Music.
Podcast. I'm Pastor Luke. And I am Pastor Cam. And this is the Uncut Podcast, where we have
uncut and honest conversations about faith, life, and ministry. This week, we get to share some,
kind of, I don't know, a mile marker for the podcast, kind of exciting. Over the course of
Of the last two episodes, we've broken 2,000 downloads or listens across all the platforms.
Awesome. That was kind of cool to find out, realize that we'd had that many people listen.
Yeah, right. That's a lot of listens. So thank you.
Thank you for downloading, watching, listening, commenting, rating, sharing, subscribing, all that. Yeah.
Faithful group of you that listen fairly regularly and when you get the chance,
and whether you're just popping in every week or when you get the chance to,
we appreciate you taking the time to kind of.
Hopefully you feel like you're joining in on a bit of a conversation here.
We hope it feels like you're just listening to some friends kind of talk some things back and forth.
That's what we want, yeah. And continue to want you to be able to engage
with topics that are important and pertinent in your life,
you know, through our text line, 716-201-0507.
Very good. We got it memorized. Memorized, finally. I've been gone here for 10 days, too,
and I don't even have my sticky note in front of me, so.
But you can text us questions to that line any time, or if you have actual access to us,
Then you just always just ask us or text us on our actual numbers.
But yeah. So you went on a little vacation, that episode, we talked about Sabbath and vacation. Right.
And 10 days and a part of the first part of that, those 10 days was camping with my
family and our family campground in Randolph.
And, uh, we had, uh, we fought the rain a little bit last week was quite a rainy
week, but it ended up being okay.
And I don't really get cell phone reception down there. So it was nice to be able to unplug and get away for a little bit.
And, um, and then, um, back, um, in the weekend and still had, you know, five
or six days that I had planned to take off just at home.
So it was nice.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's cool. Well, I mean, it's funny that you say like no cell phone reception and being
able to unplug because that's kind of the topic at least I thought we might kick around today is
sort of I don't know exactly where it's going to land but kind of talking about like,
the impact of technology and social media and thoughtfulness around that, you know,
with just even as what it means to be human and to live a balanced life,
but then also just like how that impacts us spiritually and stuff you.
Couple weeks ago now, three, four weeks, maybe it was almost a month ago, I guess you gave a sermon,
on starting in Mark, and your big idea was like,
the retreating and spending time with the Lord, seeing Jesus' pattern in the gospel,
getting solitude and time away, and at least in your application of that sermon,
you spent a significant amount of time lamenting the negative impact of having a buzzing,
tab of glass next to you, and that's impact.
And then I've, over the last two weeks or so, I've been reading a book that it's been fairly easy to read,
fairly well-written and researched book called Stolen Focus.
Kind of, it's a little bit more broad than just technology. It's just kind of examining all the reasons
why perhaps we're having more difficult time paying attention and giving our focus to things.
But he spends a significant amount of time talking about the impact of technology, social media, phones, like.
And it's fairly well researched. I don't agree with all of his conclusions.
I think he's a little bit biased in some regards, but it's a book I would recommend
just pretty much about anybody to read.
I think it's a- Stolen focus. Stolen focus by, I believe, Johan Hari.
I believe I'm saying his first name correctly, but so it's a good book,
but that's all been stirring all this in my mind. So I thought today would be a cool day,
to talk about some of that.
Yeah, I think we should do it. It feels like a lifetime ago that I preach that sermon.
But I do, you know, the main point, which you already kind of mentioned, it was just that Jesus
was willing to lay aside what the world thought,
his priority should be and what was important to the world,
so that he could spend time in solitude with his Heavenly Father.
And how even in our own lives where we maybe seek solitude with the Father,
we do so with probably what is, I don't know,
maybe the television, maybe you could say that the TV, the television is the most.
Has like in our generation or historically been the most distracting technological device.
But you can't carry that with you outside. Right, I think that that, you know.
Now in the modern-day world 2023. I don't think that there's any doubt that.
The most pervasive technological Distraction not even technological distraction technological device. Yes that.
The world knows is the cell phone right or the smartphone Yeah, like if you were to look look through time like as far as like,
media communication and technology intersection And there's like the printing press, maybe radio,
television, smartphone.
Yeah, or the internet. Or the internet and then smartphone. Like, you know, like those are like,
like historians will always be talking about these things and the impact like, you know,
our grandkids will be reading textbooks or history textbooks talking about,
when the development of the iPhone was released and like how it impacted society and all that stuff.
Like, it will be a thing, like to us, it's just so immediate that we're just like,
oh, it's just kind of normal. But like, it has been so earth shattering to the way that we live life.
Like it will be in the history books in 100 plus years.
Yep.
Yeah. early in high school.
Uh, having classes called computer lab. Oh yeah. Learning the type on the computer.
Yes. Or just learning how to navigate a computer and use its programs and being.
How to use word. Right. Just being so overwhelmed with, I remember my first,
I remember the first time that I used the intranet, independently used the intranet.
I had no idea how to do it, but I had to, it was like an eighth grade,
eighth or ninth grade, and I had to write a report.
For history on some aspect of slavery, and I didn't know how,
and one of the research tools we could use was this thing called the internet.
So I went to the library and I sat down at the computer and I opened the internet. Yeah.
And I was like, what do I do now?
And so I typed in www.slaves.com. What did that bring up for you?
It was not what I thought it was gonna be.
That was my first introduction to the internet. I was trying to do a very innocent report on slavery.
I got an education that day, not in slavery, however, I said all that to say my first experiences
with things like the internet and computers, which I thought was so powerful and like expansive.
Little device here blows those things out of the water for accessibility, power, like utility,
And so just like that the curve.
Oh, the exponential curve. Yes. Exactly. Like if you, if you go from like,
no printing press to printing press or like printing press to digital media, right. That
curve is really wide, right? Cause like printing press was, I don't remember the date was back in
what? 1500s, 1500s, 1500s, I think with like the reformation and all of that. And then it took us
Until when till we got to like digital distribution of media.
I mean, I guess it depends like large scale, I would say in the next, in the last few decades, like, you know, maybe in the last
25 years, quarter of a century, but then if you talk about the change, uh, so that's a degree of change, like the printing
press advanced, obviously, and it got better and better and we got to mass production books, but then, but that was a fairly
slow level change. And then you get to digital media and how much digital media has changed
since its advent to now. We've had more change since the, the internet has changed more than,
the printing press. Like the internet has changed more in the last three decades than the printing
press did in several centuries. Yes. 500, 500 years. Yes, for sure. You know, I remember my first cell phone.
Well, I remember my, my first personal cell phone, but I remember the first time I encountered like a mobile phone.
I remember my mom's brick.
My mom had a bag phone.
Oh, do you, you're familiar with bag phones? I've heard of them.
I don't think I ever saw one as a kid.
It had a, it was had a cord, you know, and the bag was like a little suitcase and then it had a cord on it with an antenna that,
that you stuck out your window and it was a magnet, it had a magnet on it and you stuck it
to the top of your car.
Ha ha ha ha ha!
And you and that's like some Vietnam War era like communication seriously Seriously, and I always wanted to like make a phone call on it
And my mom was like we absolutely cannot in unless it's a dire emergency because it's so expensive to make a call.
My grandpa my grandpa bought my mom one. She's a single mom. Okay, right He wanted her to have you know that but and then I got my first self
I mean just think about the amount of time. I'm not that old, right?
So think think about the the curve in technological advancement even in the cell phone. I,
Got my first personal cell phone when I was a sophomore in college. Yep,
So that would have been 2002 yeah, I think I got mine line late high school,
No, I'm sorry. I got my freshman year of college that have been 2001. Okay, 2000 2001. Yeah
But at that point, I didn't know how to enter phone numbers into the, like the phone book on the phone, you know, how you press like one, three times to get to see, right?
So you got to go, like, go through the numbers.
So everyone's, I couldn't even store anyone's number under their name because I didn't know how to write their name on the number pad.
Right. And so, and now I just say, you know, hey Siri, find me the number for...
Oh, Siri's about to do it. And Siri's doing it, you know? And so.
That was 20 years ago. Yeah Well, I mean like just the small fact like your very first story and you said going on and turning on the internet,
We don't turn the internet on anymore. It's always on it's alive It's alive and that's that's a distinction like if you're listening to this and you're you know,
So young as to not remember when dial-up was a thing like before there was broadband and now it's just internet
It's just all remember when there was no internet right, but I remember you know you had to you had to click AOL or,
Netgear or whatever it was that you're in that scape or whatever you were using to access the internet,
It was a specific applicant You didn't just launch a browser on your computer like you do now you click on Google Chrome or something or Safari,
You had to click on,
The the browser was also the thing that turned the internet on and could shut off your family's phone line,
and and so Accessing the internet was kind of like an intentional choice. It was a thing that was on and off.
Versus now our phones both right now are communicating with the internet updating our,
You know updating our emails updating notifications tracking our locations, getting other people's locations
of their phones, like all of that's happening just with the phones just sitting on the counter
and us not even touching it.
That's a very different way of living than pre-internet.
Or even just pre-smartphone living. Which is back to the initial point of like the message,
that I preached in the first chapter of Mark and what I see as the,
I see as like the, maybe complexity's maybe not the right word, but.
My penchant to avoid or to not counsel or to lead people towards doing personal devotions
or getting time with the Lord via the phone.
Or even having the phone in the same room.
Because it is rare, the person who is able to ignore is able to ignore the, the, um, notifications, the pull towards scrolling, we shouldn't be
surprised because there are extraordinarily smart and talented people who have even customized
notification alert sounds to turn something on in the brain that says, I must do it.
It. Yep. Right. It, it, it, like the amount of social engineering that has gone into like
part of the book I'm reading talks about some of that stuff and I'm like, wow, like that,
is a lot. Right. Which is why it reminds me, I'm not, I'm not too much into like documentary
hit pieces like you, like we talked about, we talked about, but the documentary, the
social experiment.
Is that the social experiment or the social dilemma? The social dilemma.
I'm sorry. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
It was I felt victimized by my Yeah, I felt I felt victimized by like they're like the,
Social engineering. Yes of those things to the point where like I feel I thought this was like,
I was just liking it because I was liking it. Yeah, but no there
It I almost felt like they were forcing me to like it by the way They were designing and I know like I'm not I'm not rescuing myself from personal responsibility,
But I think it was just very telling. Yeah. No, like if you haven't seen the social dilemma on Netflix
It is worth a watch. I think it's got some I think it for all of its Production value. I think it,
Oversimplifies a couple things sure it has some biases some of the same biases that I think are prevalent in the book that I'm reading
Because the book I'm book I'm reading relies heavily upon the interviews of the people who made that documentary.
But it's worth watching. It's worth considering that like One of the interesting studies that like they found is they had like people taking IQ tests some people taking them,
with a phone next to them that would like get occasional notifications and,
other people with no distractions and And there was a measurable score of like,
I think something between like 10 to 15 difference in their IQ scores between being distracted
versus non-distracted.
And to put that in perspective, that's a higher difference than if they were stoned
versus not stoned taking an IQ test.
So you would be better off taking an IQ test high on like marijuana, then you are with taking it
with your phone, giving you active notifications next to you.
That's crazy.
Yeah, just like, what? Like, the amount of like...
Attention shifting that that causes just like cause because every time Like people love to kind of argue this point
I know that you're like you've had some teacher at some point tell you you guys can't multitask and everyone's like, yeah
Yeah, we can't multitask. I can multitask right you,
What we're really just doing is quick page flipping in our minds. We can change topics so fast it almost feels
simultaneous, but it's not really what we're doing is we're expending brain
power, uh, pulling up.
What was the last thing I was thinking about this particular topic?
And then, okay, where am I going to go with that now? Okay. Now back over to this thing.
Well, all the while, while we've changed topics, we're still holding what was
just over here in our working memory.
And our, like our functioning brain power, like diminishes over the day.
Like, people have talked about how interesting study over like the severity of sentences
is that judges levy out on court cases
increases with the lateness in the day.
Um, so like they found a correlation between end of the day court cases tend to get more severe,
Punishments versus like first thing in the morning the judge is more likely to be lenient,
brain power willpower like those decision-making,
Elements of our thing are a finite resource And over the course of the day if we're constantly,
Switching from one thing to the other we're losing focus brain power concentration. We're becoming more foggy,
We're expending what is a limited resource we have over the course of a day.
So just thinking about that alone and what you said, how does that impact me sitting
down to read the Bible and I'm opening up, say, the Bible app, a great app that you probably
should have on your phone.
If there's an app that you should have on your phone, I think you should have that one.
But if you're doing your devotions on it and you're getting updates on the sports game
or your news or you're getting tweets, Instagram posts, messages, it has its own...
While you have access to just about any Bible translation you could ever want for free,
you also have all these distractions that are vying for your attention.
Even if it is just a bubble that pops at the top of your screen and you swipe it back up,
you're still losing some attention and some focus.
Right, right. Yeah, I, you know, we talk a lot about and in fact, I asked you a question maybe a couple
hours ago, you know, like, Hey, are you in a rhythm right now?
Or can we take a break and do the podcast or whatever? Because there is this sense of like, when you I know it's true for me that when I get
into a task, it's easier for me to accomplish the task if I don't pause it.
I mean, obviously, yeah, but because to re reboot the creative process or the just intellectual
process of getting back into it, it takes focus and time and energy, which is why I think most
people will say, or, or at least for me, I think this is probably fairly common is that when you
have an intellectual task to do that the most difficult thing in the task is usually starting
it.
And I think I've said this before, that when I write sermons, the most difficult part of
writing a sermon for me is the first two or three sentences.
If I can get the first two or three, if I can figure out how I'm going to open, then
And the rest of it, it just feels like it's there, you know, almost like the Holy Spirit is.
Well, it's like God has something to do with it, too, but yeah.
And I think it's the way in which we interact with our phones as well.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a.
Well, like I don't know there was like I can't remember this statistic but it was something along the lines of ridiculous like workers,
Like people who do work rarely get an unemployed or up did hour of work done a day
Like you don't go like I'm sure it was even less than that. I just can't remember the exact right, you know, we
Do you have there's such intentionality you have to take if you actually want to avoid,
being interrupted by,
You see and that's the thing that that's what that's so difficult.
It's like, okay, I can't get in an uninterrupted hour of work a day.
So I'm going to go somewhere by myself.
And just hammer down and focus.
You,
Did you take it with you? I'm not by myself. All right, because you've brought your phone.
Because I've brought my phone, right?
Which ends up being the most distracting thing I have.
And so whereas before we've been able to get away in solitude and silence, now when we
lead people towards or counsel people towards or encourage them or admonish them or exhort
them towards getting away with the Lord. I think I said in my sermon, I'm okay with you taking your
Bible. Don't take anything else. Don't take your phone. Just because of the penchant for
for distraction.
I even had times where, you know, I.
Okay, pastoral dashboard confessions here. I had in my own personal goals for the year to take a quarterly.
I was actually just thinking about this. Yeah, a quarterly prayer retreat.
And I haven't taken any of those yet. here we are in the second quarter.
I guess I should do that. We both should do that.
And I was telling my wife about it and she was like,
or I was like, I'm gonna like leave, I'm gonna essentially take my notebook and my Bible,
my toothbrush, change of clothes, you know?
And well, why wouldn't you take your phone?
Like, well, cause it's distracting. It's a, you know, it was a temptation to work or to scroll or to do whatever.
And even despite what for me is the most righteous of reasons, there was like,
we had this conversation about like a, well, what if you get in trouble or what
if you get hurt or what, if you need something or what if, what if, what if,
what if we both played the game?
It wasn't just her saying, no, like take your phone. It was like, well, yeah.
How does it get a hold of you exactly how could I possibly survive right? How could you possibly survive without your phone?
I don't know. Everybody must have just died in fields all by themselves lost because they couldn't they couldn't have Google Maps.
You know Like I need a trip tick or something like that from triple-a You know quest to get anywhere,
But I don't know where I was going with that, other than to say...
Like you will survive you will well it brings up a really interesting dynamic that I've reflected about the phone is like it's.
Like what do you use most?
There's usually like there's usually probably a gazillion apps on anybody's given phone smartphone,
You probably only use like five of them, right?
Like if that like you use you whatever you listen to music on on Google Maps, probably, unless you're insane
and you want to use Apple Maps for some reason.
Whatever social media you prefer, your messages and maybe your phone and your email function.
And then that's pretty much it.
Like, it's pretty rare, like, I shouldn't say rare. There are other apps, you might have games, superfluous.
But like, out of ones that you use, like, the most, right?
Can kind of fit into probably five or seven in that kind of category.
And you can figure that out by going to your screen time.
Yeah, on your iPhones, they have a screen time built-in function. You can look and see how much.
That's a sobering. I get a notification every Sunday morning of how much. Me too.
What my screen time usage was for the week. At church.
Yeah. And I'll look at it and I'll say like, your screen time usage was up 25%.
And I was like think back on the week. I'm like how stressed was I very stressed?
Yep, that aligns like that feels right like my percentage was up that much because I was that maybe,
Distracted or wanted to be that distracted right we could talk about how we use our phones to escape things
I usually know how Stressed out or distracted I've been by whether or not I have to plug my phone in before I go to bed. Oh.
You know whether or not I need to recharge the battery before I go to bed, right?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I think but back to this one point though is that I think
I think it's not so much like you were saying,
like our iPhones are more powerful than the computers that put men on the moon.
How much of that computing power do we actually use? Like, or need or need need? Yeah. But the thing is,
is we don't want to say no to the potential inside of our life.
So you're saying that's we don't want to, or that's the existential question within us.
That's a little bit like when we're asking that question of like,
what is the likelihood of even if I'm gone and I go for a walk for an hour,
hour, right? You're going to go for a walk, going to be gone for an hour. Why would you
not leave your phone at home?
In case someone needs to text me. Someone needs to text me or call me, right? The chances are is that actually, like as
important as I think you are Cameron, you're probably not that important.
Definitely not.
Right? Right. And that's true for me, for everybody, but we all have this like anxiety when it talks
about even just leaving our phone in the house and going outside for a limited
amount of time say like a hour or half hour and I think part of it is is the
potential that we're saying no to like what if I decide I want to look Google,
something right like it we're saying no to all the potential power and possibilities that it has but when in reality on an average day we're only,
using it to you know how much of that are we using to just look at like funny
dog videos on Instagram. I'm calling myself out right there. But, um, like we're only using...
Yep. Does that, does that book talk at all about the, like, and I'm not talking about like, uh,
the funny ha ha, but like the actual addiction to...
No, I was kind of surprised he didn't talk about, like, he doesn't get into any of the
neuroscience, where he doesn't get into like the...
Like the what's it called the gamblers ratio of like there's a certain,
so like if you're Casinos right have figured out and the reason gambling is addictive is because there's a certain frequency at which you succeed,
Uh that they've like scientifically named like there's a ratio of how many times you can lose
versus win that will keep you sitting at the table or keep you pulling the lever.
So if you've ever wondered or thought or had the illusion that perhaps that particularly the slot machines
at a casino are not rigged, they are a hundred percent rigged to pay out a certain amount of times.
And the reason for that is like to keep you sitting there.
And so similarly, like, And that's all playing on like our neurochemistry,
which I've looked at and stuff.
And what it does is it keeps you, so this will be, so people,
like a lot of times when you hear people talk about this, they're like, oh, like the dopamine
just keeps you hooked on your phone.
And that's true, but sometimes we don't actually understand what the dopamine is or what the function of dopamine is.
Dopamine is the desire chemical in our brain.
It's the thing that encourage us to pursue or to crave the thing that will get us the reward.
So when I find a funny video or something interesting or something novel or new on Instagram,
I'm not getting more dopamine, I'm getting more serotonin.
But that like reward, that serotonin endorphin reward tells my system to give me more dopamine,
so that I would keep doing that behavior.
So dopamine is the seeking hormone. It's the seeking hormone.
Serotonin is the reward.
Is the reward. And so what you do is you get stuck, you can, particularly, like, this has happened,
like, I had to kind of work myself out of a really bad funk after I was sick with COVID.
I spent a lot of time on my phone because I was sick with COVID.
And then I, but I was like, what I found myself doing is scrolling,
And anyone who's binged a Netflix series or spent a ton of time scrolling on their phone
will know what I'm talking about, where you're kind of still swiping, you're still watching,
but your enjoyment level of it has dropped to almost zero. And you're like, why am I still here?
I'm not actually like when I sat down, I was like, Oh, it was fun for like 10 minutes.
But then you're like 30 minutes in and you're like, I'm not having fun anymore. I don't feel
good. Why am I having such a hard time putting this down? It's because...
The, our brains are like, well, this is such an easy thing to do.
And it gives us such reliable input of positive rewards or association for new,
things, novelty or, um, or hilarity or interest or whatever.
Cause you know, let's say for like every four tick talks you watch,
you stop on like the fifth one. I'm sure there's some sort of ratio like that.
Um, and you find, Oh, that one was kind of funny. And then you keep going.
Yep. And what you do is eventually the reward you're getting kind of tracks down,
but the input that you're putting in is so low. Your brain is still just telling you to keep
going, keep going. That dopamine is stuck and you have to kind of like set it away and let your brain
to kind of recenter and readjust the things that your brain is encouraging to seek after.
So that's a brief explanation of my, at least understanding of what I've read about like
like the biochemical, neurological, like addictiveness that phones can have on us. Yeah.
Yeah, I've often thought of it, well, like I have an addictive,
and science is not clear on whether or not there are addictive personalities.
Yeah.
But I will tell you, and my wife will tell you the same thing,
Sherry will tell you the same thing, is that I have an addictive personality.
And like I seem to be more vulnerable to obsession over things, which really is addiction.
And like whether or not it's a phone,
or whether it was alcohol or whether it's a hobby or whether it is whatever,
you know, I think that there is, there.
Even anachronistically there is a sense of a addiction that comes with people are,
They're acting as though right they are addicted to.
Substances that we know that people get addicted to But the substance now is their phone. Yes, I,
Remember the one one moment where I saw this very clearly in someone else's life
I've felt it enough in my own life, but I had a I had a student friend in college, roommate, friend, and he was sick.
He was very sick. He wasn't doing very well. I was like, hey man, how you doing?
He's like, all good. And he's sitting there on the couch and he's got his phone
and he's not looking up to me.
He's like, I took enough ibuprofen so that my headache is not so bad so I can at least look at my phone
and the headache be tolerable.
And I'm like, you have a massive migraine, you're sick, and staring at your phone is aggravating your migraine,
but the only thing you're concerned about is that you took enough ibuprofen
that the migraine is tolerable enough that you can keep looking at your phone.
Yep, that's addictive behavior, 100%. 100% is what can I do,
like if I put it in terms of like alcohol, what can, I hate how I feel,
I hate what it's doing to my life, how do I rearrange my life so that I can keep drinking more?
And then it starts over again. And then you hate that you're drinking more and how that feels.
And so what you do in order to get rid of the feelings of your shame is drink more.
Right, and I hate this. This is, I hate this. What is, I hate this.
Just keep going. When I find myself, when I'm able to do this,
this is a good moment for me.
I don't always do this, but if I'm able to, when I find myself on my phone,
like maybe I'm scrolling or I'm, you know, on YouTube watching people pick locks.
Lock picking lawyer. Lock picking lawyer. If for some reason you ever listen to this podcast,
I've watched almost all of your videos.
But anyways, if I'm like doing it and I'm like, and particularly if there's something else
I ought to be doing, or I'm doing it to a point where I'm like starting to feel a little kind of ick,
in my gut around like how much I've been sitting here or I'm hungry and I'm not getting up.
Like, I have to ask myself, all right.
What am I avoiding? What am I running from? What am I trying to not feel that I'm trying to cover
up with distraction right now? It ends up being a question I have to ask myself. Sometimes it's like,
it's a project or a task at work that I'm like, feeling anxious about, feel nervous about,
trying to procrastinate on. I don't want to do this because I'm nervous about it, or I'm not
sure I'm gonna do a good job, right? Like if I can name that I'm fearful of something or I'm
avoiding something, or if I can name like I'm stressed about something or I'm trying to kind
of like unwind, I'm like, okay, what can I do besides numb out to social media? Can I call a
friend? Or more to the point, can I pray to God about it rather than just trying to ignore it?
It? Can I actually take it somewhere that's meaningful, purposeful, and like, redemptive? Yeah, rather than
just trying to stuff whatever feeling it is I'm trying to cover up with my social media use.
And that takes an extraordinary amount of self or self awareness.
Yes. Like I said, I don't always do focus, right? If I'm able to do and sometimes I'm able to name it. And I'm like, I don't
care. And I keep scrolling. Right? Yeah. Yeah, I get that.
You know, it is, but it's impacting like.
It's for something that has become so ubiquitous I feel like we sometimes just don't talk about how much of an impact it's had on pretty much everyone,
Yeah, because well,
Because it's not been stigmatized.
It's it's normalized. Mm-hmm there's we talk about addiction because we're able because it's not a it's not a normative like we,
Go bank going back to alcohol. We can talk about alcoholism because it's not a,
Necessarily normative human experience, right? It exists,
Relatively on the fringes of our lives. Well, everybody's always kind of said well
Yeah, like if you're using alcohol to this degree that is not appropriate, right?
But we've Completely normalized being on your phone five plus hours a day. Yes,
Yeah, in fact, it's kind of and weird not to be.
Yes. You don't have social media?
Yeah. Like what? Yep. You know, or this is so funny.
I was actually, when I was mindlessly scrolling early this morning, not wanting to go out of bed,
I came upon a reel of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Ooh, the Arnold. The Arnold. The interviewer, he was in an interview, absolutely astounded.
Arnold Schwarzenegger does not have a phone. He's got a hard line in his house, but does not have a cell phone.
Sounds like an 80s action hero. Yeah. He has an iPad.
And, and she was like, well, how, how do you get phone calls?
And he's like, and he's like, I don't, she was like, well, how do you talk to people?
He was like, I have an iPad and I use FaceTime.
He was like, I would rather look at someone in their face to talk to them rather than
have a phone and all of its trappings.
And, well, what if they don't have FaceTime?
Then I'm not going to talk to them. I won't be talking to them on that media, essentially, he said.
And she just could not like, you could tell it was such an aberration,
that she didn't have a box to put it in.
Like he was some kind of like circus sideshow freak for not having a phone.
And so to say, well, we have completely normalized.
Completely normalized the use and by extension overuse of that form of media or form of technology
that to not participate in it in the way in which everyone else is makes us the weird ones.
The weird ones. Well, and, and so this, this is like, most of us have taken for granted
that apps like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, whatever social media you prefer
to use YouTube, um, doesn't cost you anything monetarily. Well, we could make an argument
it costs you something monetarily, but it's costing your time. Um, but, um, it doesn't,
don't typically have to pay a subscription fee. That seems to be slightly changing. There's some options for subscriptions in some of those
platforms now. But we're like, oh it's like a free thing. And actually one of the interesting arguments that the author in the book I'm reading,
one of the things where I think I would probably disagree with him a little bit,
is he kind of says, well maybe what if we treated social media, what if we treated
Facebook, like a social, like a social utility, like plumbing.
Or like, like sewer systems and waterways and things like that.
Like, you know, we have government bodies oversee, like sewers, like, why don't we have government bodies overseeing the
internet and overseeing social media as like a social utility that everyone has a has a human right to have access to. And my,
My problem with that is I was like I.
Like, I think humans exist off of social media and I think they probably should.
Like, I don't think it actually should be necessarily treated as a social utility
that people have access.
And there's a whole bunch of things that I would want to have.
I don't know that I would agree with in his particular solution and conclusion in that direction.
Um, but like one is to simply say that, like, you don't actually have to be on social media. Right.
It does cost you something. It costs, like you're paying social media
with all of your biometric interest and profile information.
All your advertising wants and needs. All your advertising wants and needs.
Like, look, if you were under the assumption
that big tech does not have like multiple profiles of you that connected and have connected
all of your accounts, all your email accounts, all your social media accounts.
Like why do they ask for your email account when you make any profile?
Well, because then it knows which, knows to connect you to that profile.
And even if you've got multiple emails, I guarantee you they've got all those emails connected,
to you as an individual.
And then they know what types of videos you like to watch. And then depending on the type of like stuff that you like,
if you use fitness material and stuff like that, They might even know how healthy you are.
They know whether or not they need to be advertising you health medication.
They know what life stage you're in, if you're getting married soon,
or if you're getting ready to have kids.
Like the amount of like, when I started getting engaged and everything,
the amount of content I got that was geared towards,
like couples, like newly wed people on the internet, like-
You did not search for I did not search for got skyrocketed. Yeah, right,
And of course because I'm like in that stage of life, I watched more of it So it fed more of it, but it knows like and I'm sure they've got an algorithm out there
That's looking to say, you know, somebody who's like maybe a diaper or baby food,
Advertisement or something like that? Like I'm sure or better yet I'll probably get like the advertisements for like the camo baby carriers or something like that
that. They're like, okay, we want to look at people who are recently married this
many years ago, and we're going to send them these types of advertisements that
that are geared towards people who are thinking,
That is a hundred percent the reality. Um, the, the book talks, they're interviewing, he interviews several people
having kids.
Who worked in big tech and then have left because of their consciences convicting them over how they were using people's information and stuff.
And while the book, the book makes the assertation, cause if you've ever like said, like, I swear, my phone must be listening to my conversations.
Cause it is.
Well, they say it's not their answer. they're like, they swear, they're like, your phone is probably not listening to you.
The algorithm is actually just that good. It actually has that much information on you
that it can make predictions about you without having listening to you.
That is the conclusion that they... Jesus needs to come back soon.
Put forth in the book, yeah. So if you think that using social media is not costing you anything,
it 100% is. Because if they have enough information on you, they're definitely selling you things,
and you're definitely paying in that way. And you're also just paying in loss of privacy and
all of that, if that's a concern to you. But all that to say, I don't think that we actually have
to be on social media. Like, um, the human, like the human brain, uh, like our, we, we kind of cap
out around a hundred, like semi close connections, a hundred, 150 is about like where we kind of like
cap out as far as having semi meaningful personal relationships. Um, some people can probably have
more but like and I'm not talking like close friendships you can't have 150 close friends
but like you can have 150, let's say 200, like meaningful acquaintances in your life.
Social media like gives you access to thousands.
If you've been on Facebook as long as I have like you have an inflation of friends that do not actually represent meaningful connections anymore,
like I remember when I first got on social media. It's like I'm only gonna make say yes to friend requests of people who are like,
meaningfully connected to me while I was in high school and like Like that, who those people have has changed and in slash I gave up on that, you know,
thing.
I just say yes to a bunch of friend requests because I met them once.
Well, because people will say that that's the benefit of social media.
Right. But you, you actually can't take advantage of it.
You're, we don't have the intel, like we don't have the brain bandwidth or the emotional
bandwidth to maintain even that many relationships and connections, right?
You're supposed to maintain about as many connections as you can tolerate in person.
Because about 150 or 200 meaningful acquaintances is about what you can tolerate for in-person connection.
And so, what are we doing when we're demanding ourselves to, or trying to expect that we do more than that?
And you end up with these weird parasocial relationships and everything.
So I don't it's like I guess like all that to say that like I think that is slightly a myth,
This idea of being I want to be connected to everybody. I think that's a bit of a myth
Like you're not really you have like at best like you should probably just keep a phone book.
Like, if you actually just want, like, well, I want to be able to, like, contact them if I want to
catch up with them someday. Okay, keep their phone number. Keep, like, an email address.
Do you know my phone number?
Off the top of my head, no. I don't know my wife's phone number off the top of my head, Cameron.
I don't. I don't. I know the zip code because I just typed it in several times yesterday.
Yeah, we don't need to, right?
But I don't need to, you know. But, like, yeah. Like, how many connections do you maintain
Yeah on social media that like that are actually meaningful actually meaningful and you say well
I don't want to unfriend them because like what if one day I want to,
Look at their page and actually I mean gossip about what they're posting We all have people that we have as friends on social media that we if we see them across the room in in an actual,
Situation we avoid yeah, because it's awkward. Yep. Why right because we are not actually connected to them or
or wouldn't recognize them because we made connections with them so long ago.
Right.
It's like, oh yeah, we met one time, we may connected on social and then that was it, you know?
Like, yeah. So I don't think, I think like that, to me at least a little bit debunks that personal excuse
of like, I gotta stay on social so I can be reached and connected with people. Yeah. Yeah. No.
Well, we encourage people, maybe we can put a link in the show notes or whatever in the
description or maybe even do a fancy thing on the screen here, link to that book for you.
Yeah. Well, you know, I'll also, I'll share like something that I have been doing personally,
like in my own kind of trying to navigate my relationship with my phone.
What? What is so funny about that? Is it that I answer more advice on your phone?
I just trying to man it. It's a difficult relationship. It's really complicated on again, off again, relationship. Really? Yeah.
She keeps talking to people behind my back.
Yeah. The way we talk about it. Oh man. We live in such a dystopian world sometimes. Um, but like, uh,
you can do things like set app limits on like your, your thing.
I've been using an app called, by the way, none of this is sponsored.
This is just- It can be, if you want.
It can be. If you are the developers of these things, you can definitely pay us for this.
I'm using an app called Opal. I've been using it like maybe the last month or so.
It's a little bit more advanced than like the inbuilt screen time app on iPhones.
You've got a little bit more features and stuff, but what I've got it, I'm not taking full advantage of it,
but I do have a basic setup so that during the weekdays
from essentially like midnight until one o'clock in the afternoon,
all of my social media apps are like off limits blocked.
So that means, cause that's when I get my most productive amount of thought
and work time done is between like morning hours to like post afternoon slump.
And so by putting a limit on it and that I cannot open those apps during that time.
Allows me to be a little bit more focused. I had it on for a couple weeks, and then I took it off
and did a couple days of work without having it on, and my productivity just went, foo, just dropped.
So it actually did benefit me. And there's different levels.
You can block it so that you can take a break for a couple minutes, or you can turn it off early,
or you can set a block that is unmovable and will not change until a certain time.
So like you can do a thing like if you're trying to figure out a way of like you want to do like that retreat Cameron like you can,
Set it default have it select all apps and disable them and then unselect like the few that you're like
All right I need the phone call one and then and then that's it or like phone call and Google Maps or whatever,
And those are the only two things that your phone can do,
And then you set a like time limit or a date limit of when that app limit will turn up and you can set it,
it either at a level where you can turn it off if you want to.
Are the controls password protected or something like that? No, they're not password protected.
But if you can set it so you can turn it off and that it just says, hey, do you want to take a break,
how long are you going to take a break?
And then you can set it for a time limit and it turns it back off.
And if you want to take another break, you can turn it back on and have access to those.
Or you can set it so it just sends you a reminder and says, hey, you said you didn't want to be on this.
Or you can go all the way to the extreme of saying, there is no way to turn this limit off.
Without uninstalling the app.
So there's that. There's another, it does cost a subscription,
which like, you know, if you need another subscription in your life, you know.
But you're also, there's a little bit of a psychology thing behind it.
I'm paying for it, so I should take advantage of it kind of thing.
And then there was another product that isn't released yet, but I find really intriguing.
I don't know if I'll get it yet or not.
I don't know if it's on Kickstarter, or I'm sure if you Googled it, you could find it.
Maybe I'll put a link to it. It's called a Brick,
and it's this little round square brick looking thing.
And it comes with an app, and you set up whatever you want to kind of,
you set up whatever things, whatever apps you want to have access to,
and the ones you don't want to have access to.
You tap it to it, and then, foop, and your phone will essentially become up.
It'll just be able to do only the five or four apps that you feel are absolutely in this necessity,
Keep the phone with you and it is not until you come back and touch that brick,
That you can disable that so like if you're going on a vacation,
It's a really good way the brick home leave the brick home tap it. All right. I have now access to my,
like phone And google maps and maybe spotify or something like that and that's it and I will not be able to turn that off until I come back home and,
Tap that brick. That's cool idea, you know and like the physicality of it like brings some.
You know You could do that even for like if you're one of those people who uses your phone as your alarm
Which you probably shouldn't do but I do,
or Like in you're like like I want to keep myself from scrolling in bed Like, okay, put the brick outside of your bedroom,
tap it before you go to bed, and then take your phone with you into bed.
Now you can't do anything on it.
So now you should just read or whatever. You can still use it as your alarm.
People can still get ahold of you in the middle of an emergency, but you've limited it.
You know, so there's, there are some practical steps like that
that you can begin to take to limit that.
And so the book, Stolen Focus, would actually, he doesn't disagree with what I'm saying, but he would say that it's too short of a solution.
Because his primary conclusion is, he's like, well, we have these big companies who've done this to us,
and somewhat maliciously, not necessarily always intentionally,
but somewhat maliciously. And now it's all personal responsibility up to fix it.
Fix it. And I think that's an interesting conversation if you want to have it.
But I think it's similar to the conversation just about like.
Of Yeah, so like personal yeah personal responsibility like do we have the ability to say no, yeah,
yeah, and so it's like a You know, we can debate. I think his his opinion is is worth considering that like well.
Like yeah, maybe we should have companies that are doing this to us and trying
actively to manipulate us to have some limits or accountability on them. I think
that's a worthwhile conversation having, but I can't make that legislation happen
tomorrow. So in the meantime, what's my personal responsibility and ownership
over the things that I am doing with my time? Or what are the
underlying issues, so why I am? Yes, I think that's a worthwhile conversation. So those are a couple things I'm looking at and
trying to do and kind of my, uh, to try and curb tail some, not
cause I use social media as part of what I do here. Conduit. Like,
I'm like, Oh, not all, but a lot of the stuff that ends up on socials, I end up messing with. And so I want to be able to do
that. And I enjoy social media usage within a certain limit.
There's like a, uh, so much time I can spend so much time on YouTube before, I'm like, this is a now a net loss on me. Yeah.
You know, so trying to live with inside what I feel are like healthy limits for myself, without just completely turning
everything off and deleting it forever. Yeah, moderation, of course. Yeah. And so and for some people, moderation is none.
Right? You know, and that's, that's a matter of conscience. And I don't know, I might, I might become convinced of that
eventually. So we'll see. Good,
conversation. Yeah, I feel like there's probably more there. But if you're listening to the
podcast, and you've got thoughts or questions or experiences,
like, drop a comment, drop us a message, let us know, like, how
are you experiencing social media what you're like.
A relationship with your phone or other tech devices, like how's that maybe been impacting
your spiritual life or your relationships with your family or other responsibilities.
We'd love to hear more of that, because I think if we get some, maybe some feedback on what you
guys are dealing with and thinking through on this topic, I think we could definitely revisit this.
Yeah, I would say maybe not necessarily a book solely focused on technology and focus
and all of that, but the most recent classic is John Mark Comer's The Ruthless Elimination
of Hurry, which kind of addresses some of these issues.
He goes from a pretty wide perspective down to a granular perspective, so you could pick that book up.
Deconstructs the idol of being busy. Yep. I'm just so busy. Mm-hmm. Yeah, as it's as if it's a badge of honor Yeah.
All right. Well, thanks for listening, everyone, and we will catch you on the next episode. Yep. Bye.
Music.