Rhythm of Rest: Tech Detox
The little girl gazed into my eyes with a pleading look. “Watch me!” she begged once she had gotten my attention. This is the cry of every child to a parent - notice me, engage with me, be a part of my life! Only… I wasn’t this child’s parent; I had literally never seen this child before in my life. This friendly and eager face was just a kid on a playground who had discovered a rare creature: she had found an adult who wasn’t staring at a phone. I glanced around at the nearby benches and realized with sadness that every other adult in that vicinity had gotten sucked up in the allure of a shiny screen and all of them were completely ignoring their children’s accomplishments on the monkey bars or on the swings.
I pushed my flip phone deeper into my jacket pocket to make sure that it didn’t fall out - at some point I needed to know what time it was as we couldn’t spend all day on the playground. My phone at that stage of my life served two purposes: it was my clock and my… get ready for it… phone. Perhaps you remember that use for a phone: to call your grandma and to answer dentist office calls to schedule appointments… Those were the only reasons I had a phone. No internet, no texting, very few pictures as they were grainy and not worth taking.
One day I was substitute teaching at my children’s school. One of the first grade girls was about to go outside without a coat on. I called out to her that she needed to wear a coat. She trudged reluctantly back toward me and her locker asking, “What’s the temperature outside?’ I shrugged, admitting that I didn’t know. But I held to my request: she needed a coat. It was definitely cold enough for that.
“Why don’t you check your phone?” she persisted. I pulled it from my pocket, laughing, and I told her that my phone did not tell me the temperature. She stared at the object in my hand in disbelief and scorn. “That’s not a phone,” she informed me with all of the vast wealth of knowledge and authority a seven year old can muster. “That’s a toy.” That moment blew me away and still makes me shake my head.
I was the anomaly, for sure, as my children’s prime growing up years were from 2007-2021. “Everybody” had a smart phone, and some people even had that cream of the crop, that much coveted product known as an “I-Phone”. My version of occasional analog communication had suddenly gone into oblivion for the vast majority of people in the world around me. But never once have I regretted hanging onto that old flip phone for so many years. It was a conscious decision and one I made because I did not want to be distracted from the little lives happening in front of me. Not so much this random child at the playground (although I did ache for that child’s desperation to be noticed), but my own four beautiful children. There was no way that I would allow this metal piece of competition to dethrone my children’s right to the thrones of ruling my heart, my time, my focus, and my undivided attention of their growing up years.
Rebekah Lyons writes a chapter on detoxing from technology, and part of her reflection on the need for this involved her realization that during her fast from social media, she became aware that she wasn’t “copying, comparing, or envying the lives of others” (36), She had discovered that she had “filled [her] mind with everyone else’s noise” (35) and was suffering from “the consequences of living an over-shared life” (36). During this time she “recovered the lost art of paying attention” (38).
In these same precious years of my babies arriving, toddling, and exploring the world around them, social media also became a prevalent part of many people’s worlds. I found myself sitting down one night to type a list of “Reasons Why I Hate Social Media” to have available to share with people in case anyone asked me about my lack of interest in it or my absence on those websites but mostly just to articulate to myself why this held no appeal to me at all. I quickly and easily came up with 25 reasons, and I have never had to fast from social media since I never even took the first bite. This is another decision that I have never wished that I had thought through differently.
“Resting from technology, from social media or the internet or our smart phones, slows us down, makes space for us to examine our blind spots, and gives us greater capacity to be present to the moment right in front of us” (38) - Lyons was discovering what I’d already suspected was true and had managed, by the guidance of listening to my heart and God’s whispers, to live out in those precious prime years of raising my children. I hope that you too feel called to live in the moment and in the space where you are, intentionally choosing what God has for you in that place. You will find it’s much easier to see what God presents to you when there’s not a screen in the way of your view!