12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You
12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You
By: Tony Reinke
[Fulfilled ‘A nonfiction book about technology’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]
“My phone is a window into the worthless and the worthy, the artificial and the authentic.”
“With my phone, I find myself always teetering between useful efficiency and meaningless habit.”
This book is not an anti-technology book. Or even an anti-smartphone book. Reinke is fascinated by technology and its advancements.
“my aim is to avoid both extremes: the utopian optimism of the technophiliac and the dystopian pessimism of the technophobe.”
He has written this book to help us use our phone in better ways. To think about how our phones are influencing us and changing us and to help us take captive our habits and thoughts and order them properly.
“The question of this book is simple: What is the best use of my smartphone in the flourishing of my life?”
There are numerous studies on the psychological and physical affects smartphones, social media, and internet usage has on people as individuals and on the society in general. We would be naive to think our phones aren’t changing us.
Reinke doesn’t dive into the psychological and physical, but instead veers to the spiritual. He spends time talking about nine biblical realities surrounding technology and how it pertains to creation, human power, our creativity, our health, our relationships and more.
It was convicting to read this book and realize the deeper influence my phone has on my ability to listen and hear God, distracting me from meeting physical needs around me (tangibly and spiritually), keeping me from silence, enabling me to speak harshly with little immediate kickback, inflating my fear of missing something, weakening my ability to process information, and luring me to become “like what I like.”
I think all would benefit from reading this book and changing our mindsets and boundaries with our phones.
I thought it was interesting when he compared our phones to the carved images and statues (idols) of Bible times. They weren’t used as tools, but they were worshiped for something else:
“These idols were more like our technologies, divine oracles of knowledge and prosperity, used by worshipers in an attempt to control and manipulate the events of life for personal benefit. The figurine and the iPhone appeal to the same fetish.”
There are definitely ways we use our phone as a tool, but if we aren’t careful, it becomes the means by which we seek to control and manipulate our lives for our own gain.
Similarly, in the foreword John Piper likens our phones to mules. If we live in fear, our phones become an escape from life or from fear of death, but as Christians we have hope in the resurrection of Christ and should not live in fear. Then our phones are more like mules— there to just get the job done and help us on our way to something better.
“Don’t waste your life grooming your mule. Make him bear the weight of a thousand works of love. Make him tread the heights with you in the mountains of worship.”
One interesting thing about this book is that it was written in 2017 and even in these 7 years between its publishing and my reading it, technology has changed. AI is on the rise. Facebook isn’t as popular. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, the Metaverse, and Fortnite are the time-wasters. And there’s probably a whole host of other apps that I’ve not even aware of taking over the interwebs and people’s time.
This book is more phone/internet-specific, but if you are interested in how we as Christians should view technology more generally, I would recommend Reinke’s book God, Technology, and the Christian Life which has some really good insights from the Tower of Babel and beyond and how God has used technology for his glory.
Though our world has advanced since its writing, the principles Reinke shares in this book are no less relevant.
I liked how he summarized the twelve points at the end of the book:
[I’ve removed chapter parentheticals for easier reading]
“Our phones amplify our addiction to distractions, and thereby splinter our perception of our place in time.
Our phones push us to evade the limits of embodiment and thereby cause us to treat one another harshly.
Our phones feed our craving for immediate approval and promise to hedge against our fears of missing out.
Our phones undermine key literary skills and, because of our lack of discipline, make it increasingly difficult for us to identify ultimate meaning.
Our phones offer us a buffet of produced media and tempt us to indulge in visual vices.
Our phones overtake and distort our identity and tempt us toward unhealthy isolation and loneliness.”
I think we can read these and all recognize areas of our phone usage that is not beneficial to our relationship with ourselves, those around us, or God himself.
But with every warning, Reinke pairs it with a positive, an encouragement and a grace. Just throwing out our phones is not going to solve the problem or change our hearts. We must use wisdom to understand our weaknesses and in all things seek Christ first.
Reinke promotes disciplines that tie in with each pitfall and points us back to Christ and the gospel freedom he offers us. It positions us to our phones in a way so we can use the phone for God’s glory instead of being at the mercy of our phone.
Some Standouts
Every chapter had great insights and I took a lot of notes, but here are just a few ponderings I will share from my readings:
In the throes of Covid, churches were largely forced to commune online. And even after we could meet in person again, so many people opted to continue to be churched from afar, electing to just watch the sermon online. What’s the point of dealing with the church body if I can just be taught at home?
But we miss out on so much when we are not meeting together in person as the Lord commands in Scripture. Sure, it might be awkward at times, or uncomfortable but we have to force ourselves out of the phone’s drive for immediate approval and its pull to like-minded people.
People are diverse. People have different strengths, weaknesses, and blindspots. The church is a place to feel unity and encouragement even in difference. To learn how to work through disagreements and talk through hard things, not avoid them.
“In the local church, I do not fear rejection. In the healthy local church, I can pursue a spiritual depth that requires agitation, frustration, and the discomfort of being with people who conform not to “my” kingdom but to God’s.”
We can’t live in a vacuum or on a pedestal of our own maneuvering. We need the body of Christ to challenge us and bear with us in our struggles. We need the honesty and tangibility of the church body.
As a reader, another of Reinke’s principles stood out to me. Our phones cause us to lose literacy. The shortness of tweets and posts and our constant scrolling and skimming erodes our ability to concentrate and read for long periods of time.
We are being conditioned for snippets and highlights, not depth and meditation.
“God has given us the power of concentration in order for us to see and avoid what is false, fake, and transient— so that we may gaze directly at what is true, stable, and eternal. It is part of our creatureliness that we are easily lured by what is vain and trivial.”
“We are called to suspend our chronic scrolling in order to linger over eternal truth, because the Bible is the most important book in the history of the world.”
We are called to know and love God’s Word. But to understand the Bible, we have to put in the work of studying it, and lingering over it. Taking it to heart. A random daily Bible verse on an app is not bad, but it’s not the kind of depth that is required of us.
I know not everyone can read the amount of books that I do, but it’s important not to shrug off reading altogether. We miss out on the very words of God when we settle for snapshots and scrolling instead of silence and savoring.
As an artist/creator/writer, his chapter on production and digital media and creations was interesting to think about. It reminded me a little of Rembrandt is in the Wind by Russ Ramsey as he talked about what art is meant to do, meant to portray.
Technology can help us create things. Make art. It is a platform to share our pictures and our words.
We need to think about where our art and our words lead people— towards God or away? Does it serve and build up our audiences?
We wield a power to influence many people and we should evaluate before every post or creation whether or not we are pointing to truth and the beauty of God and his world.
“take all of God’s created and revealed gifts to you and make all of them into a life that shows the world how glorious and satisfying God really is.”
I was shocked when Reinke shared this statistic:
“The average output of email and social-media text is estimated at 3.6 trillion words, or about thirty-six million books— typed out every day… which is one million more books than the Library of Congress holds.”
Seven years later, it’s got to be a lot more than this. That is a lot of words.
And it’s sobering when we consider that we will be held accountable for every idle word we speak or tweet or post or message. (Matt 12:36)
How much of our online presence or our phone usage is made up of idle, careless words? We may think what we do with our phones is anonymous or without consequences, but God sees every stroke and swipe and we will have to answer for every action we take on our phones, every choice we make with it.
That’s not to beat us down with the gravity of that reality and make us feel like failures, unable to atone for all those careless words we’ve written. Of course, we do need to feel the weight of our sin and the need for our Savior.
But Reinke also uses this verse to remind us that we are responsible for every word that comes from us— in word, thought, or deed— and it would be good practice to consider the idleness of our phone usage and our online presence. Can we stand behind what we do and say? And if not, what changes need to be made?
Conclusion
“If our digital technology becomes our god, our wand of power, it will inevitably shape us into technicians who gain mastery over a dead world of conveniences.”
I recommend this book to all people. Smartphones aren’t going away. Or if they do, they will be replaced by something even more invasive and alluring. We have to take the time to look at how our phones are changing us and what pitfalls we can easily fall into.
Reinke’s book is realistic and practical and written in a voice, not of abandoning technology, but in harnessing it and using it to point to God and his glory. To use our phones and not let our phones use us. To understand what sins poor phone usage can tap into and to seek forgiveness.
“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. And that leads me to my point: I do not have “time to kill”— I have time to redeem.”
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