Here, at TEA of Life Podcast, we want you to do life better…YOUR life better, and we want to give you the encouragement and tools that you need in order to achieve this. This week, I talk about a video that’s being shared around Facebook about the effects of using cell phones. In this particular video, they call this effect, Digital Dementia, and their purpose is to persuade you to stop using your cell phone so much. I call it Informational Bullying because, although I agree with lowering the use of our digital devices and possibly some of their reasoning, I don’t agree with their fearmongering technique.
The video that I talk about starts out with slow, emotional piano music and a guy who looks like he about to have a nervous breakdown. I’m sure you’ve seen it. He says that he cannot even imagine what the rates of suicide, homicide, rates of depression, and accidental deaths due to overdose is going to look like in the future. He is blaming all of this on the use of cell phones.
After this scene is over, it automatically goes to another guy who introduces the Digital Dementia word that spawned the name of this episode. He says that we rely on our smartphones so much, that it is making us stupid. Now, I have watched other videos of people who talk about how they don’t need to know certain things because Google can tell them anything they need to know, so I understand where these comments are coming from, and this is similar to a conversation that my husband and I have had together before, but, this guy in the video is saying that we have lost the ability to memorize phone numbers, and he’s referring to pretty much everyone in this statement. He equates this to having our arm in a sling for 6 months and the muscles atrophy because they are not being used. He implies that using our phones to keep our schedules and to-do lists is not using our brain muscles to remember things. It seems that he’s assuming that we aren’t filling our brain with other things instead.
When he implies that using our phones to keep our schedules and to-do lists is not using our brain muscles to remember things, he’s not “remembering” (pun intended) that we have used lists for hundreds, probably thousands of years. My parents and grandparents used lists to help them remember things, and none of them ever suffered from memory loss. They used paper calendars to help them remember dates and appointments. Businesses and some households had these things called Rolodex (you remember those things, right?) that they used to remember phone numbers, long before digital devices were so readily available.
According to research, paper calendars were first being used during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s in order to allow bosses and managers to keep a handle on their increasingly busy schedules. I, personally, believe they were being used even earlier than that. If you remember Moses and the Ten Commandments, you will remember that God inscribed the Ten Commandments on a tablet in order for people to remember them. Exodus 31:18 says, “When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.” Maybe this could be an actual account of the very first to-do list ever made.
After this, the scene suddenly switches to another person on a stage speaking to an audience. (Still, with sappy, emotion-driven music in the background, I might add.) He asks if he can borrow someone’s phone from the audience. He clearly came unprepared for his own presentation. (ha-ha) He takes a phone from the audience member and begins to talk with it in his hand. He’s not looking at the phone or even showing the phone to the audience. He is just holding it in his hand. He asks the question, “Do you feel that you are the most important thing to me right now?” He then IMMEDIATELY, before giving anyone the chance to actually answer, he answers his own question with, “No. You do not.” In this statement, he is telling the audience how they feel without actually giving them a moment to decide how they feel for themselves.
Just like you, I’m sure, this has happened to me. I have had conversations with others who have held their phone in their hand without looking at it during our conversation, and it does not make me feel like I am less important than the phone they are holding in their hand. I don’t feel that they are telling me that the phone is more important than our current conversation. But, because he answered his question before even giving the audience time to think about their own answer, they now, without question, feel the way that he, in essence, told them to feel.
I am guessing that in his eyes, holding this phone in his “hand” makes it more important than the person he is actually talking to. I’m wondering if his message would change if he was holding a pen, or piece of paper, a paper calendar, a set of keys, a flashlight, a Coke or even a McDonald’s Cheeseburger in his hand. By the measurement to what he’s saying, we would still feel that we are not the most important thing at that moment just by him holding something in his hand. When we go to dinner with others, we have to hold the utensils in our hand and the glass of water we drink from in our hand. What’s the difference? Seeing a phone or anything else in someone else’s hand does not make ME feel less important to that person.
Actually, he does say that “if you don’t have a pocket to put it in, find a shelf and walk over and put it on the shelf.” For me personally, I think that the person walking away would make me feel less important than if he were to immediately responding to me and just hold the phone in his hand.
What about a book? If he was holding a book in his hand, would he put it down before having a conversation? We are told that books are good right?
So, speaking of books… I hear over and over again how we need to read more and make our children read more; that we have forgotten the value of books and education through books and reading. Some fairly argue that reading books and highlighting and taking notes on a digital device is not the same as an actual paper book. We argue that we need to stop staring at screens and get back to reading real, actual books. Just like in the video that sparked this talk today, we hear about the digital epidemic of children (and some adults) not being able to socialize properly due to their lack of interaction from staring at a screen all day long. We argue that they need to look at and get to know the world around them for a change.
We might be able to say that we have a digital epidemic, but before you so quickly agree to this, I’d like to tell you about an epidemic that swept a country back in the 18th century. In the 1700s, there was actually an outrage at the number of people who could not put down their book. It was so intense that others around them started to notice that there was an increase in anxiety from the readers. (Does this sound familiar?) It was actually considered a Media Panic. According to historytoday.com, “A dangerous disease appeared to afflict the young, which some diagnosed as reading addiction and others as reading rage, reading fever, reading mania or reading lust.” How many of those words right there are we using today to describe the quote-unquote epidemic that we are witnessing today?
The New York Times called it, “When Novels Were Bad For You,” and their writer referred to novels to being equivalent to “today’s scrolling through Twitter.” I mean really… Is it truly any different? Maybe a little, but we can get lost in a good fantasy novel, wishing our life was the same as or even hating the character in the book just the same as we can get lost scrolling through Facebook feeling the same about the people we see there. Whether we practice it or not, we are more in control of what we do and don’t see or what we do and don’t read on social media than we are by reading fiction in a book. But, of course, there is the whole attention-span problem that we could talk about, but I’m not addressing that in this episode.
The thing that is going to stress out and overwhelm us the most is listening to people who keep telling us what we should and should not do. We are continuing to listen to others tell us what is right and wrong for our own selves and family when we should be listening to God speak to us through the Holy Spirit. We need to figure out if the Holy Spirit convicting us or if man condemning us? And, if you don’t consider yourself a Jesus Follower, you still have this little gut-prompting feeling in the pit of your stomach when you know something is right or wrong. Listen to it.
To me, it seems that the people in this video are just telling us what we are doing wrong and the effects of these wrong things, but they are not providing a solution to the problem. They are very quick to judge and not so quick to give answers. You should not allow me or anyone else besides God tell you what is right and wrong for your or your family. Listen to the information that is given to you, and then ask God what you need to do with this information. There will be times when you may need to take action, and there will also be times when you need to throw it out and run in the opposite direction.
There are so many people around us telling us what we should and shouldn’t do. Stop using your cell phones. Eat organic. Get rid of everything and live a minimalist lifestyle. Discipline your kids. Don’t discipline your kids. Take out a loan. Get out of debt. Yeah, it’s really great to do some or even all of those things, but if these things are not something that God is convicting us of instead of others condemning us of, then they are not really good after all…no matter how good, or in this case how bad the world tells us something is, we really need to follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Whenever we allow others to be our only voice, they become our god.
When I was finding my way as a homeschooling mom, I naturally surrounded myself with other homeschooling moms. This is what we do when we want to learn more and gain support about something that we desire or want to do…we surround ourselves with other people who also want to do or are already doing what we’re doing. This helps us learn and gives us the motivation that we need when our passions get tough. However, there became a time when I ended up needing to take a break from hanging out with other homeschooling moms. I decided that I just couldn’t do it anymore.
Now, not all homeschooling moms can be tyrants. I have since found some really great friends who are homeschooling moms, and things are great, but at that particular time, I didn’t have them. Those other moms were very adamant that their way was the absolute right and best way, and that was it. I tried very hard to keep up and measure up to their standards, and it was almost detrimental. It was the moment that I went to the grocery store and had to leave my cart full of groceries due to a breakdown in the middle of the produce aisle that I knew that I needed to surround myself with different people. I could not measure up to the condemnation of buying non-organic grapes and strawberries for my family; therefore, leading me into a frenzy in the middle of Publix. I was allowing others around me dictate what was right and wrong for my family. I was not listening to the voice of God. People around you can act like they are the voice of God, and they can say some really compelling things to make you believe it as well. It can be really confusing at times. Distinguishing the difference can be really tough. It takes practice.
The most ironic and funny thing to me about the video that sparked this whole conversation was this, at the very end were these words, “if you struggle and have a hard time, consider taking an online therapy session…” An ONLINE therapy session. They didn’t recommend a face-to-face therapy session. They recommended an ONLINE therapy session for your “digital” addiction.
If you found this helpful or in any way freeing, please let me know. If you didn’t like what I said, feel free to let me know that too. Either way, I’d love to hear from you. Leave me a comment on Facebook or on this episode on my website, teaoflifepodcast.com. Have a great week, and I’ll see you again next Monday.
Click here to watch the video by Simon Sinek that I am referring to today.
