I regret the day I decided to buy a smartphone.
It was 2010, and I was at the Philadelphia International Airport heading to visit my goddaughter. When I got to my gate, I saw that my plane’s departure was delayed by a few hours. I turned and walked through the terminal in search of a magazine and a meal.
After an hour, I headed back to the gate, planning to wait the remainder of the time there. To my surprise, the plane was nearly boarded, the crew preparing to close the door. I ran to the attendant to have my ticket scanned.
“What happened?” I asked.
“We emailed everyone that the departure was moved back up,” she said. “Didn’t you get it?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t have email on my phone.” She shrugged and let me know I was lucky to have boarded.
Ready or not, the world was moving to smartphones. I went to the Verizon store when I got back from my trip, vowing not to miss any future flights.
As a millennial, I belong to a cohort who likes to boast of having grown up in a device-free world, as if we have control over our phones because we remember a time without them. My weekly screen time notification keeps my pride in check. At 40, I’ve now lived nearly half of my life with a smartphone. It has changed the way I live, and I don’t like it.
I’m not alone. Pope Francis, for one, has grown increasingly cautious about social media and technologies that distract and divide us.
In fact, he decreed that Catholics can receive a plenary indulgence during the 2025 Jubilee of Hope by “abstaining, in a spirit of penance, at least for one day of the week from futile distractions (real but also virtual distractions, for example, the use of the media and/or social networks).”
Many people might not experience that as penitential. Social scientists have discovered that a majority of Gen Z, the generation that came of age with smartphones and tablets, wishes that social media sites like TikTok and X were never invented. Some are voicing their desire to raise their own children without tablets, and others are migrating back to flip phones.
By now the data is clear: our phones are as addictive as drugs; social media sites ravage mental health; 24-hour news media fuels collective, continuous outrage; and our employers, schools, friends, and family members expect us to be on call every waking moment. Our phones are our maps, newspapers, and wallets.
While we are beginning to wake up to the psychological and physical effects of our device-saturated lifestyles — evidenced by a wave of educators banning them from classrooms and the emergence of life coaches helping individuals through digital detoxes — a growing chorus of voices are also sounding the alarm about how they affect the spiritual life.
Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business and author of “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” (Penguin Press. $30), puts it succinctly: smartphones are religious and spirituality blockers.
Though he self-identifies as a Jewish atheist, Haidt explores the topic at length in his book. Recognizing that everyone has a “God-shaped hole,” Haidt says that smartphones interrupt our ability to seek communion with God and other people. As a social scientist, he attributes this to how much time smartphones demand of us.
“There are many ways a phone-based life is not going to leave you time to go to church,” he explained on an episode of the “Holy Post” podcast.
Haidt theorized that if one’s phone is vibrating up to 20 times an hour, and they feel compelled to respond to every message, call, email, or notification, people simply don’t feel they can manage their digital life, let alone find time for in-person community.
“The day you give your kids a smartphone is the day you cut down by 70% everything else in life: books, hobbies, time in nature, time talking with friends,” he relayed. “I would think that thoughts about God, a sense of communion, feelings of compassion — all of this stuff is going to be greatly reduced.”
Haidt laments the societal decrease in religious participation given the benefit that religion plays in providing people with community and a space for silence and contemplation.
But he’s also concerned about something less practical and more pressing. Recent data overwhelmingly reveals that teens and young adults feel their life has no meaning or purpose. While those phrases are often thought to indicate depression, he thinks they are signs of hopelessness — something more spiritual than clinical.
Charles Camosy, a professor of Medical Humanities at the Creighton University School of Medicine, shared on the Tucker Carlson Show that he is seeing more students interested in ditching a digitally saturated life.
“They [Gen Z] have a sense of this being foisted on them,” he shared. “Interestingly when my colleagues teach a class that involves a ‘technology fast,’ those classes are totally full. People want an excuse to get out of it.”
Camosy said that the addictive nature of smartphones prompted him to ask bigger philosophical questions.
“How do we live with this? What is the good way that we live with [phones]? It’s difficult for me to imagine, but I think one of the solutions is to have a community of people around you who can hold you accountable.”
Father Christopher Seith, a formator at St. John Paul II Seminary in Washington, D.C., and author of “Rekindling Wonder: Touching Heaven in a Screen Saturated World” (Enroute, $15.20), believes that the problem is one of spiritual sickness — and that only the Church really understands its root.
That malady is acedia, or a sadness for being made in the image and likeness of God. The Desert Fathers called it the “noonday devil” — evil which makes things dull.
“The soul wishes he were less than human so as to avoid the challenging adventure inherent in his humanity — to radiate the self-giving love of God revealed in Jesus Christ,” Seith writes. “Saddened by what he is, man’s life becomes, quite simply, boring.”
Friendship with God is demanding, and reliance on God feels risky. In short, it is easier to be bored than bold.
Seith argues that our digital devices play right into the devil’s hand. As much as technology might make life more convenient, it does not make it more human.
“As much information as our devices may communicate, if they do not foster love for what we are seeing, they will actually damage our ability to experience reality. Our eyes do not see as well when they are void of love,” he argues.
So what’s the solution? How do we live with something that makes us less patient, turns us in on ourselves, and distracts us from the things that signal our longing for God — emotions, relationships, and desires?
Seith suggests building a plan.
First, we should make sure our devices are not allowed to enter every aspect of our lives. We should designate specific times and places that are “intentionally device-free.” Even though we’re encouraged to rest or decompress with screens, we should “waste time” with loved ones or in solitude, as both are better medicine for our souls.
Second, we should use our devices for the reason we reached for it, and then put it away. He adds that we should remove apps that distract us from our purpose, “even if that means being less aware of what is happening in the world.”
Third, we should frequent the liturgy, not because it requires that we silence our phones, but because it directs our eyes upward toward Jesus Christ.
“People in chronic pain are relieved to know the cause of their pain,” Seith notes. “How relieving it is to name the despairing indifference that hovers like a fog over modern man.”
It’s hard to say how long I might have put off getting a smartphone after nearly missing that flight years ago. Like many others, I wish for a world in which it’s easier to be present to the people we love, to spend time in silence, and above all, to be in close relationship with Jesus.
But the good news is that he’s still there, begging us to look up. And in this Jubilee Year of Hope, letting our cellphones go dark could usher in some light.
Source: Angelus News
