only to call my children who live in the USA, and only when I am sitting at my desk). I never carry it around. There has been one time during my 70 years, that a cell phone would have come in handy.
Thus, I will never walk into traffic, be distracted while driving, walk over a cliff, bump into other people while walking, be rude by answering my phone when I am having a conversation. Never be a part of a gathering of people that, instead of talking to each other, are on their phone talking to someone else, as I have witnessed teens in my home, not speaking to each other, but were on their phones.
No, I will never be a part of that, for I am free, and never have been addicted!
Good for you brother! The best way to be free is to never be enslaved.