What a Description

With my daily life so indelibly marked by the presence of the digital, I have increasingly felt that when Apple’s fan base hailed the first iPhone as the “Jesus phone,” this moniker was more telling than they could ever imagine. As a person of faith who has been steeped in the understanding that Jesus Christ transforms anyone who opens themselves to his presence, I can personally testify to the curious ways that the Jesus phone has transformed me since I “accepted it into my life.” My relationships, my work patterns, my routines of how I spend my time and how I engage my spaces, even the patterns of thinking and my heart’s preoccupations–all of these have been quietly shifting and changing. Indeed, when I stop to recall what life had been like before it became enveloped by digital ubiquity, I need to work at remembering: What did consciousness feel like before mobile devices, email, and the internet? The difficulty in summoning up the memory of what that state of existence felt like reveals how clearly the logic and presence of all things digital in my life have incrementally but definitively made me into a new creation. That I barely can perceive this transformation when I consider how I move through my daily engagements signals how most everyone around me has undergone a similar transformation too.
Felicia Wu Song, Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age

A mass conversion event. Almost 60% of the mobile phones in use in the world are iPhones. There are over 6 billion smartphone users globally. This isn’t just a market phenomenon. It’s a spiritual shift.

Doomscrollers

Doomscrolling. Now that term does a lot of work.

What is it? Doomscrolling is that thing we do when we open social media, flick fingers and thumbs, caress our screen upwards and downwards, tactile, gentle, eyes fixed and looking, looking, looking upon all that is horrible, no good, and bad. Sure, we occasionally land on a cat meme or an uplifting video. But more often we look for things that upset us. We look for things that confirm our deepest suspicions that the world is unwell. We look for things that outrage us. We look for DOOM. No, not that Doom.

I have been a habitual doomscroller. I’m a little better now.

The human brain is wired to fixate on problems. The internet is a portal to all kinds of bad news. Social media aggregates everything that is wrong with the galaxy. With so much disaster at our fingertips, with so much that is hideous, loathesome, sickening and offensive, we find we can’t look away. We all love a good pile up; we compile car crash videos.

Doomscrolling drives up anxiety, we’re told. Let me simplify. Scrolling drives up anxiety. Social media drives up anxiety. News drives up anxiety. The big problem is that most of us carry around a little device in our pockets that keeps all of that anxiety right within our reach. Wait, turn that around. We put ourselves right within reach of all that anxiety. We let it grab us, usually with red little circles with numbers in them, though even if we’re not looking at our phones, we feel them calling out to us, telling us to unlock our screens, and check to see, to stay current, to scroll and scroll and endlessly scroll, world without end.

Lulu Garcia-Navarro offers a few gentle guidelines for slowing your doomscroll. She says we can: 1) set a timer, 2) stay cognizant, and 3) swap vicious for virtuous cycles.

Ten minutes a day is enough doom for anyone. Don’t you think?

When you’re scrolling your feed, remain focused on why you opened the doom portal in the first place. Don’t fall down a doomhole or chase a doom trail.

Share a photo of a beautiful sunset, not a doomrise. OK, doomer.

Or, better yet, delete all social media, or at least buffer your updates. Ditch your feed. Reach out to friends directly. Call people on the phone. Have conversations. Don’t carry your phone everywhere. Turn off notifications. Change your home screen to grayscale.

Does the prospect of abandoning social media terrify you, fill you with dread, evoke a sense of inevitable and impending doom?

Doom to the left of you, doom to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with doom.

iPhone Addiction

I’d rather be addicted to this than addicted to a phone. But sadly I’m showing the signs.

What are the symptoms of phone addiction? Read:

Using your cell phone for longer than initially intended
Spending a great deal of time using and recovering from excess cell phone use
Inability to cut down or control cell phone use despite trying to do so
Urges or “cravings” to be on your cell phone
Using your cell phone in situations that make it physically hazardous, such as texting while driving
Continued cell phone use despite adverse physical or psychological consequences of use
Withdrawal symptoms when not using your cell phones, such as restlessness, anxiety, and anger
Feelings of panic or anxiety about losing your cell phone
Feelings of irritability, anxiety, stress, and other mood changes when unable to respond to or receive messages
Checking your cell phone obsessively for emails, calls, and texts
Using your cell phone in inappropriate places like church or the restroom
Missing out on social opportunities and face-to-face interactions so you can use your cell phone
Loss of interest in favorite or long-held hobbies and activities
Frequent and constant checking of a phone within very brief periods of time
Using your cell phone frequently to achieve satisfaction and relaxation, or to counteract negative moods
Thinking you may have heard your cell phone ring or felt it vibrate when it hasn’t

I carry my phone everywhere, check it too often, use it to cope with boredom, and fall down too many rabbit holes. It’s my camera, my radio, my encyclopedia, my news source, and my direct line to friends (and strangers).

Here’s a few fun stats:

– The typical cell phone user touches his or her phone 2,617 times every day. 2,617 times!
– Most people, on average, spend 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phones each day.
– Half of all phone pickups happen within 3 minutes of a previous one.
Joshua Becker, Seven Proven Ways to Break Your Cell Phone Addiction

I was reading John Mark Comer’s book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and he mentioned in passing that setting your phone to grayscale could help you break the addictive habit of checking it impulsively, so I’ve given it a run. This Wired article tells you how to do it.

I also deleted Instagram from my phone after installing it shortly after the start of the pandemic, and I’ve kept to my rule of having no more than one screen with which to interact (no swiping). My main application use is for listening to podcasts, tracking nutrition, staying disciplined with fasting, and for phone and text. I haven’t had an email app on my phone in years. I keep notifications off. That decision made me a happier person. Most of the time my phone is in “do not disturb” mode.

So much of life is being present, aware, and focused. Cell phones are energy-takers. Social media applications are designed to consume more and more of your time. And most of what I can do on a phone I can do on my browser, at a computer, when I sit down to work.

Thus far, the change is working. But I still have more paring down to do. The goal is a simpler life. Less stress. More room for the expansiveness of thought, creativity, and soul.