Guest Blog Post from Jake Bier
Walt Mueller invites Jake Bier – CPYU Research Fellow and Assistant Pastor at Springton Lake Presbyterian Church, Newtown Square, PA – to take over his blog. What follows is Part 2 of a blog from Jake. You can read Part 1 here. This content was adapted from a series of classes he taught at his church.
As we saw in the previous post, the internet has become a Web, a hostile environment designed to steal as much of your time, attention, and money as possible. Discernment and wisdom for media choices are important, but they are not enough on their own. As spiritually mature adults, we need to model the kind of lives we want our kids to see. If we are lacking self-control in the area of technology, how much greater are the problems for teens and kids?
What we really need is a set of new disciplines, habits, and ways of engaging with technology—practices that will keep us from getting caught, and help us break free when we do.
#1: Put Tech in its Place
Screens are everywhere. Most of us have multiple devices scattered around our homes, cars, workplaces, and pockets. Even when a screen isn’t on, the Web still has a way of wrapping its tendrils around us.
Work, business, bills, news, entertainment—almost everything we do now runs through a screen. And whenever we have a few spare minutes (standing in a checkout line, waiting at the doctor’s office, sitting in traffic), what happens? Without thinking, we reach for the phone. It fills every silence and every gap.
One of the first things we need to do is put tech back in its proper place. We need to limit how often and how automatically we engage so that, when we do engage, we’re doing it with intention—not out of habit, boredom, or reflex. Many parents track their own or their kids’ screen time already. That’s a good start. We should absolutely use built-in screen time limits, but we should go further than that. We should build habits that restrict where, when, and why we use technology—not only how much.
It’s always a little embarrassing to see how many hours we’ve logged. But the truth is, tech is unavoidable. So the solution isn’t to ditch devices altogether (as much as I’d like to) but to put systems in place so that, when we sit down to use technology, we’re doing it deliberately: for a specific purpose, for a set amount of time, and in the right context. There’s a world of difference between sitting down at your computer to organize your finances and mindlessly scrolling through Twitter.
It helps to adopt a simple set of rules or guidelines for how your family will engage with technology. Andy Crouch’s The Tech-Wise Family is helpful on this point. He notes several no-brainer moments when we simply should not use devices: during meals, when we’re spending time with friends or family, at church, and so on. Definitely not while driving! He also suggests not allowing recreational device use in private rooms. This protects against temptations, but it also fosters togetherness. A family movie night in the living room is very different from each person scrolling alone in their bedrooms.
Because screens are so ubiquitous, it is also helpful to restrict them to specific places. We’re used to carrying them everywhere, but that only was possible pretty recently—I can still remember the little computer nook in my parents home growing up. Tying devices down to a particular spot helps prevent the creep of constant use. Recently, for example, our family moved the TV to the basement. That small shift transformed our living room and removed the temptation (for parents and the kids!) to turn on the TV just because it was there. Instead, we created a cozy little theater area downstairs. Now, when we decide on purpose to have a movie night, we all go down together.
Crouch also recommends leaving your phone on its charging station whenever you’re home. We don’t need to carry it from room to room like a security blanket. Use it when you actually need it, but resist the urge to have it glued to you at all times. I’ve taken a similar approach with my computer. I keep it at my desk and only use it for specific tasks—paying bills, ordering things, looking something up. Keeping it tied down to one place keeps it from becoming an ever-present distraction. Crouch also recommends putting phones to bed before we do—again, that protects against temptation, but also restores the bedroom to its actual purpose: relaxation and sleep.
There are other restrictions we might apply. When I get to the office, I try not to open my laptop right away. I wait until later in the morning after I’ve completed a few non-digital tasks. We all know how easily the day can disappear once you open your email.
All of this is about creating systems—new habits and new disciplines toward the kind of life we want to have. Tech will fill every corner of our lives if we let it. But it’s worth remembering that, up til pretty recently, we lived just fine without the constant buzz. You really don’t need to look up every fact mid-conversation. A paper Bible works just as well as one on your phone. You can read a physical book just as easily as an ebook, and at least the physical copy won’t shove an advertisement in your face the moment you open it.
Putting tech in its place—physically, mentally, and within our schedules—will go a long way to curbing its influence.
#2: Practice Embodiment
One of the biggest dangers that the Web poses to our spiritual and mental health is that it enables and even encourages us to live in disembodied ways. Your smartphone allows your mind to be transported a million miles away—thinking about something else, talking to people you’ve never met, and so on—all the while being completely alienated from the place you’re actually in. This is a problem because the more disembodied our technology is, the more dehumanizing it becomes.
On the Web, you can be (or at least pretend to be) anything you want. This is especially a concern for youth, who are asking the big questions of identity: who am I, where do I belong, and what am I for? The dominant worldview today is expressive individualism, which thrives online.
As the digital world reaches into real life, it reshapes our behaviors and expectations of what real life is like. For instance, it’s become “normal” to divide our attention between the physical world and devices—scrolling through feeds during meals, checking notifications in meetings, or thinking about distant online interactions while sitting next to someone in person. It’s not really even considered rude anymore to be staring at your phone while talking to someone, or to pull it out in the middle of a conversation. If you think about it, it’s not just rude—its dehumanizing. It communicates that the other person is less important than whatever is happening on your phone.
Maybe you may have felt the pressure to check your email or to catch up on work even when you’re at home or on vacation because technology enables you to. The digital world has reshaped our expectations of what real life is like, and may even override the kind of work/life boundaries we wish we could keep in place.
Our tech tempts us to “live without limits”—you can be anything, know everything, and be anywhere at any time. But, as we increasingly see, this takes its toll. Extensive smartphone use is consistently linked to higher rates of depression, anxiety, and loneliness.
In some ways, it’s no surprise that the younger generations are the loneliest and most anxious on record because, for much of their developmental years, they have had unfettered access to technologies that disconnect them from the real world. Throw in COVID, digital learning, social distancing, and other factors, and you are left with teens who are increasingly uncomfortable in real world situations. Many have not developed the emotional and social skills necessary to navigate interpersonal relationships. This can show up in a difficulty to make eye contact and avoiding in-person conversations. And this is not just teens! The smartphone has become an ever-present escape hatch for all of us to get out of any awkward conversation or situation, like standing in line at the grocery store or being the first to arrive at youth group.
More and more, we turn to technology in order to get what we really should be getting from other people. We may even use it to avoid talking to people at all. A number of recent reports have shown the extent to which people rely on AI chatbots, even for things like therapy and relational counseling. Think about how crazy that is! Not only is it incredibly unwise—AI will only ever tell you what you want to hear—but it replaces real, embodied, flesh and blood relationships with a robot. You’ve probably had the experience where you call customer service, only to get put through an AI answering machine. Isn’t that so frustrating? It feels dehumanizing—let me talk to a real person!
With our technology today, it’s perfectly possible to live a completely socially isolated life. That was the reality for many of us during COVID, but for some people it’s only gotten worse. You can work from home, get all your news and entertainment from the internet, order all your groceries on InstaCart, and never interact with a physical human being ever again. This is a challenge that the Church is going to have to face in the years to come as we seek to carry out the Great Commission.
All these issues are, in part, driven by the way our technology enables and invites us to live in disembodied ways.
In order to push back against this, then, we need to practice embodiment. We do this by embracing our limitations as finite creatures. Scripture says that each of us have been “fearfully and wonderfully made”, and that includes our limitations (Ps 139:14).
That’s the way God made us—as finite creatures who need to eat, sleep, rest, exercise. We need love, affection, and in person relationships (Gen 2:18). We are particular people in a particular place, with physical bodies that have their own unique array of abilities and disabilities, obstacles and limitations. Our finitude is not a bug in the matrix, but a feature of being a creature. That’s the way God designed us to be.
Only God is infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. We are not, and we shouldn’t try to be. Tech offers an illusion of overcoming our bodies, but even then we hit limits. When we embrace our limitations, we can then be fully present in the bodies God has given and live in the world as he intended. We can receive everything from him as a gift, not to be “lifehacked” or optimized, but to be received with thanks.
On the internet, it is a common expression to hear people say that “So and so needs to go touch grass”, as in, they need to get off the internet and reconnect with the real world in order to get some perspective. The phrase is usually derogatory, but it actually contains a lot of wisdom. In Matthew 6:26-34, Jesus’ invitation to those who are anxious and worried (something connected to internet use…) is to “consider the lilies” and the birds of the air—he doesn’t quite say “touch grass”, but the point is the same.
Theologians sometimes called creation the Book of Nature – God gave us two “books”, the Bible and the Book of Nature. Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” One of the primary ways that God has revealed himself is in the natural world. And we only know ourselves in relation to him.
If our heads are always down, looking at our phones, what are we missing? Numbers vary, but one estimate says that the average American child can recognize 1,000 corporate logos by 5th grade, yet only identify about 10 types of plants or flowers native to their region. Come to think of it, I might struggle to do any better. But it all comes down to exposure: we spend a lot of our time indoors, shut off from the natural world, and connected to digital devices. In what ways, then, are we missing out on how God has revealed himself in the natural world?
To “practice embodiment” means we need to get off our phones and experience the world the way God intended. It is to prioritize in-person relationships and to enjoy the kind of fellowship we were made for, with God and with one another. Daily activities like eating a meal together and sharing a conversation with a friend can be spiritual practices in which we relate to our Creator and to one another as those made in his image. If we would be free of the Web, we must embrace our role as finite creatures and behold God’s glory in creation, receiving it all as a gift from him.
#3: Pick What Lasts
Much of the content on the Web is short, quick, and easily digestible. There is so much content out there that we mostly rely on the algorithm to suggest what we should read next, watch, and engage with—and even then, we often only skim the surface. Headlines grab our attention, videos replace full-length shows or movies, and summaries replace the actual books or articles. It’s even worse now that AI tries to summarize everything. The Web prioritizes what is fast, easy, and, above all, new. Yesterday’s content is forgotten because today there is more to come.
The problem with this is that what is quick, easy, and instantly gratifying is rarely what is truly good for the soul or the mind. These digital snacks might be entertaining, but they don’t cultivate wisdom, patience, or deep understanding. You can watch a YouTube summary of a classic book or skim an article, but that’s not the same as wrestling with the text yourself, pondering its meaning, and allowing it to shape your thoughts. What is quick and convenient rarely sticks with us. True learning, insight, and spiritual growth requires time, attention, and deliberate effort.
As Christians, this has profound implications. Scripture calls us to love God with our “heart, soul, mind, and strength” (Mt 22:37-38) and to meditate on God’s Word day and night (Ps 1:2–3). Cultivating wisdom, understanding, and discernment is not a fast-food experience, but a lifelong pursuit. Our technology pushes the opposite. It encourages us to fragment our attention, to multi-task, to chase novelty, and bypass the discipline of thinking deeply.
So, we should consciously push against the ease and convenience that our technology brings. We need to “Pick What Lasts”, even if it takes more work. That means picking articles over headlines, books (even old books!) over the daily news cycle, and movies over short form videos. We should pick the eternal over what is ephemeral—not uncritically, but we should seek out what has stood the test of time.
In all this, we should let what Paul says in Philippians 4:8 be our guide: “What is true, what is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Picking what last means that we should pursue what is good, true, and beautiful, even if it’s more difficult.
Conclusion
Our tech is the driving force behind the cultural and spiritual issues of our day, and we need to really pay close attention to the way it’s affecting us and our kids. If we’re not careful, the Web will spread to every corner of our lives and entangle us in its grasp.
Romans 12:1-2 commands us, “Do not conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds”. We will lose our ability to be effective witnesses if we are just as addicted to our phones as everybody else. But more than that, we will miss out on the good world God has given to us to enjoy in communion with him and one another.
These practices can be acts of resistance against a world that is constantly trying to distract us and pull us away from what matters most. They will help us protect our time, our attention, and our hearts. Through them, we can honor God with our use of technology—and ultimately point a desperate world to the One who exists beyond it all.