This is Part I of a 2-part series. To read Part II, click here.
Cultivating habits of holiness in our everyday lives can seem an insurmountable challenge when we recognize how many distractions this broken world has to offer. Whether we are readying ourselves for work or caring for our family, it is easy to pull our phones out and check if there’s anything new to see. With a single swipe, we can make financial transactions, display current glucose levels to manage diabetes, or access a map so that we won’t get lost while driving. The medical technology to which our phones link us can potentially save our lives. The special tags our phone can track for our children can help contribute towards their safety and well-being. In short, there are many healthy things this pocket-sized piece of technology can assist with.
Our Device’s Duality
As with many good things, however, technology comes with a dark side. A brief pause in our day can quickly turn into hours of scrolling content, imbibing negative news stories, and pouring over mindless videos. These devices can distract us from precious time with family, produce a siren call of beeps and pings when we are trying to keep our eyes on the road, or interrupt necessary fellowship with the temptation to check our most recent push-notifications.
Social media is now designed ultimately to feed us what we want…
Designs for social media algorithms were initially introduced in 2009. It was at this point that media began to appear to users based on preference and engagement, not chronological order. The benefit of this is that we receive content more suited to our tastes. However, because our social media is now designed ultimately to feed us what we want, there are many ways in which our weaknesses can be exploited. Matthew 26:41 tells us to, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The first step for believers in their battle for temptation is to be vigilant, identify personal weaknesses, and anticipate how these areas may affect us. The following list is not exhaustive by any means. However, knowing these key areas on how we can be tempted in our use of technology sharpens our awareness of “sin crouching at the door” (Genesis 4:7).
Fueling Fear and Anger
When individuals or organizations are developing content, one of the most frequent goals rests on how to keep users engaged for longer periods of time. This increased exposure time improves the likelihood of a user making money for content creators. Because short stories, videos, or photos increase dopamine to the brain, we instinctively gravitate towards those apps which will feed us more of this feel-good chemical. In his book, The Anxious Generation, author and scientist Jonathon Haidt summarizes this truth: “The creators of these apps use every trick in the psychologists’ tool kit to hook users as deeply as slot machines hook gamblers.”
One of the most profit-yielding currencies in digital marketing is human anger. This emotion stimulates the brain to engage, react, and perseverate on what caused the anger to begin with. A relatively recent term utilized by media companies is “rage-seeding,” referring to sowing seeds of anger to harvest the benefit of human outrage. Content that is created to provoke, elicit argumentative reaction and re-sharing has greater financial traction.
One of the most profit-yielding currencies in digital marketing is human anger.
This anger often comes from deep-rooted fears about the circumstances we are viewing. What we choose to do in the aftermath of that fear and anger can very quickly lead us towards sin. Colossians 3:8 tells us, “But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.” Shielded by anonymity and protected by a virtual layer of removal, it is much easier to type words that are slanderous, wrathful, and malicious. This can affect not only the battle of our physical actions but also the battle of our minds.
An added harm is that we do not oftentimes know the full breadth of the content’s origin. There is a plethora of misinformation, fake AI content, and sensationalized news stories that are wholly plucked out of their contexts. This misinformation is served up to our primed selves on a silver platter, ready to foment a call-to-arms on whatever issue is trending. The end result is that we are expending time in our short lives, stewing in anger over an issue that is often distant from us geographically, potentially operating off of false information and falling into sinful reactions.
Fostering Comparison
The second way in which our phone algorithms can potentially lead us into temptation is by causing us to rely on false truths about our identity. When we share things about ourselves or our lives on social media, it would be more typical for us to show the best version of what we want people to see. It is safe to say that many people are attempting the same: polishing content and releasing it when they are satisfied that it shows only the best aspects and none of the worst. In a world of airbrushed models, glossy food advertisements, and access to people’s fancy vacation photos, it can be easy to fall into the trap of coveting.
Some of these desires can actually lead to good outcomes in our personal lives. To be charitable about its uses, our phones can provide us with new ideas on how to make our homes more welcoming and efficient. Viewing advertisements for healthy living apps can potentially lead us down a road of stewarding our bodies with God-honoring self-control.
However, there is also a down-side to this carefully curated content. Viewing staged photos can potentially lead us to the sins of coveting and idolatry. It can become all too easy to compare our lives and talents to the painstakingly airbrushed content that we are viewing. If we find our décor style, physique, or income-limited lifestyle lacking, this creates rich soil for seeds of envy to take root. When jealousy-related anxiety takes hold, we feel compelled to make changes in our environment or purchase products that help us to mirror what we are viewing on our screens. It is a cyclical appetite that can leave us feeling inferior and our bank accounts potentially much emptier.
This can lead us towards finding meaning in material things rather than reveling in our identity in Christ. Proverbs 14:30 gives us a piercing reminder when it says, “A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.” We can still operate technology without falling into this entrapment—it simply requires careful and frequent examining of our heart posture to root out those insidious and stubborn roots of envy.
Enabling Addiction
…the fire of our closeted addictions can easily be stoked without proper watchfulness and accountability.
The third area we see a potential pitfall lies in the realm of enabling addiction. Because our algorithm caters to our appetites, there is always the possibility that our phones can latch onto the wrong sort of hunger. Because these digital computations are designed to find that which holds our attention, the fire of our closeted addictions can easily be stoked without proper watchfulness and accountability. Having these temptations presented in front of us frequently greatly increases the probability of our stumbling. James 1:14-15 summarizes this progression: “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”
If you have ever indulged in something delicious, you will understand how tempting it can be to take a second and third helping. God created good things in this world for us to enjoy as a means of common grace to all mankind. However, these good things can become harmful to our health if our desires do not remain within God-given boundaries.
Our devices are capable of identifying and feeding into sexual appetite by displaying provocative content. This can quickly lead to sins within the mind and sins against our own bodies. Pornographic content has the power to destroy trust within marriages, provide people with sinful expectations on intimacy and compromise personal integrity. If these digital designs catalogue our interest in gambling, our screens will quickly proffer outlets for a vice that can bankrupt us. If our algorithm identifies our proclivity for engaging in retail therapy, eager providers await to lap up one’s disposable income. Indeed, even auto-play functions on our media cause consumers to peruse content for hours without making the self-aware decision to do so. This tailored spoon-feeding can potentially make us waste hours of our precious lives imbibing content we will soon forget.
Submitting to the Right Dominion
In summary, it is vital to our spiritual health to remain aware of the numerous ways in which our devices can track and pursue our desires. It is also good to keep in mind how some of these pursuits can actually be very healthy. Anecdotally, my own phone algorithm tracked my inquiries about my son’s congenital medical condition and directed me towards a life-altering treatment option. I have sought advice on topics that my local community could not speak on, garnering wisdom from informed individuals I have never met in real life. Indeed, the Lord can use our searching to answer our prayers, provide us with encouragement, and point us towards the wisdom and personal experience of others.
When we are in Christ, God’s grace signifies that sin will not have dominion over us.
In contrast, this useful aid can also lead us into temptation. However, Jesus’ strength to resist sin and flee from temptation gives us hope that we can lean into the Lord for endurance. When we are in Christ, God’s grace signifies that sin will not have dominion over us. In Romans 6:12-14, we read, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”
In Part 2 of this series, I will examine practical ways in which we can lean into the Lord’s sufficient strength to overcome the challenges we face in the digital world. It may be innocuous enough to wake up in the morning and begin to mindlessly follow the trail of breadcrumbs that our algorithm is leaving for us. In reality, however, we must remain mindful that we are being faced with a difficult choice when we open our applications. Will we obey sin’s passions and let it reign over our mortal bodies or will we flee and pursue Christ’s example and acknowledge God’s dominion over our lives?
