When Vietnamese game developer, Dong Nguyen released the smartphone game Flappy Bird he had no idea how immensely successful the game would become. He also hadn’t predicted that less than a year later, with Flappy Bird still enjoying immense popularity, he would take the game down.
At its peak, the free download Flappy Bird was making $50,000 a day from ad revenue. Nguyen should have been pleased but he was conflicted. He started to read Twitter messages and app store reviews of numerous users of the game warning others to stay away from the game’s addiction.
Users lamented of “ruined lives” and “losing all their friends.” Dong Nguyen had seen enough and informed the digital world that he would be “pulling the plug” on Flappy Bird. He made good on his word and the game disappeared as did Nguyen from the limelight.
In a technological world where we are constantly connected, we have never felt more alone. In a world where are constantly entertained, we have never been more bored.
Author, Andy Wise in his book The Tech-Wise Family has created Ten Tech Wise Commitments. Number 6 on his family’s list is:
“We use screens for a purpose, and we use them together, rather than using them aimlessly and alone.”
Andy calls the time before dinner while everyone in his household waiting to eat, “the bewitching hour.” It can be a time of frustration and impatience. You might know it as being hangry. The temptation is to placate everyone’s behavior and distract his kids from their hunger by entertaining them with screens.
It’s an interesting human behavior in an advanced world, we can be together but yet, disinterested in each other. We can be in the same room but with a preference for being distracted.
Being bored is a new phenomenon that has only existed for a couple hundred years. The idea if being bored hasn’t waned with the introduction of gaming consoles, smartphones, tablets, and streaming entertainment. In fact, we might be able to make a correlation between increased usage of devices and boredom.
My kids have tablets and old smartphones which they mostly use for watching Netflix and Youtube. We limit their daily usage by setting timers. After reaching her daily limit my oldest daughter lamented, “Daddy, I don’t know what to do.”
The other day I caught my middle child staring blankly at the corner of the room. I would normally pick at her but I just took time to notice what she was doing and I thought to myself, “Oh, to daydream is so much better than the alternative.”
Once on a car ride, I caught her daydreaming and asked her what she was thinking about. I can’t remember what she told me but it made me laugh and I envied her childlike imagination. I’ve since thought to myself, “Is it because I’m older that I find it difficult to wonder or have I simply replaced that ability with something else?”
And how have they limited our social interactions?
There is a habit so prevalent in our smartphone saturated culture that it has been given a name, “blueface.” According to an urban dictionary, it is defined as, “People who isolate themselves from their friends when they go out because they are texting the entire time. At night their face will glow blue from their phone.”
Together, yet so far apart. We want to be with people and with the world at the same time. We want both but we end up having neither. We want to be connected but fail to be present.
We push away people.
This may describe our desire to be with God but yet our inability to be changed by him. We want God to do his good work in us. We want the abundant life that only he can give but instead choose a distracted life that our screens give.
Instead of our faces blue reflecting the light of our screens, God wants us to lift up our faces, turn to him and reflect the light of his glory.
But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. – The Apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians 3:16-18
Contemplating the Lord’s glory is a solution to the distracted life. How would our social interaction be different and life-giving if we chose to lift our heads from our screens and reflect the light of God? What might that produce?
God doing his good work in us is called “fruit.” The fruit of God is produced by the Spirit of God. And God’s desire is that we bear much fruit. In order to do that Jesus tells us that we must abide/remain in him.
Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me, you can do nothing. – Jesus, John 15:4-5
I have a habit every Sunday of checking-in to Littleton Church of Christ on Facebook (I’m usually present). But Jesus calls for us to abide in him, not just check-in.
Tony Reinke in his book, 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You, says we have a series of “unchecked distractions.”
- Unchecked distractions that blind souls from God.
- Unchecked distractions that close off communion with God.
- Unchecked distractions that mute the urgency of God.
In checking-out, we are missing out on God’s plan for us. Not abiding means not remaining in God’s transformative love; loving as he loves, loving who he loves.
Instead of drinking from the well of love we drown in tech-induced anxiety and loneliness.
In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the Parable of the Sower. In the parable, some of the seed sown lands on rocks, among weeds, and a hard path where it cannot take root, is choked, and eaten by birds. But other seed fell on good soil. The seed is God’s word.
God’s good work in you begins with a seed. He wants that seed to be planted in the soil of your heart so that it may grow.
We may need to consider that maybe his word is not growing in us because the seed has landed not in our hearts but on our screens instead.
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Jovan preaches for the Littleton Church of Christ near Denver, Colorado. Visit here to listen to sermons preached at the Littleton Church.