Visit the Outernet, Tarry Awhile

Our kids love a song by Steve Poltz and Danny Michel called “Devices.” With a chorus of “Get off your devices / They’ve all become vices,” these Canadian singer-songwriters don’t mince words about the negative impact of phones and tablets. 

“What’s a vice?” the kids wondered at first. Their two guesses worked as well as the original: is the device our personal Vice President or do we hang onto our phones with vise-like grips? This sparked a great conversation about homonyms, homophones and bad habits.

“Get off of that Internet / Come out to the Outernet / You’ll have a good time I bet.”    

It sounds bald here in print, but Poltz and Michel never take themselves too seriously: when we heard Danny Michel play it live, he pretended to forget the lyrics and stopped to look them up. . . on his phone. 

During my sabbatical, I read three books on how technology is colonizing our lives. Danny Michel’s joke fits a pattern – even the people sounding the alarm about how dependent we’ve become on our glowing rectangles have a phone in hand. Andy Crouch, for example, ends each of his suggestions for putting technology in its proper place with a “Crouch Family Reality Check,” where he admits to the ways he’s fallen short. 

We are essentially all always connected, for better or for worse. And culturally, we’ve come to this point so quickly that it boggles my mind. What’s the impact on our brains, bodies, faith, relationships and creativity (just to name a few) when we spend more time on the Internet than in the “Outernet”? The three books I mentioned try to answer that, but it’s just about impossible! Very few people live tech-free anymore, to provide comparison. Contemporary churches are more likely to jump on the digital bandwagon than offer thoughtful resistance to sweeping tech trends, in my experience. The task of finding a healthy digital diet, if such a thing exists, is left to individuals (or to families, as Crouch encourages). 

Can our devices lead to virtue or have they all become vices? And does that imply a series of bad habits, or actual wrongdoing? Those questions are worth a dozen more books and conversations (and songs)!

All I can say is this: I don’t want to spend my life staring down into a small screen. 

NEOMANIACS
I usually keep some paper handy to jot down quotes while I’m reading, but with these books I found myself fascinated more by the vocabulary. Let me share a handful of new terms here. 

David Brooks says our entire lives now mimic a digital cocktail party: multiple strands of endless small talk. We’re addicted to anything new – within the last five minutes – which is known as neomania, Tony Reinke explains. Likewise, if you get anxious without access to your phone, that’s nomophobia – literally no-mobile-phone-phobia. 

Reinke also identifies outrage porn: our impulse to judge, punish and get riled up with righteous indignation by things we find online, a cultural appetite fed by click-seekers. 

Smart phone and app developers understand that our attention is a commodity worth money in the attention economy, Cal Newport says. 

He also believes that if your phone continually distracts you from your own mind, you may be suffering solitude deprivation. (This is easy to remedy! Go for a walk and leave your phone behind.) 

Reinke finds a prophetic warning about the information age from King Solomon – “Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body” (Eccl. 12). Simply put, our physical bodies cannot carry the volume of our data ingestion. One solution might be Crouch and Newport’s digital declutter: a 30-day break from optional technologies during which you explore and rediscover meaningful real-world activities.

Or try digital minimalism as defined by Newport: a philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected activities that support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.

HYPERCONNECTED
Why did we devote an entire issue of Christian Courier to the smart phone? Because “the pace of technological change has surpassed anyone’s capacity to develop enough wisdom to handle it,” as Crouch says; we desperately need each other’s insight and advice. More crucially, the glowing rectangles care nothing for our values, and we do precious little to examine theirs. 

Does this phone redeem the time I give it? 

Does it bring healing in an area of brokenness? 

Does it deserve $84 a month in data charges? 

Does it help me draw closer to God or sense his goodness?   

For how many of us, I wonder, is the quiet, honest answer “no”?

Sensing the same problem, a new company called Yondr now creates phone-free spaces for artists, organizations and educators by physically separating people from their devices. You can hire Yondr for your wedding or concert! Each guest is given a phone case. The case locks. Guests carry the locked cases until the event is over. 

“We provide a haven,” the company says, “to engage with what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with.”

This is surely proof that we’ve lost all self control, and are clinging – just barely – to perspective. Thankfully, Yondr isn’t necessary in our house, not yet at least. If our kids catch anyone on an iPad or phone for too long, they’ll break into song: “Get off your devices. . . .” 

CITED BOOKS
The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in its Proper Place by Andy Crouch, 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke and Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport.