My smartphone is changing me. But this book changed me as well, and it did so in incredibly valuable ways. I highly recommend it to each and every person who holds a smartphone in the palm of her hand.
In the sea of bad news about how smart phones and social media usage are changing our lives, this book stands apart in that it gives us a gospel-enriched perspective. Thus, it helps us to see the dangers while also seeing the hope and the weight of eternity in our decisions about our phones.
If you have been staying sweetly ignorant of the bad news, I urge you to read this book. It serves as a traffic sign in our lives, cautioning us away from dangerous paths. (In my favorite chapter, which includes statistics about phone usage while driving, it even warns us of physical dangers of our phone use.)
If you are already aware of many affects of smartphone usage, this book will provide additional guidance, presenting a beautifully Christian perspective on this vital topic. It helps the entire church to respond to these things not merely in a reactive way but with desire to glorify God and help others understand the eternal significance of our smartphone habits.
Here are the 12 parts of the book from the Table of Contents:
- We Are Addicted to Distraction
- We Ignore Our Flesh and Blood
- We Crave Immediate Approval
- We Lose Our Literacy
- We Feed on the Produced
- We Become Like What We “Like”
- We Get Lonely
- We Get Comfortable in Secret Vices
- We Lose Meaning
- We Fear Missing Out
- We Become Harsh to One Another
- We Lose Our Place in Time
I really love Reinke’s style and precision, the time and care he took in researching and writing this book. Here are a few of his very quotable sentences:
“The more we take refuge in distraction, the more habituated we become to mere stimulation and the more desensitized to delight. We lose our capacity to stop and ponder something deeply, to admire something beautiful for its own sake, to lose ourselves in the passion for a game, a story, or a person.”
“The sad truth is that many of us are addicted to our phones because we crave immediate approval and affirmation. The fear we feel in our hearts when we are engaged online is the impulse that drives our ‘highly selective self-representations.’ We want to be loved and accepted by others, so we wash away our scars and defects. When we put this scrubbed-down representation of ourselves online, we tabulate the human approval in a commodity index of likes and shares. We post an image, then watch the immediate response. We refresh. We watch the stats climb-or stall. We gauge the immediate responses from friends, family members, and strangers. Did what we posted gain the immediate approval of others? We know within minutes. Even the promise of religious approval and the affirmations of other Christians is a gravitational pull that draws us toward our phones.”
“Assuming a driver never looks up in the average time it takes to send a text (4.6 seconds), at fifty-five miles per hour, he drives blindly the length of a football field.”
“True freedom from the bondage of technology comes not mainly from throwing away the smartphone, but from filling the void with the glories of Jesus that you are trying to fill with the pleasures of the device.”
“Drawing from the insights of numerous thinkers, published studies, and his own research, writer Tony Reinke identifies twelve potent ways our smartphones have changed us―for good and bad. Reinke calls us to cultivate wise thinking and healthy habits in the digital age, encouraging us to maximize the many blessings, avoid the various pitfalls, and wisely wield the most powerful gadget of human connection ever unleashed.” (Amazon description)
Other Suggested Reading:
“Drawing on in-depth original research from the Barna Group, Andy Crouch shows readers that the choices we make about technology have consequences we may never have considered. He takes readers beyond the typical questions of what, where, and when and instead challenges them to answer provocative questions like, Who do we want to be as a family? and How does our use of a particular technology move us closer or farther away from that goal? Anyone who has felt their family relationships suffer or their time slip away amid technology’s distractions will find in this book a path forward to reclaiming their real life in a world of devices.” (Amazon description)
“What images should I feed my eyes? We often leave this question unanswered― because we don’t ask it. Journalist Tony Reinke asked these hard questions himself―critiquing his own habits―and now invites us along to see what he discovered as he investigated the possibilities and the pitfalls of our image-centered world. In the end, he shares the beauty of a Greater Spectacle―capable of centering our souls, filling our hearts, and stabilizing our gaze in this age of the digital spectacle.” (Amazon description)
“With her fresh approach to the familiar Bible story, Joanna Weaver shows how all of us, Marys and Marthas alike, can draw closer to our Lord: deepening our devotion, strengthening our service, and doing both with less stress and greater joy.” (Amazon description)
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