A More Beautiful Life Collective

Today we are talking all about technology, including how technology affects us and some new habits we can have concerning technology.

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Links:

• Habits Guide
• The Purpose Planner by A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast
• iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy–and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood–and What That Means for the Rest of Us
• Tech-wise Family
• The Common Rule
• Habits of the Household
• Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
• Reclaiming Conversation
• 1,000 Hours Outside Podcast: Rediscovering Joy

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Here at A More Beautiful Life Collective, we know that the hectic hurry of everyday life can drown out our focus on what matters. This podcast is a moment to intentionally pause and realign our focus. Together, we’re working to find the rhythm of Peace in him through the pace of beauty and order. Thanks so much for joining me. 

Announcements

Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast. I’m so excited that you’re here. This is Episode 3 of Season 1, and so I’m so excited to jump back into all the things that we’ve been talking about. 

A couple of announcements before we get started. First, if you haven’t subscribed to both your podcast app, whether that’s Apple podcast, YouTube, or Spotify, please make sure that you subscribe so that you can get notifications for every time that there’s a new episode. Also, there are lots of great things on the blog, and we have more coming. So if you haven’t subscribed to the blog at amorebeautifullifecollective.com. Please go there now and subscribe. 

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to be focusing on habits on the podcast. But we’re also going to be looking at different habits that you can include in your life on the blog. So make sure you check that out.

 Also, I mentioned this in the last podcast, but we have an Etsy shop open. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to keep adding more resources and printables for you. But the Etsy shop is going to have our Purpose Planner. So if you are interested in making sure that you can track all of the things that we talked about as far as our habits go, that purpose planner is really going to help you track what you want from your life, especially in the realm of your habits. 

If you haven’t listened to Episode One and two of this season, go back and listen to those, we talked about the importance of habits. And then we talk about basically how to create habits. So we look at some of the most common ways the best practices for creating habits that looks at Tiny Habits, Atomic Habits, and habit stacking, and all of those things.

Technology: A Keystone Habit

Today, we’re going to start focusing on the first area in our series of habits. So as we go throughout the next few episodes, we’re going to look at technology. Then, we’re going to look at family discipleship, other spiritual disciplines, hospitality, fasting, rest work. But before we get into some of the more common spiritual disciplines like hospitality, or like reading your Bible, I wanted to start our first episode actually talking about technology.

The reason why is that I think as we look at our habits, one of the things that really defines most of the habits in our daily lives is our use of technology. So it could be that we wake up in the morning, and the first thing that we look to is our phone, or it could be that whenever we get home, the first thing that we do is turn on the TV and or turn on Netflix. All of those things set the tone for the rest of our day. And it can suck away time for other habits that we want to do that are going to be beneficial for our life.

One of the terms that they use, whenever you’re looking at a lot of these researchers and people who write books about it, is they use this idea of a keystone habit, or you think of it as maybe like an anchor habit. And so these habits are the habits that are the cornerstone of your day. If you change that one thing, then the rest of your life will change. So for instance, if you automatically wake up and you look at your phone, first thing. That is going to set you down a path where you may be limiting the amount of time or the amount of mental headspace that you have to do other things, like read your Bible.

What we’re going to look at is first our current habits about technology. How do we currently use technology? And then second, we’re going to look at maybe some guidelines for how we should use technology in the future. 

Some Scripture about Technology

Honestly, these verses go with everything that we talked about as far as technology and habits in general. I think they’re good to ground our conversation and technology.

• Proverbs 14:12 – “There was a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” 
• 1 Corinthians 6:12 – “All things are lawful for me. But not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved to anything.” So as I think about those first two verses, I think a lot of times, technology right now, it definitely seems like a way that is right to man, it seems like everything that we’ve been doing in society has led us to this point where we have this technology. And so we feel like we’ve earned it. And it is a way that’s right to man. But we know, there are things with technology that lead to really bad and chaotic outcomes. And in many ways, there’s people who are enslaved to technology, they’re addicted to it. 
• 1 Corinthians 10:31 – “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” 
• 1 John 2:15-17 – “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world. The desires of the flesh, and the desires of the eyes, and pride and possessions is not from the Father, but it’s from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever.” 
• Romans 12:2 – “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing, you may discern what the will of God is what is good and acceptable, and perfect.” 
• Matthew 6:33 – “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” 

As I look at all of these verses, I think it’s important to ground our understanding of habits based on what these verses say. So some of the common themes that I see is (1) it’s very easy for us to view certain things as a way, that’s right. And a lot of times, what we’re doing is we are viewing what the culture says, as what is good and right for us – when that may not always be the case.

Tim Keller talked about this in he used to say that it was a script that we live by. So basically, whenever we are raised in a certain culture, we take in what this culture gets. So we might watch shows, we might read books. And so we take in these things. And these become the script that we go by, a lot of times, they’re things that we don’t even really understand that we’re doing it subconsciously because it’s a habit. And so we are taking these things in, and we almost become enslaved to it. And so I see these verses where it talks about Do not love the world, do not be conformed to the world. If we’re conforming to these scripts, without ever analyzing whether they’re good or bad. In many ways, we may just be conforming to the way that the world works, and not recognizing how God wants us to live differently. 

So I think whenever we look at technology, it’s important that we recognize that there’s a danger sometimes where you can become legalistic about things like technology. But I think it’s important that we want to make sure that things that we’re doing are being done for the glory of God, and that we’re seeking God first. So it’s important to analyze the scripts that we’re living in. And then after we analyze it, we pick the best way that we can seek after God and the way that we can seek His glory.

Assess Your Current Technology Habits

So I think it’s important for us to pause now and say, “Okay, what are your current habits?”

Now, everybody is going to be different. So the things that I do, my husband doesn’t do. So I definitely am on social media more. So I might look at Facebook, or Instagram, or Pinterest. I really love Pinterest. But I look at those things and that’s what I like, but he enjoys watching YouTube videos more. And so the things that I would need to do to understand my current habits in the use of technology are going to be different than what he would need to do. If you notice that use a lot more social media then that would be something that I would want you to recognize and write down. If you notice that you’re watching YouTube videos more, you need to recognize that and write that down. 

Use the screentime app. I think the first thing that we have to look at is how much time we spend on technology, it’s really important to use an app called screen time to document your time, if you screen time, it’ll show you like, are you using three hours, one hour, two hours. And it will also divide it up by apps. And so once you’ve written down how much time you spend on technology, I really encourage you to open up that screentime app now and just check out how much time you’ve been using. If you don’t have it going, you can go ahead and flip it to the on button. But again, depending on what type of technology you use, for me, I use a lot of time, I spend a lot of time on my phone. 

Identify what devices you are using. So because I spend more time on my phone, than I do like watching TV or something like that, looking at the screen time on my phone is going to give me a good indication of how I use technology. But if you notice that you spend a lot more time on your computer, or on TV, you will need to look at that and add that in. So I would make a list of how much time you spend on technology.

Identify how you are spending your time on those devices. And then some of the things that you are doing, when you’re using that technology. Is it social media? Is it gaming? Are you just like kind of Mindlessly scrolling, binge-watching Netflix? or kind of like vegging out? What are you doing? Looking at the news?

Identify what you are trying to gain from using technology. Are you trying to gather more information, you know, some people, like to watch the news. Another way that we have this kind of knowledge acquisition is we are watching YouTube videos or like I mentioned Pinterest. Pinterest is very much like you’re looking at these pictures of things that you want to do maybe in your house, but you’re also getting like these DIY projects. And I really love that I find that there’s a lot of inspiration for things that I can do. 

But you can tell what you’re looking for from technology based on the types of technology that you use. And all of this, the reason why it’s so important that we keep track of what we’re using technology for is that our current habits are going to indicate what we’re trying to get from that technology. And that’ll indicate basically what we’re worshiping in life. So let’s think about this. 

Last time, we read a quote from Justin Whitmel Earley. And what he said is that habits are a type of liturgy because it’s an action repeated regularly. And so we mentioned how habits become worship and worship forms us. 

So just like we can make interest in idols, and we become like them, we become our habits. And so if you notice that you’re spending 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 hours on technology, then you are going because that’s a ton of time, you are going to spend your life doing things. And what you spend your life doing is what makes you who you are. There’s a book called iGen and I just finished reading it. She talks about the fact that I Gen so that would be me, I was born in 1995. So that is me. iGen are people who we grew up and smartphones became a thing I was in high school in the late 2000s. And so that’s when really like blackberries were coming in. And then people started to get like the first iPhones. And so having those iPhones and having those, that access to social media, it became the thing that I just did. So we stopped going out and doing some of the bad things I did. And the subtitle of the book is why, you know, this generation is, you know, drinking less, not having sex as early, not really going out. But they’re not really doing anything, because they’re at home, on their devices. And generally, she said that the boys were on video games, and then the girls were on social media. And so you’re spending so much time on these devices. 

What are you trying to get out of technology?

And so basically that is the thing that’s shaping you as a person. And so, when you’re looking at your list of technology, you need to see okay, what am I trying to get out of this thing? Why am I doing this thing? One thing that I think is helpful is as you list out the activities that you’re doing, try to boil it down to what are you finding? What is this? What is this action satisfying in your life, and that will help you to understand what you were worshiping. 

So for instance, if you first thing in the Morning, look at your phone. And the thing that you feel like you need to do is you need to look at the news because you need to know what happened in the day so that you can feel prepared for the day, that is going to show you that you want to maybe have control over what’s going on in the world. Or maybe you feel like if you know about it, you can prepare for it so you can lessen your anxiety. So you are looking to the news as something that you trust in to overcome, you know, these uncertain circumstances. 

But some of us, we don’t really care about the news, you’d rather not know what’s going on in the news, but we still might be reaching toward towards our phone. But instead, we might be looking at social media first. And there’s different reasons why people get on social media, it could be that you’re looking at social media, for the common reason, which is to see who’s liked your pictures and maybe liked your post, or maybe who’s tried to connect with you. So it makes you feel like you are loved and seen. Or me I don’t really do that on social media. But I am on social media a lot. And normally what I’m doing is I’m trying to find out information on there. So it’s basically the same reason that people look at news, but I’m using it, my social media becomes almost my news source, which is probably not that great. So that’s another reason. If you’re gaming, or if you’re you know that you’re not watching Netflix, or just scrolling mindlessly for like the dopamine rush. That’s another reason it’s because maybe it’s an escapist reason, which I think is another reason why I use it is you’re trying to escape from your reality by looking at your phone, and it can change your that like the chemicals in your brain, because you’re getting a dopamine rush. 

Technology Addiction: Real Life seems grayed out

When you are looking at social media, there was a book that I just listened to called Dopamine Nation. And in this book, she talks about the way that addicts try to get over their addiction and some of the things that they do. And also she talks about how really, as a society, we’ve all become addicted to things because we have so much in our society that we can get addicted to. So you might not think about it. I mean, sugar is addicting. Coffee is addicting. Technology is addicting. The foods that we eat fatty foods can be addicting salt, in high quantities can be addicting. So these are things that they’re addicting, because they release that dopamine in our brains, and so it makes us crave them. And so what we’ve done is we’ve heightened our, like our baseline that we need to feel good, you know, just like alcohol, if you drink more alcohol or more coffee, you will heighten the baseline where you know, one cup of espresso latte may make you jittery. But then if you start drinking one cup every single day, eventually, you’re gonna get to the point where you’re like, I think I need another coffee. And then you’re upping your baseline, just like with medications or anything. And so that’s what we’ve done in society is we’ve done that with ourselves. 

But we’ve done it with things like technology, where to get to the point where we feel good after watching something, or after reading something or after drinking something, we need more. And so you can kind of see this, I did kind of a self experiment with myself, I had seen somebody recommend that. To limit their technology, what they were going to do is they were going to put their phone in grayscale. So you can do that if you have an iPhone, I don’t know how you do it on Android. But if you have an iPhone, you just have to turn on Siri. And you can say, hey Siri, turn phone to grayscale. And if you do that, you can see how your screen time changes because in grayscale, the way that the person said it and I think this is very good as they said that they recognize that the real world was in color, and their phone was not. And so it made them want to live in the real world. But we can see how even the images, kids feel this way where the video games that you play, and the movies that you watch, those things are so much more almost vivid than real life, but it’s not actually real. And so you need to understand all of this is to say you need to understand what you’re trying to get from technology. And that will help you to understand why you may or may not be addicted to it. 

One thing that I think that is important when talking about technology is our needs and how technology can be an idol. There’s lots of books that you can look at to talk about this. The Common Rule by Justin Whitmore Early, he does talk about this but then there’s also the Tech wise Family, Reclaiming Conversation. There’s lots of books that focus on our technology use and how to Do it well. But the Common Rule says, “This sin has turned a people meant for presence into a people of absence. When we try to be present everywhere, we end up being present nowhere. When we try to free ourselves from the limitations of our presence, he always become enslaved to absence.” So I think by us trying to be on technology, again, we’re escaping almost everything that you do, you’re escaping. If you’re trying to look at news and you’re looking at news from halfway across the world, you think that you’re doing that because you need to know, to be informed, to be omnipresent, we want to become like God. But really, what we’re doing is we’re limiting ourselves because we’re not present anywhere. If I’m looking at news from halfway across the world, or even news where I’m trying to see what friends have liked it that, you know, I went to high school with that I never actually see, what I’m doing is I’m actually fracturing, my presence. And I’m not present in the moment where I actually am. 

There was an episode on a podcast that 1000 hours outside podcast, where she talked about it was this lady who wrote a book about pictures and taking pictures. And she actually said that by doing that, it was actually grounding her in the presence. Because by reminding yourself to take a picture, you are starting to look at the little ways that life can be beautiful. And I’ve noticed that myself, I don’t really take pictures that much. And so because of that, I forget, I become a person who forgets all of the great things that I’ve done with my kids and in my life and all those perfect moments. And so I think by trying to ground yourself in the presence, however you do that is important. But I think technology takes us out of the presence. 

So I think the question once you figure out what you’re trying to get from technology, how much time you spend on it, how it is forming you? The question, then we can ask ourselves is we I think at the base, and at the root of it all, I mean, obviously, I’m using technology now, to record this podcast to create the blog to create these things. You know, I typed my notes on the computer. So I use technology quite a bit. I just mentioned how taking pictures can ground you in the presence, that’s also using technology in order to do that. But we have to recognize what technology is. And technology is a tool. 

But it is not our God, it is not the thing that we want to worship. And so to figure out where we’re at with technology, and what the next steps with technology need to be, we have to ask ourselves, are we in control of technology? Or is it in control of us? And so when we recognize it, that we can ask ourself the question who is forming whom? Is technology forming us? Are we using technology to form our lives as a tool? Once you’ve decided what you want to use technology for, that you want to use technology to be a tool for you, maybe in your job, or something else. But you don’t want to let it be the thing that rules your life. 

Habits to integrate into our technology use

The next thing that you have to do is figure out okay, what are the habits I can put in place in my life that is going to help me to overcome this. And so there’s two ideas. Again, these come from the Common Rule, and you can pick up that book, the links in the show notes. It’s a great read, and I’d recommend anybody to read it. 

But the two recommendations he gives is one to limit your time on technology, and then to to curate your time on technology. So let’s talk about limiting first, and then we’ll talk about what curation is.

Set boundaries on your technology use. So limiting your time is basically you’re saying, Okay, I have certain parameters on my time. And then the rest of it, I’m not going to pick it up. Actually the dopamine nation book, it talks about this, it says, you know, for some people who, you know, maybe they’re alcoholics, and they’re not going to quit cold turkey, what they do is they say, I’m going to have a beer after five o’clock, or maybe I’m going to have a beer on Friday nights after five o’clock, or I’m only going to drink whenever I am with, you know, my friends or something like that. So they’re trying to limit their time. If you do intermittent fasting, it’s the same thing. You’re limiting the time that you can eat, to try to curb some of the snacking that you may just have a habit of doing outside those times. So late night snacking you don’t want to do you say okay, I’m gonna stop eating at eight o’clock, and then I’ll start eating in the morning at eight o’clock. And that limits your time. 

So you need to think about this with technology when a great recommendation and I’ve been doing this for a long time is I put my phone so I have like a dumb alarm clock little egg timer thing. And so that is my alarm clock so I don’t use my phone as my alarm clock. What I do with My phone at night is I plug it in, in my kitchen. So I have a little charging station in my kitchen, I plug it in, in in my kitchen. And normally what I’ll do is I’ll take off my Apple Watch and my phone, and I’ll put it my phone to bed around nine o’clock. And then in the morning, I’ll get it after I do my Bible reading. So what I’ve done by putting my phone there is I’ve said, Okay, I’m not going to be scrolling Instagram, super late at night, I’m not going to be looking at emails, and I’m not going to be waking up first thing, and looking at Instagram, or looking at emails. So putting your phone to bed is a great idea. And also, if you do that, in the morning, it’s one of those Keystone Habits. So in the morning, I’m not automatically looking at my phone, and losing that time in the morning. So by having it out in the kitchen, then what I can do is, after I’m done with my Bible reading, I can look at my phone, but I don’t go there first thing. So that’s an example of limiting your time for a while. 

What I did, because I wanted to really severely limit my social media time is I said, I could only be on Facebook, on Fridays, whenever I was in the car coming home from work. So whenever I was still working on Fridays, I would look at Facebook. And so I could get all of the updates. You know, if people have announced that they were having babies, or that they had got engaged, I could see all the updates, but I was limiting my time. So that’s another ways you limit your time for maybe the place that you’re in. So if I’m doing it my car, I’m not going to sit my car all day. And so because of that, it limits my time for me. So this for examples of limitations you can put on your time, I think it’s good to be a little bit more specific than I only want to spend like an hour a day, especially even with the screen time app on your phone, you can always just click, you know, ignore this message for today. So I think by saying that you are going to limit it to a certain time, it makes it a little bit easier to actually stick with it. So that’s the first habit that you can have. 

Curate what you are looking at on technology. The second habit is this idea of curation. So I’m going to read you this quote from the Common Rule. It says, “The habit of curating media and take strikes at the heart of the impulse of the common rule. The Good Life doesn’t come from the ability to choose anything and everything. The Good Life comes from the ability to choose good things by setting limits.” So this quote right here, I mean, it talks about this idea of limitation, but then it also shows how even curating your media, it’s the same idea as limiting your intake on your phone. And most of us would say it’s good to spend less time on your phone, this is the same idea. So basically, you only pick the best things for your family, to watch and to intake into their lives, we recognize this, that you know, you can’t eat everything in the world, right? If you did, you’d be really heavy, it would be unhealthy wouldn’t be a good thing. And so we curate our food to pick the best things, we recognize that if we fill up on cookies, then we’re not going to have room for the vegetables that we need to get our nutrients. And so it’s the same thing with curating media, sometimes you have treats of things that you like, My son loves Paw Patrol, there are times that we let him watch Paw Patrol. But we also want him to see these other things. So there are movies that are good movies, movies, that can be life changing. And so by curating your media intake, you can show your family, the best movies, the movies, that’s going to change them. Stories that will change them. But you’re also limiting some things that are more like candy that they don’t need to be in taking so much of. 

One idea for curating your media intake is to have a family movie night. So every Friday, we have a pizza and movie night. And we get to pick lots of different movies that we love to watch sometimes are things that are new, that we’re just trying to figure out if we like, sometimes they’re things that my son wants to watch. But then they’re also movies that we really like and that we want our kids to watch, too. So that gives us that option where we’re cultivating a family culture. And it’s something that he looks forward to my son looks forward to. It’s something that we can do as a family. And we’re building these memories together. It’s a great tradition, but then it’s also something that we can show them the best that society has to offer. So that’s one example of curation. 

You can think about this with music, like you don’t need to listen to every single song under the sun. You need to pick the best songs and the best songs for your family to learn. And you need to think about that too, with just the mindless, you know, music that you have in the background, pick the best things so that you’re building the melodies that your kids are going to grow up knowing what do you want them to hear? And so with every idea of curation, there’s this idea of wading through all the things that maybe society has just given you, and saying out of all of these things, what is the best because you can’t consume everything. And so one of the best ways to limit technology is to pick the best, and then have that in your life. 

I was talking with some people in our Wednesday night Bible class, and one of the things that we said, is just our entertainment, you know, keeping along with this, if you just watch Netflix all the time, sometimes you’re going to think, Okay, well, this show is super funny, or on HBO or something like that. This show is super funny. This is what I want to watch. But you know that that’s not the best thing for you to be in taking into your life. And if you say, I don’t really care, I’m gonna watch it anyway, you might have made that thing an idol. And so sometimes with society, if you have clean comedy, or if you have shows that maybe aren’t, in keeping with what culture says is a good thing. We view those as worth less than things that reaffirm our values. But what I’ve noticed is a lot of times, you know, discipline breeds desire or leads to desire. And so I think, the more that we put what’s good and beautiful in our lives, the more that we cultivate this taste for good things, the more that we will see how beautiful life really is. And the more that our tastebuds are, you know, the things that we want to put in our lives, our intake, the more that we will want those good and beautiful things. And maybe not the things that society says are good, but we know that they’re really not. 

10 Tech Wise Family Commitments

So as we wrap up today, this was our deep dive into technology. Again, we’re going to continue talking about all of the things related to habits. Next week, we will be looking at Scripture and prayer. After that we’re going to be looking at our households, and who makes up our households. And then we’ll look at hospitality. And so there’s lots of things that we are going to be looking at over the next couple of weeks. And so I really encourage you to make sure that you like and subscribe to this podcast. It’s also on YouTube, Apple, podcasts, Spotify, and leave a five star rating and review if you like what you listen to, because that helps us get noticed and to build the community together.

So the last thing that I’m going to do is I’m going to read you these 10 tech wise commitments. So this is for your family. So if you’re looking at ways that you can make some goals for your life, about technology, what habits you want to add in our technology, you can look at these tech wise commitments. And then on the habit guide notes, if you go to the blog, you can download these notes, there’s a place for you where you can write your own tech goals for your family. So I’m gonna read these these are from the tech wise family by Andy Crouch. Number one, we develop wisdom and courage together as a family. Number two, we want to create more than we consume. So we fill the center of our home with things that rewards skill and active engagement. Number three, we are designed for a rhythm of work and rest. So one hour a day, one day a week and one week per year, we turn off our devices and worship, feast, play and rest together. Number four, we wake up before devices do and they go to bed before we do. Number five, we aim for no screens before double digits at school and at home. Number six, we use screens for a purpose and we use them together rather than using them aimlessly and alone. Number seven, car time is conversation time. Number eight, spouses have one another’s passwords and parents have total access to children’s devices. Number nine, we wanted to sing together rather than letting recorded and amplified music take over our lives and worship. And number 10. We show up in person for the big events of life, we learned how to be human by being fully present at our moments of greatest vulnerability. We hope to die in one another’s arms.

So as we wind down this week, I’m gonna end this with prayer just to wrap up this time together. But again, I hope you join us next week as we continue looking at some more habits that we can add to our life. And don’t forget to check out the blog where you pray with me. 

Dear Lord, thank you so much for this time just to be on this podcast and this time to talk about technology and how we can use it as a tool to glorify you. Or please just make us aware and make us wise of the way that technology maybe forms us maybe shapes us and just help us to have the discernment to limit the times where we maybe make it the Lord of our lives instead of you. I pray this in Jesus name, amen. 

Well, I hope we’ll see you next week.