I LOVE MY SMARTPHONE. Since you have grown up in a digital generation, it might be hard to appreciate how amazing it is to have one device that is simultaneously a calculator, phone, navigation system, calendar, clock, camera, and so much more. Since I grew up before the invention of smartphones, I marvel every time I pick mine up.
I remember the first time I got an email address. I remember when my brother-in-law showed me how to search on Google. I remember when Steve Jobs first held up an iPhone in 2007. I remember the first time I watched YouTube, searched Facebook for lost friends, and sent a tweet. And I remember a world without any of these.
My guess is that you probably experience the world through a different lens. After all, you were likely swiping a screen before you could even speak! Smartphones and social media have always been part of the world you grew up in.
Neither of our generational experiences is better or worse; they’re just different. My generation may struggle to understand new digital technologies. And your generation, because you have no experience of a world without smartphones and social media, may struggle to see how deeply they affect you. Given that they’ve always been around, you may not have thought about them at all!
Our goal in this chapter is to think Christianly about smartphones and social media.
Your Smartphone Is Not the Problem
Did you know that roughly forty thousand people die each year in car accidents in the United States?[1] This is close to the average attendance at a Division I college football game.[2] Next time you watch a bowl game, look at the number of fans and realize that it’s likely close to the amount who die annually from a car crash. That’s a lot of people. And many of them are teens.
Does that make cars bad? Should we ban cars? Of course not! People make poor decisions behind the wheel, such as driving angry, drunk, or while messaging, and thus endanger other people. We certainly need to be wise about how we use cars, but cars are not the problem. The problem is how people use them. Cars are not morally good or morally bad but morally neutral.
Like cars, smartphones are morally neutral. They become good or bad based upon how we use them. Do we interact with others kindly on social media? Are we wise about what we look at on our phones? Do we steward our time wisely? The key question about our smartphones isn’t if we use them but how do we use them?
Although smartphones are morally neutral, that doesn’t mean they are unimportant or uninfluential. Like other technologies, they shape our worldviews. Consider the invention of the clock. Have you ever considered what life was like before people used clocks? For most people throughout history, the natural cycle of day and night, determined by the sun and stars, was sufficient to measure the progression of time.
But the clock changed the way we see time and the way we see ourselves. After the clock, people began to measure their lives by smaller increments of time—hours, minutes, and seconds. Some thinkers even argue that the clock, because of its focus on exactitude and methodical ticking, helped usher in the scientific revolution!
Smartphones Shape You
Like clocks, smartphones are amazing technology. They help us, and they also shape us. Consider five ways smartphones likely influence us:
Screens Affect How We Assess Truth
Not long ago, I had a public conversation with Matthew Vines, an influential author and speaker who believes the Bible supports same-sex unions.[3] In assessing our conversation, one young man commented that he thought Matthew Vines had more authority to speak on the issue than I did because Matthew had a YouTube video on the topic go viral. At that time, Matthew had more views and subscribers on YouTube than I did. Does that make him right?
This young man didn’t consider our educational credentials. He didn’t even consider the arguments themselves. Rather, he sided with the presenter because he had more views on YouTube. Hopefully you can see how crazy this is. The number of times something has been viewed has nothing to do with whether it is true or false. In fact, since provocative videos tend to draw viewers, false videos might even have an edge over true ones. Be careful not to confuse viewership with truth.
This is how screens can shape the way we think. They encourage us to focus on appearances rather than ideas. They encourage us to focus on popularity (views, subscribers) or entertainment rather than truth.
Screens Affect Us Emotionally
A number of years ago, I had my ninth-grade students journal at the beginning of each class period. Since most of them told me they rarely had tech-free space in their lives and watched videos on social media nearly every free moment, I asked them to reflect on why they kept themselves so busy and distracted.
I will never forget the response of one fourteen-year-old girl. She wrote, “I keep myself busy, so I don’t have to slow down and feel the loneliness in my heart.” Wow. Her honesty took me off guard. Have you ever felt that way? She was able to tap into something deep, namely, that technology allowed her to remain busy so she didn’t have to deal with her emotional hurt. Her smartphone was not the cause of her emotional pain, but it was her escape from emotional pain. Technology can be a Band-Aid that helps us cover our pain rather than deal with it.
Screens Affect Us Spiritually
In chapter 4, we talked about the power of worldview, which is a “mental map” of reality. One of the worldviews we discussed is individualism, the view that life is about you, that the purpose of life is to be authentic to yourself and to live according to your feelings without obligation to anyone else. Being inauthentic to yourself is the equivalent of “sin,” and “salvation” is found through discovering your inner self.
Can you see how this worldview is encouraged through social media? Social media is all about you. Do whatever it takes to get followers and “likes” so you can be popular. Be funny. Be outrageous. Be crass. Getting followers and views is all that matters. Promote yourself. Quite obviously, this is the opposite of the gospel, which is about glorifying God (not self) and loving others (not seeking love from others), and from those two pursuits we find the joy we’re actually longing for. Again, the point is not that all social media is bad—it’s not!—but that it subtly fosters ideas that conflict with what Jesus teaches.
Screens Affect Our Identities
Have you felt the temptation on social media to compromise your values for likes? Of course. We all have. Sexy pics. Workout pics. Crass pics. Celebrity pics. You know the drill. If a certain post gets likes, we do it more to increase our popularity. Can you see how this encourages us to find our value in what other people say about us rather than in what God says in Scripture?
The Bible says that we have value because we are made in the image of God. Regardless of our race, biological sex, athletic ability, looks, or popularity, we have value because God made us in his image. Our value comes not from what we do, what we say, or what others think about us but from what God says.
Screens Affect Our Relationships
In a blog on friendship, Scott Slayton said it best:
In our social-media dominated age, we are so image conscious that we think more about the impression that we make than we do about making genuine friends. If you are not careful, you will carefully craft an image using social media and not allow people to get too close because it would ruin the image. Then, you build your identity on the number of people who are impressed by you and who respond to the image you have created. You have an important choice to make—you can impress people or you can have genuine friends. When we develop real friendships, our friends will know we are not that impressive. They will see the rough edges and the ugliest things about us, but we will be known and we will be loved. That is the beauty of true friendship—it sees the ugly and it stays.[4]
Quick Tips for Using Technology Wisely
As I have said a few times, technology is not bad. I love my smartphone, and I love using social media. The key is to be reflective about how these things affect us and wise about how we use them. If you are not careful, you can become a slave to your smartphone.
Here are a few tips I have learned that can help us honor God and love other people with our smartphones:
Smartphones and social media are amazing technologies. They do affect the way we see the world. But if we are wise, we can use them to encourage other people and to build God’s Kingdom. That is my prayer for you.
[1] “Motor Vehicle Deaths Estimated to Have Dropped 2% in 2019,” National Safety Council, February 20, 2020, https://www.nsc.org/newsroom/motor-vehicle-deaths-estimated-to-have-dropped-2-i.
[2] Christina Gough, “Average Attendance at Division I FBS College Football Games from 2003 to 2019,” Statista, September 20, 2021. https://bit.ly/3ab70nx.
[3] Dr. Sean McDowell, “What Does the Bible say about Homosexuality? Sean McDowell and Matthew Vines in Conversation,” YouTube video, February 3, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFY4VtCWgyI.
[4] Scott Slayton, “What Are the Marks of Genuine Friendship?,” One Degree to Another (blog), Patheos, October 9, 2018, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/onedegreetoanother/2018/10/friendship/.