Podcast: How to Develop Healthier Tech Habits in 2025 (Samuel James)

December 30, 2024 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Reevaluating Our Tech Habits for 2025

In this episode, Samuel James talks about some of the negative impacts that smartphones and our other devices can have on our relationships with other people and what it might look like to cultivate good habits for using these technologies wisely as we think about the new year.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:00 - A Tech Reevaluation for the New Year

Matt Tully
Samuel, thanks for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast today.

Samuel James
Thanks, Matt. It’s great to be back.

Matt Tully
Today we’re going to talk about what it might look like for us to think a little bit more intentionally about our use of technology, our tech habits, for lack of a better term, especially as we start this new year. Sometimes the new year is a time when we’ll have New Year’s resolutions, we’ll have goals that we try to set up, and we’ll take this time to step back and think about our lives in these bigger ways. So I wonder if we could start there. Why might it be a helpful thing for us to consider doing a tech reevaluation as we think about 2025?

Samuel James
I think it’s a really interesting question. I think that the new year is typically misunderstood in one of two ways. Either people think it’s a magical thing, like, “Oh, on January 1st my life just completely resets, and I can do whatever I want and make myself the person I want to be.”

Matt Tully
All my struggles with self-control and discipline are going to just disappear in the new year.

Samuel James
They’re just going to evaporate. January 1st is when everything changes. And so there’s almost that mythological sense of the new year, which I don’t think is true. But I also think people can make the mistake of thinking that it’s nothing. And actually, when you look in Scripture and you see how many times God’s people came together for festivals and for different feasts and different things like that, you get a sense of time and that God’s people are called to live within time in a way that’s meaningful. For example, in the year of Jubilee, every seventh year, there was massive socioeconomic implications for that. The land would take a year off, debtors would be forgiven. And so there is that sense of that, as embodied people, we live in time. And so when we do turn the page on a year, I think it is a good time to think about what the Lord is calling us to do. What are the ways in which we may have struggled or fallen short in the previous year? And then what are some lessons that we can take with us into the new year? And I think that can just be a way of refreshing our own hearts. There is something invigorating about the start of a new year, just like the way there’s something invigorating about the start of a new job or of a new school year. It does feel like promise and potential. And I think the Lord intends that for us. I think that’s a grace that he gives to us. So I think the new year is a good time to think about our tech habits and make the changes that we maybe wanted to make or failed to make in the last year.

03:49 - The Form of Technology We Use Matters, Not Just Content

Matt Tully
I’m really excited to hear from you some of the wisdom, the insights, and even the practical advice that you would have to offer all of us listening when it comes to how we use technology. That’s something you’ve obviously spent a lot of time thinking deeply about. But before we get to that more practical angle, I wonder if you could help us by reminding us of some of the big ideas that we should be keeping in mind when it comes to thinking about how technology tends to shape the way that we think and the way that we act. That’s something that you’ve thought very deeply about. It’s the focus of your book, Digital Liturgies. So what are some of the big ideas that we should be keeping in mind right now?

Samuel James
So the biggest idea that I tend to remind myself and other people of is that form matters, not just content. And what I mean by that is that it’s the technology itself and the way it’s delivered, not simply what I use the technology to do, that matters. So if we think of hardware versus software, for example. Christians have tended to think of media consumption as primarily an issue of content. Don’t watch bad things, don’t listen to bad things, don’t participate in things that depict sin or are negative in some way. And that’s fine and that’s good as far as it goes, but that’s primarily keeping the conversation at the software level. Don’t put bad software into your mental computer, so to speak. But the question is, Is there something about hardware too? Is there something about the television itself? Is there something about the internet itself that might actually have a shaping effect on us? And this is not to say that television and the internet are just intrinsically 24/7, always bad. But it is to ask, Is there a shaping effect on our hearts that goes beyond simply what’s on the screen? Can we be affected not simply by what we watch but by how we watch, how we interact with the content? And I think so. I think that is a conclusion that’s borne up by science. I think that’s a conclusion that’s borne up by good philosophy. But primarily I think it’s a conclusion that’s borne up by Scripture. The idea that we are in fact shaped by the material world and by the things that actually we let in, not just at a content level but at a hardware level. The classic statement of this that goes back to the critic Marshall McLuhan is, “The medium is the message.” And what he meant by that is you can say something, but the way you say it and the place you say it actually deeply affects what it is that you say and how people understand you. And so when we apply that to the internet, my book Digital Liturgies is primarily about unpacking the ways that the social internet—social media and primarily that sort of thing—what are the ways that actually shapes our hearts beyond the things that we are conscious of using it for? So we might tell ourselves, Well, I don’t go to bad sites. I don’t talk to bad people, but it could be that social media is having just an intrinsic effect on us. And I think it is. And that is what the book is about, that we can look at Scripture, and we can look at science, and we can look at just cultural observations around us, and we can conclude that, yes, we are different people for having become online people. And so how do we identify those effects, those digital liturgies, and then how do we compare them with Scriptural truth so that we can discern what the effects are, and we can push back against them in our Christian life.

Matt Tully
I wonder if we can, as a case study for just a moment, talk about podcasts. We’re talking right now on a podcast. I know you and I both are fans of podcasts. We listen to different shows. I wonder if you could take the example of someone who loves to listen to podcasts and loves to listen to good content, like this conversation and like this show and other shows where it’s edifying. Maybe it’s pastors preaching or it’s conversations about theology and God’s word. Maybe it’s just an interest in history or science and technology. Whatever it is, let’s assume that this person is listening to solid content that is edifying and that is educational, perhaps, but in what ways might the medium of podcasts be affecting them and impacting how they think in a way that they might not be aware?

Samuel James
I think that’s a really interesting question, given that podcasts are such an explosively popular medium of serious conversation. So there’s a lot of learning, there’s a lot of serious discourse that happens on podcasts. And I think we should take that seriously. I think there are a lot of really, really strong podcasts, and there are good reasons to listen to them. I do think maybe one effect could be that there’s just a transient nature to the way that we’re listening. If I subscribe to Matt Tully and The Crossway Podcast and I subscribe to four other really good podcasts, I might listen to The Crossway Podcast and get something really encouraging. But because the next podcast episode is right next to my thumb, I finish the Crossway podcast and then I click the next one. And so what it turns into is even though in the moment it feels very substantive and encouraging, it’s really channel surfing. I’m just going on to the next thing, and it’s the immediacy and the availability of the next thing that kind of shallows out or flattens the experience of any one piece of content. And so this is why I think Christian ministries that try to put content out there on Facebook or Instagram or podcasts or YouTube, one of the challenges that they have to navigate is, How do we make our message a certain way so that it doesn’t just collapse neatly into the stream of entertainment or mindlessness or just boredom alleviation? So I think that is one possible effect for a faithful podcast listener. Another possible effect is that if you’ve got a person who listens to a lot of podcasts, sometimes there is this lack of discernment in terms of which podcasts really know what they’re talking about and are trustworthy versus which podcasts aren’t. Because in the medium of a podcast, everyone sounds equally like an expert. Everyone sounds like they’re really intelligent. Everyone sounds like they’re making brilliant points. But it can only be when you actually do the hard work of reading and of having conversations and doing your own investigation that you might find out this podcaster over here sounds very confident and intelligent, but actually what they’re saying is not true or not helpful. So there is this plausibility structure that’s created as we’re immersed in podcasts, where everyone sounds equally authoritative and knowledgeable, but if we were to dig underneath that, we would find reasons to be concerned. Again, this is not an argument against podcasting, but it is an example of how, as the medium evolves into a digital medium where there’s just a lot more stuff and it’s a lot more easily accessible, then the way we think about these things changes with it. It can become hard to navigate.

11:07 - A Paradigm Shift for Habit Formation and Life Transformation

Matt Tully
That’s such a helpful example. Those two things—the ease with which we can go right from one episode to another with no break and no time for reflection or thought or application, we just move on to the next piece of content, and then even the ease with which people can publish their ideas and their words in the world. Which again, has been such a huge benefit to many things and many people. So much of this content that we have access to is edifying and helpful, but it can also have that downside as well. I think that’s what you do so well in the book. You are affirming the good things and the good abilities that this technology has given us, but also acknowledge that there are downsides. There are costs even when we’re using these things intentionally in good ways. So let’s talk a little bit more about habit formation and how we start to get a hold of how we’re using our technology. In the book you talk about how for most of your life you had a certain view of how “meaningful transformation happens in our lives.” But now you’ve started to see things differently in the last few years. I wonder if you could unpack what you used to think about how this change happens and then how that’s changed in your thinking as you’ve researched this a little bit more deeply.

Samuel James
What I used to think was that the way to see change in my life was that I needed to think the right thoughts, I needed to read the right things, and I needed to do that as intensely as possible so that in my heart there would just be this unstoppable desire to change. So that as I just immersed in whatever positive virtue I was aspiring to, if I knew enough, if I could cram enough in my head and in my heart, then my emotions would do all the work for me. I would stop wanting to do the wrong thing, and I would just automatically do the right thing. And what I figured out was that I would often wait for that to happen, and it never did. Instead, what I’d be left with is I know I want to do this, but I just can’t get out of these patterns of behavior, whether it’s sin or whether it’s just something that’s not helpful and wanting to make more positive change in some area of life. And so what I’ve discovered, though, is that the Bible actually doesn’t talk about change that way. The Bible talks about change very, very much as a matter of habit and a matter of deliberate choices that we make. So we reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to righteousness, but then we also sow to the Spirit and not to the flesh. And so there’s a passive side of it in the sense that as justified sinners we are being renewed by the Holy Spirit, but then there’s a very active side of it to where we actually have to practice the things of the Spirit every day. And then as those things become internalized, we reap according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh. And I think the language of habits captures that really well. Many of your listeners will be familiar with the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. James Clear is not a Christian, and Atomic Habits is not a Christian book. But when I read through that book for the first time, there were so many parts where I underlined and wrote in the margins, “This sounds just like Paul. This sounds just like the New Testament.” One of the points that James Clear makes in the book is that every choice you make is a vote for the kind of person that you want to become. And that’s the New Testament, right? The New Testament doctrine of sanctification is you have been born again; you have been bought with a price; now be what you are. And so every choice that we make that is in alignment with who we are as children of God is a vote for the person that God is making us. And that’s what makes sin so chaotic and destructive in our lives is because that’s a vote for something that we’re not and then becoming that. And that creates that dissonance and that disconnect. So I think for me, recovering the language of habit has been a very, very powerful way of understanding that to see the Holy Spirit’s work in my life is not simply a matter of sitting down long enough so that maybe the Holy Spirit would bring about these powerful emotions in my heart, but it’s to actually do the things that the Spirit says to do. And as I’m doing those things, the Spirit actually can work not just from the inside out but from the outside in. And I can start to feel the things I want to feel as I’m doing the things that the Scriptures call me to do. And this is similar to the point that C. S. Lewis famously made about loving our enemies. He said if you are worried that you don’t love your enemies—that you don’t feel enough love for your enemies—then act as if you did. Do something that you would do if you did love your enemies. And over time you will find that it’s that action, primarily prayer and serving them, that will actually kindle the feeling of love in your heart. And I think that’s the power of habits, that they can kindle those feelings from the outside in.

Matt Tully
It’s interesting to hear how you describe the way you used to think and then how you would say that the Bible even speaks about how we change. As I think about Christian subculture more generally, when you think of stories of transformation or stories of change, the stories that we’re often most drawn to are these dramatic, almost miraculous examples where it’s like, "Hey, I went to bed, I was a drug addict, I was sleeping around, I was addicted to all these bad things and had all these terrible habits. And I woke up the next morning and God had changed me, and I was just different the next day and I’ve never really struggled with this again." Obviously that’s not true to most of our experience of the Christian life, and yet there’s something powerful about that story, that narrative, that I think we often do hear in Christian culture that then becomes a dominant model in our mind. Do you think there’s something true to that? Have you encountered that thinking? Have you seen that?

Samuel James
Yeah, I think so. I have to admit that I’m a sucker for these stories too. One of my all-time favorites is one that I’ve been thinking about in the last couple of weeks—A Christmas Carol. A Christmas Carol is the ultimate example of this supernatural life transformation story, where there’s this man, Scrooge, and he gets visited by three ghosts. At the end of the night, he wakes up and he’s a totally different person. I think one of the reasons we’re attracted to that is just that it sounds so easy. If I could just be visited by three spirits.

Matt Tully
I’ll take one terrible night and then my life is changed after that.

Samuel James
Yeah. One terrible night and then I’m a completely different person. That sounds easier than a lot of the alternatives. But I think the more positive reason we’re attracted to that is if you actually read stories like that closely, it’s very clearly a death and resurrection story. So Scrooge dies. He sees his own death, about his old self dies that night. And then when the morning comes, he’s a completely different person because he’s been delivered from death. The death that he thought he was headed toward has been alleviated. He’s not dead anymore. And so I think, and there are layers to this that I just have not penetrated yet, but I think that the Bible has this theology of change that is so rooted in the resurrection. In fact, Paul says, “The Spirit that rose Jesus from the dead is the Spirit at work in you.” I think we could plumb that for eternity and not get to the bottom of what that means. But I think we’re attracted to those stories because it does resonate at some level with what we know. We know that some part of us has to die. We know that some part of us needs to be saved, otherwise we’re going to die. And so when we talk about habits and we talk about the way we change, the Bible has this language of “put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you.” But we’re not putting it to death by ourselves; we’re putting it to death because we are dead. “You have been crucified with Christ. . . . Therefore, seek the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” You’re dead. Your life is hidden with Christ. Therefore seek. So there’s a deadness, there’s a resurrection, and then there’s a seeking that is in alignment with our identity, with what has happened to us. And so whether we’re talking about changing in our relationships or changing our use of tech, it’s the same principle. There’s no ten-step program that can fix our relationship with tech or our fight against sin that is independent of dying and rising with Christ. Because at the most we’ll get behavior modification, but we’re not going to be transformed in his image. We’re not going to be like Jesus. The only solution, the Bible says, is for us to die and be raised again with Christ. And then as we are raised with Christ, we are pointed upward in his direction, and every choice that we make that is in alignment with his will and his word is a step forward where we’re actually going. So I think that’s a very hopeful thing. If we’re feeling discouraged about what 2024 has been like for us in whatever area, the good news is you’re dead and you are raised with Christ. And so there is a sense in which every single day is January 1. Every single day is Christmas morning for Scrooge. Every single day when you wake up, his mercies are new, and every choice that you make that day is simply a step toward the person that you are becoming in Christ by his grace.

20:56 - Do You Need a Tech Audit?

Matt Tully
I think this is such a helpful, important point as we think about this topic because it can be easy to isolate things—like how we’re using technology and how I’m using my phone—isolating that apart from my life as a Christian and my relationship with the Lord, and even our destiny as redeemed sinners who are headed towards glory. I think keeping all of this together and recognizing that we can’t isolate our use of technology from our walk with Christ is an important thing, both encouraging us and motivating us as we think about these topics. So let’s dig into tech habits that we might have. I think when it comes to addressing this topic, before we can really know what we need to change, we have to take stock of what we’re doing right now. That’s something that I know I struggle with because oftentimes my bad tech habits are things that I don’t think I’m always conscious of. They go under the radar, and I’m not even aware that I’m doing it until my wife or my kids say something to me. So I wonder if you have any tips or advice for doing some kind of tech audit on our lives. What might be a way to approach that to then get a baseline for understanding how we’re using technology right now?

Samuel James
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I tend to think that what’s most helpful is to get out of our own head on this. So I think most of us think we’re doing really well, and then there are some folks who think, I’m doing horribly. And both groups need to be helped by other people being able to speak honestly into our lives, because we simply don’t see ourselves the way other people see us. And so when I talk to churches or individuals about this, I always say the first thing (and I think really the most important thing) is to ask, Is our relationship with technology open to other people? Do other people have the freedom to speak into it? Do we seek out the aid of other people in setting our own limits and things like that? You could say, “Hey, I’d appreciate you changing my password for a few weeks.” What I’ve noticed is that when I say something like that in a church context, people kind of stop nodding. You can just feel that I’ve lost a good chunk of people. And I think the reason is Christians have not really interrogated the world’s priority of privacy. Christians have really adopted it, and we think, “Tell me what I’m supposed to do, and that’s great, and I want to change.” But if you tell me that somebody else has a right or an obligation to check in on me and ask me hard questions or to change my password or whatever, then that’s where we start to get really defensive. We start to get really, really nervous about that because we feel toward this technology that it’s, by right, a private part of our life that we can control. And actually I think for a lot of people that’s the biggest domino that will fall. So once you topple that domino and you see in Scripture, “pray for one another, bear each one another’s burdens, confess sin to one another,” once you see those one another’s in Scripture and you see your relationship with tech as a part of your Christian life that should be open to other people, that domino falls, and that’s a powerful domino. And once you start to open that up to other people, and for people who are married, it’s probably most naturally going to be your spouse. For people who are unmarried, it’s going to be a trusted friend. For people who are in the teenage years, I think having a parent or a youth pastor nearby would be a great option. But the point is finding someone who can give you an honest audit of your technology so that you can say, “Hey, do I seem excessively distracted? Do I seem angry? Do I seem not able to hear what you’re saying? How do I come across in conversation?” And what I think we’re going to get from those conversations is some surprising things. We’re going to hear, “Actually, I feel like you have been really distracted and remote lately.” Or we might hear, “Actually, I think you’re doing a really good job with it. I’ve noticed these and other signs of grace in your life.” We’re just not good at self-diagnosing that much, especially on tech. So that’s the big first principle domino that once that one falls, I think the rest of it tends to fall in line. But there are some other things too.

Matt Tully
I think that’s so insightful, and I think it would be hard for all of us to deny that inviting someone else to speak into that is probably going to be a very illuminating, helpful thing. But I think you’re right. It’s probably a pretty painful and scary idea of asking someone else close to us who knows us and who sees us everyday, asking them to tell us how we’re doing on this front. It can just feel very intimidating, I think, to us. But again, as you said, if we just take that step it probably will bear a lot of fruit. Another thing that you mentioned in the book that I thought was really insightful when it comes to starting to take stock of how we’re using technology is you suggest focusing on “how we default” in the midst of our lives, in terms of what we’re doing with our phones, let’s say. So what do you mean by “how we default”? Why is that a helpful place to start?

Samuel James
We could even call this “the waiting in line test.” When you have to wait in line at the coffee shop or the restaurant or whatever, what do you do? Where does your hand think it belongs in those moments? I think nearly all of us would say, “Yeah, I kind of reach for the phone.” There was a hilarious tweet a couple of years ago where someone said, “I’m at the coffee shop right now, and there’s a man sitting across from me drinking his coffee, no computer, no phone, no book. He’s just staring like a madman.” What has become weird has been not having something in front of your face. That now feels awkward. I can attest there’s been moments where I’ve not had access to my phone or my phone’s been dead or something like that, and I’m waiting for something or I’m waiting in line and you almost feel wrong to not have it in your hand. And that’s just an example of how technology creates society. It just reshapes our expectations of what’s normal. So I think the default is a good question in terms of what I do when I don’t have anything else to do. But I also think that maybe even a more important question is, What do I do when I’m not feeling good? What do I do when I’m bored? What do I do when I’m frustrated? What do I do when I’m disappointed? If I’m feeling those negative feelings, where is my go to? And for a lot of us, the answer is going to be social media, streaming, it could be anything. It could be positive, could be negative, but it’s probably going to be technology. And I think there is probably a good indication that this technology is medicating us in a way. The distraction itself is kind of the point. We want our brains to go somewhere else for a minute. The default I think of our hearts, I think, can be noise if it blocks out maybe something else that we’re not wanting to think about. And so that’s just a diagnostic question that I think is important for everybody. What is your default when you have to weight or when you’re not feeling well? What tends to be your go to? And I think the answer to that question for each person will reveal how your relationship with technology might be shaping you.

Matt Tully
I think it’s important to note that it’s obviously not always wrong or inappropriate to, when we’re bored, to find something that attracts our attention, or if we’re feeling stressed about something, to find a little bit of relief with some kind of distraction, a positive distraction. But I think the difference is that those things are now so second nature and they’re so available all the time to us that we perhaps don’t spend hardly any time anymore just thinking about whatever it is that’s stressing us out, thinking about the way the Lord might be using that or working through that. We block out all time for that kind of reflection because we just go right to distraction.

Samuel James
Absolutely. That’s 100 percent right. It’s not to say that it’s always wrong to get on our phones or to look at something. I think one of the challenges for people our age and from our generation is that our lifestyles are generally dictated by technology. Our jobs and hobbies are very technological. And so I do think that there is this anxiety and mental stress that can set in when we don’t have anything analog to give our attention to. When we go from working on our computers all day to streaming and then to bed, it’s basically screen to screen, and then the day ends. I think there is a mental health aspect of that that is not good. And so one of the questions is, kind of like Brett McCracken’s book, The Wisdom Pyramid, he put different media sources in the shape of a food pyramid and said, “Here’s what should be every day. And then here’s what should be sporadic.” I think there is a value in realizing where our social media and our streaming is on that pyramid and not setting up our life so that we’re defaulting there all the time. Because I think what we’ll find, and what many people have found and what I’ve found, is that when that does become the default, there’s just an anxiety and a frustration that can set it in.

30:48 - Do You Need a Tech Sabbath?

Matt Tully
In the end of your book, you highlight a number of strategies or things that we can keep in mind as we seek to cultivate good habits, as we want to move forward here in the new year in our lives, making progress in a positive direction on these fronts. And so you’ve already mentioned a couple of these, but I wanted to hear a little bit more on each of them. So you mentioned tech sabbaths or the idea of taking a break from the technology itself. I wonder if you could speak to that. What have you tried on that front? What’s been successful for you? What are some nuances to how we do that that could be helpful as we consider that as a strategy for the new year?

Samuel James
I think one thing that’s been very effective for me has been not putting my phone right next to me as I go to bed. I would not consider while you’re asleep to be sabbath. That’s a little bit of cheating. But I think what that does do is it actually prevents for me the first thing that I gravitate toward in the morning. If your phone is in a different part of your room than your house, then you have to get up, and then there’s a rhythm to the day that starts independent of the phone, which I think is healthy. I think tech sabbath is a principle that can look very different depending on a person’s season of life. Andy Crouch has a really helpful system where he says one hour per day, one day per week, and I think one week a year where we intentionally withdraw from nonessential technology—from our social media, from our streaming, that sort of thing. We intentionally withdraw from it for an hour a day. And he doesn’t mean while we’re sleeping, but from a waking hour a day and then from a day a week. And the day a week thing can kind of intimidate folks a little bit, but I think there’s a really good argument for making that Sunday. Christians spend Sunday at corporate worship, and then we’re given the Lord’s day in Scripture as a day of rest. I know several Christians who are very serious about no social media on Sunday. And it’s not like this weird, legalistic thing where they’re looking down on people who do this, but it is to say I want a full day of rest. I want a day of rest physically but also emotionally and mentally. And, of course, if you’re like me and you, Matt, and have small kids, then your day of rest is relative.

Matt Tully
It’s a certain kind of rest.

Samuel James
It’s a certain kind of rest, and the Lord knows that and that’s fine. But I think there is a rest from saying, “I’m not going to spread my attention thin today. I’m going to focus on what’s right in front of me. I’m going to focus on the people in this family, in this church. And then when I get home, I’m going to be in the moment and I’m going to let technology sit.” And I think that could be a very effective rhythm in people’s lives, where it could just habituate us. And the more we practice this, and this is what I’ve seen in my own life, the more we practice that intentional withdrawal, we tend to come back to the technology and say, “You know, I didn’t really miss it as much as I thought I did.” It’s when we’re immersed in it that pulling ourselves away feels impossible. But when we actually peel ourselves away for an hour or a day, we come back and we go, “Yeah, I didn’t really miss it that much.” So I think people would be surprised at how liberating and alleviating they might find it.

Matt Tully
I’m sure there are some people who have tried that—tried taking a whole day and taking it off from getting on the internet, watching things, streaming things—and they’d say, “I’ve tried that, and I really struggled. It was hard for me to do it. I felt that phone in my pocket the whole day, and I just found myself constantly being drawn to pull it out and look at it when I was bored or stressed or what have you.” So again, what would be your advice for someone who feels like they’ve tried that and it just felt like it was constantly there, calling for their attention?

Samuel James
I think it’s almost inhumane the way that we expect people to have healthy relationships with technology that is constantly in their pocket or at their elbows. I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t think human beings were created to ignore magic boxes of information that they just carry with them all the time. I don’t think human nature has the capacity to simply not go there, to simply not look at it. And so what I think what becomes essential in a smartphone age is creating physical distance, creating physical separation so that you’re not with your phone 24/7. And what that looks like is probably you and your phone are in two different rooms for long stretches of the day. Or I know people who keep their phone in their car when they go to church or they go visiting with a friend. They literally put the phone away. And again, this sounds crazy to so many people, like, “Why would you do that?” But the idea is simple. Everyone has experienced the phantom vibration syndrome. You’re sure your phone just went off, but you check it and it didn’t. That’s just our brains being rewired by just constant access to this device. And so the only way to fight against that is to create that physical distance and to put in literal feet and inches between us and this technology. And so one practice for someone in that situation who thinks, Every time I try to do this, I just feel so stressed, one simple test would be to turn your phone off for an hour, put it in a separate part of the room, go about your day, and just see how that feels. I think the lack of accessibility—the fact that you can’t hear it anymore, the fact that you can’t actually reach out and touch it anymore—is going to reprogram your sense of what’s possible and what is hard. I think that’s just true of a lot of people. And again, I don’t think the Lord made us to be able to carry around these devices all the time and just ignore them and just automatically have super healthy relationships with them. I think we have to leave them aside.

Matt Tully
And that’s probably where, again, having other people in our lives who can help us. And if we’re married, then a spouse is probably perfectly positioned to turn off your phone and give it to your spouse and say, “Hey, go hide this for me. Get this away from me and help me to stay accountable to this next hour or this next afternoon of being completely unattached to this device.” Another related thing that you highlight in the book is how you value the importance of gathering with real people in the real world. And you just speak to how that simple thing that we do can have such a powerful effect on helping us to take control of our use of technology. Speak to that a little bit more.

Samuel James
I’ve never met a person yet who was with a group of beloved friends and having a good time and catching up with one another who thought in the middle, I really want to be watching Netflix right now. I’ve never talked to anyone who talked that way. I think in many cases, our use of technology is a substitute for relationship and for community that we wish we had but we don’t, or that we are anxious about and we want to do it in a way that we have more control over via social media. But the reality is is that time with other people is what we’re made for. That is literally what we’re made for—to be together as people. And that’s why Christians have a gathering one day out of seven that we are commanded to do in order to love one another, to pray for one another, to worship with one another. And Christians are quickly becoming the only people in modern society who actually are gathering regularly, when a lot of other people simply won’t. A lot of other social settings have simply disappeared. Christians are one of the only people left who assemble with each other. We’ve actually got a book coming out from Crossway by Rebecca McLaughlin on this very topic and the benefits of gathering as a church, not just to our souls but also to our bodies and our minds. So I think it’s extremely important to see other people. And I think one of the things that does even at a weekly basis is that it reminds us that we’re not totally in control of our relationships. Social media gives me the illusion of control. I can control how I look to people. If somebody says something that I don’t like, I can unfollow or mute them. I have control. When I go into church Sunday morning, I can’t control who I see. I can’t control what this other person says. And I think that’s what the Lord means for us. The Lord means for us to learn humility, caring about others, putting others concerns above ourselves, dying to ourselves. The Lord means for us to learn that in community with other people. And so I think one of the effects of a social media age has been that our relationships tend to have that self-serving character, where we we withdraw from people that we aren’t sure about. I think being drawn into those physical communities is a way of just learning how to love other people more than we love ourselves.

40:02 - One of the Biggest Mistakes You can Make When Establishing New Habits

Matt Tully
All right, Samuel, maybe a final two questions here as we wrap up. What’s the most common mistake that you think people tend to make when it comes to either stopping a bad habit or starting a good habit related to our use of technology?

Samuel James
I think the most common mistake I’ve made in my life is that I’ve said, “Okay, after I do this twice, it’s going to take.” And it just doesn’t. So it takes reps to do this. So if I start out the new year saying, “I really want to exercise” or “I really want to start the day with Scripture” or something like that, I can do it two days in a row, and what I trick myself into thinking is that those two days in a row are just going to stick. “This is it! I don’t have to think about it anymore! I did it two days in a row!” It actually takes a lot of work to establish a habit, especially with regard to technology because our technology is so accessible and it’s near us all the time. That work tends to be very counterintuitive. We’re fighting against nearly everything that technological culture suggests we should be doing when we set these kind of rhythms and boundaries for technology. So my encouragement would be if you set these sabbath goals or these more measured use goals for your technology and you do it a couple days in a row in January, and then on day three it just doesn’t work, don’t say, “Oh, I tried it. It doesn’t work. I’m just going to give up.” You’ve got to press through that because it does take work and it does take reps. And the Lord sees that and the Lord will honor that. I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes that we all make when we’re trying to establish habits is we simply don’t stick with it long enough. At the first sign of difficulty or at the first hard day or the first day where we don’t do it the way we want to, we just say, “Oh, it’s not worth it.” The good news of the Christian life is that our destiny and our life is not contingent on how successful and consistent we are. That’s the whole point of the gospel is that we are not the sum total of our good days. So we can persevere in that good work, knowing that’s not the ultimate determiner of who we are and where we’re going. So that’s the hope that we have as Christians, and that’s a good reason to persevere even when things are hard.

42:19 - Read for Five, Pray for Ten

Matt Tully
Obviously, with the people listening, there could be people from all different backgrounds, all different life stages and seasons. Our relationships with technology can vary and our habits can vary. But if you were going to boil it down and offer a suggestion related to just one habit and one step that our listeners could take in the new year, what might that be? What might be that habit that you think most people probably could benefit from as they think about this new year, and it would be a good first step in starting to take control of our use of our technology?

Samuel James
I would say as much as you’re able, start the day with Scripture and with prayer. There was a time where I would have said to start the day with Scripture. I think that’s really important, but I talked to our friend Donald Whitney one time, and I said, “What’s your advice on how much Bible reading and how much prayer I should do like in the morning? Like what’s the ratio?” And he said, “If you have fifteen minutes, read for five minutes and pray for ten minutes.” And that just blew me away. I think we, especially at January 1, evangelicals are all about those Bible reading plans. We want to start the year reading the Bible consistently. But I just don’t think I grew up with that same attitude toward prayer, that same kind of discipline. I need to pray in the same way that I need to be in the word each day. So starting the day, as much as possible, and again, fifteen minutes: read for five, pray for ten. But really pray and meditate that truth into your heart. And I think prayer in particular—we can read the Bible on our phones, which thank God for it, right? Thank God for the fact that we can listen to and read the Bible on our phones. That’s great. Our phones cannot pray for us. Our phones cannot approach the throne of God for us. That’s something we have to do. And that’s something we can’t do if we’re distracted by technology. So I think prayer is probably our strongest habit in determining our focus, in determining how we’re going to think about our life and our day. So start by just committing that day in prayer to the Lord.

Matt Tully
Samuel, thanks for helping us to think about good habits that we often want to pursue, bad habits that we want to kill in our lives, and I think giving us this broader picture of how our technology is working to distract us. But then as we said back at the beginning, just keeping in mind the bigger picture of our life as Christians and what God has called us to and the hope and promise of the gospel for our lives, even as we seek to be wise in these ways. We appreciate it.

Samuel James
Thanks Matt.

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