By Mark Azzara
My Dear Friend,
The following confession may prejudice you permanently against me. I don’t own a smartphone. Never have. And in all likelihood never will. That’s because I cling to the old-fashioned notion that my time is mine, not yours or anyone else’s, and I decide what to do with it.
I own a cell phone, but a smartphone is altogether different. It not only informs you of an incoming phone call but also tells you about every new email, tweet and Instagram message. And I’ve noticed that smartphone users feel obliged to check those messages immediately, even if, in doing so, they insult the person they’re talking to.
Apart from treating relationships superficially, I frequently hear people complain that they don’t have enough time anymore. But such complaints aren’t valid for those who treat their time so superficially that they willingly give it away to anyone whose message beckons.
I have had this discussion before with younger members of a prayer group to which I belong. They have rejected my arguments as ancient. It is therefore heartening to read a university student’s recent observations about how smartphones can also make faith superficial.
In a Christianity Today post Kaitlyn Schiess says she is having second thoughts about relying on her smartphone to provide her with a daily dose of faith. Those who commented on her blog were generally critical because they didn’t hear what she was really saying.
“I worry that our motivation at times is not ministry or mission, but convenience itself. Are we actually trying to make Christianity as painless as possible?” she writes. “Jesus told large crowds of people: This is going to be hard. In Luke 14, he warned his followers to ‘count the cost’ of being a disciple. They had to decide for themselves if it was worth it, because it cost something. We can’t expect his truth to impact our lives if we try and minimize our time and investment in discipleship.”
The late Marshall McLuhan is famous for his book, “The Medium is the Massage.” When he got the printed draft back from the publisher he immediately saw the typo in the title, which was supposed to be, “The medium is the message,” but he chose to keep the typo because it reinforced his point.
McLuhan was concerned about the increasing encroachment of electronic media, to the point where they dominate our lives. At the time television was becoming wildly popular. The risk initially posed by television, and now by all sorts of more modern media, is that they: provide a visual message that compels us to watch, even if it distracts us from face-to-face connectedness; and alter or constrain the message because of time, space or character-count so that we don’t even receive the message that was intended.
Media can thus replace face-to-face relationships as the primary source of communication and make such relationships increasingly superficial and even unnecessary. But smartphones aren’t the cause of abused, trivialized relationships. They merely provide the opportunity.
The latest example: A newly discovered sexting network that’s been operating for several years among more than 100 current and former students at Canon City High School in Colorado. These clueless teenagers have not merely demonstrated an appallingly superficial understanding of intimate relationships. They may also have unwittingly limited their future chances for having such relationships if they are charged with distributing pornography and/or are required to register as sex offenders.
If you own a smartphone I’d like to ask you a few questions. Since you began using a smartphone do you spend more or less time in face-to-face conversation? Do you let smartphone messages interfere with face-to-face relationships? Do you spend more or less time cultivating your relationship with God? Do you spend more or less time each day contemplating your faith in silence, where God’s voice is heard?
If you take my questions seriously your answers will tell you something about your life and its direction, and may even lead you to ask one more question of yourself: Now that the consequences are clear, what should I do?
All God’s blessings, Mark
