What My Screen Time Exposed About Our Spiritual Crisis
(ANALYSIS) Nine hours, 21 minutes.
It’s the most embarrassing data I’ve ever shared with the public and it came during a talk to several hundred students in a university chapel message on media literacy: 9:21 … my average screen time per day for a week in March. It wasn’t typical (mostly) — there was a spring break in there, college basketball streaming, and this and that … but … but …
Nevertheless, the number stayed, because it was real and presented the magnitude of the problem I was talking about. It’s not just those “crazy kids” with too much screen time. This is a “we” problem and until we all get real about our own media time, we won’t see how it’s changing us and our society.
Approximately 15 years into the mobile and (not coincidentally) social media revolution, the data keeps coming. Research firm Emarketer, estimates TOTAL time on all media for U.S. adults will reach nearly 13 hours by 2026, with digital media eclipsing traditional, 2 to 1.
Of course, no one sets out to spend half a day and two-thirds of their waking hours binging and scrolling. The data threatens, not because of what we do when we get home — like in the quaint days of television’s dominance — but in how we replace every in-between moment throughout the day with the device in our pocket: the coffee break, the wait in line, the conversation or plain, old quiet think time. You want another number? Take a look at your device pickups per day. If the phone was a dumbbell, you’d feel it.
While preparing to share these numbers, two things occurred to me: First, most will not be surprised. In fact, many just shrug, “it’s just boredom killing. No harm.”
Secondly, the forces behind this addiction — if you want to go there — may run deeper than money, corporations, technologies, governments or leisure. To my point, I think the battle for our attention is now actually spiritual warfare and may only be reversed with a spiritual countermeasure.
Sophisticated readers may recoil from this argument and — to be frank — it’s not a state of soul I visit often. But Christian orthodoxy does not let me off my intellectual hook. The Apostle Paul makes this all too clear in Ephesians 6:12: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (ESV)
In various religions, we may disagree on the extent to which the spiritual world intrudes on the material, but most any transcendent believer must look at phenomena such as this rapid domination of digital devices as something way beyond human comprehension. I contend something deeper, maybe even Satanic, is going on.
Removed from the pitchforked images of novels and movies, the Bible speaks of Satan or adversary as the “father of lies” (John 8:44) who masquerades as an “angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). His weapons are not fire and brimstone so much as deceit and half-truth, making what is wrong and harmful both plausible and attractive.
In Satan’s first Biblical appearance as a serpent, he leads Eve with obfuscation: “Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?”
In tempting Jesus, Satan appears after a long fast and dares Him to use His powers to turn stones into food. Both deceptions are also distractions from the mission at hand. For Adam and Eve, it was tending the garden. For Jesus, it was commencing His kingdom.
In other words, we are in the midst of a spiritual battle on our screens. I am not saying all media technologies, companies or content are necessarily tools of Satan. I am saying their overwhelming domination of our attention distracts us from deeper work – on our families, our communities and ourselves and this spiritual adversary can use those distractions for his own, deceptive purposes.
Fortunately, the solution is as simple as the barking orders of our parents, “turn that TV/game/phone off and go outside and play!” Yet, the simplest solutions are often the hardest. Like screen time, they require each of us to confront our own behavior.
However, a quiet, growing pushback is afoot. Secular institutions such as schools are waking up to the wonder of phone-free zones. Sociologist Jonathan Haidt is seeing change through his book “The Anxious Generation” and After Babel platforms for speaking and writing on children and smartphones. Now, if the parents would only go along and confront their own usage, we might get somewhere.
Sadly, many churches seem way behind their secular counterparts — often adopting the screens, scrolling and all of their technological baggage right into their sacred spaces without question. Have you seen QR codes on your pew back yet? “Click here for salvation.” In the evangelical churches I know best, the next big tech is rarely questioned. It seems, every good and shiny thingie comes from above, for those who share good news.
Media critic and professor Neil Postman — who had much to say about religion, too — wrote 40 years ago in “Amusing Ourselves to Death”: ”… Every new technology for thinking involves a trade-off. It giveth and taketh away, although not quite in equal measure.” (29)
Postman’s target, in 1985, was the television screen and it’s doubtful he could have imagined the trojan horse would actually enter the sanctuary in purses and pockets. But what doth this digital horse “taketh” now from our corporate worship and individual practice?
We could yet see a revolution even in church if every person of faith realizes they no longer have the mental bandwidth to “take every thought captive to obey Christ,” (2 Corinthians 10:5), because they’re giving them away, minute by minute, to a little black box.
My screen time numbers were embarrassing, but also eye-opening. I realized I had a problem — the first step – and I might be fighting a battle not winnable in my own flesh and blood. Government bans won’t change this. Media companies won’t change. The technology genie is not going back. We must wrestle with the black box ourselves. But in this spiritual battle, we are not alone.
Randall E. King, Ph.D. is a professor of communication at North Greenville University in South Carolina and a former television reporter and news producer. He has more than 40 years of experience in media work as educator, journalist and content creator.