Tag: technology

The Anxious Generation: Unveiling the Impact of Smartphones and Social Media

On By Jarrett Ray FletcherIn Book Reviews2 Comments

What makes a book good? Good books fill gaps in knowledge, whether it be our own or society’s at large. Good books serve as a key to unlock the mystery of something that happened in history or is presently occurring in the world. There’s something satisfying about reading and thinking, “so that’s what’s happening.” But good books must also compel and prescribe action. No one wants a book full of statistics and trends that offers no advice on what to do with them. Perhaps such books are necessary, but they don’t fit my definition of a good book.

Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation is a good book. It fills a gap in society’s knowledge by answering the question of what’s causing the rapid increase of mental illness among Gen Z. It also solves the mystery of how smart phones and social media are changing childhood and affecting our mental health. And it offers compelling calls to action to parents, schools, governments, and tech companies. It is an excellent book.

In The Anxious Generation, Haidt argues that “the great rewiring” of childhood is causing the current epidemic of mental illness among Generation Z (those born after 1997). This rewiring consists primarily of the the transition from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood that took place in the early 2010s.

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Three Areas Where God Calls Us to Invest Our Time

On By Jarrett Ray FletcherIn MiscellaneousLeave a comment

In today’s world, distractions abound. Phones, social media platforms, sporting events, and advertisements compete for our attention. Once they have our attention, they begin to clamor for our time. Soon, we begin investing large amounts of time on these platforms, at these events, or watching these shows. Yet God has called us to invest the majority of our time in three primary areas:

  1. Our relationship with Him.
  2. Our relationship with the people in our lives (family, church, friends).
  3. Our life of work.[1]

Are we spending the majority of our time investing in these three areas? If not, what distractions keep us from them? There are only twenty four hours in a day, seven days in a week. If we invest time in one place, it inevitably detracts from the time we can spend in another. Too often we become distracted and end up mindlessly investing our time in things that do not matter. Not only do they not matter, but they take time away from the things that do matter. We can’t have our cake and eat it too. That’s why Paul tells us to make the best use of our time (Ephesians 5:15-17).

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Magnifying Christ as the Sovereign God of Technology

On By Jarrett Ray FletcherIn MiscellaneousLeave a comment

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In our day and age, we have technophiles, technophobes, and people in the middle. Technophiles are incredibly enthusiastic about technological developments, while technophobes are deathly afraid of them. But the Christian can stand comfortably balanced between the two, because the God of all of this stuff- all our technology, rules over it all.

Technology is a tool, and tools are given to us by God. The first stone Adam used to crack open a coconut was a tool. It was a token of technological advancement. As the centuries have passed, God has given us the resources and abilities to continue advancing our tools. These tools are not inherently good or bad in themselves. However, they can find themselves in the hands of a person doing good or evil, something beneficial or detrimental. They are not new “gods” unless we revere and worship them as such. They are neutral. However, as Doug Wilson points out in Ploductivity, technology is a form of wealth. The Bible describes wealth as a blessing, but a blessing that can easily turn our hearts away from God (Deut. 8:10-20). Therefore we must view our technological tools with grateful suspicion. We should be grateful for the blessing that they are and desire to use them to honor God. But we should be suspicious of our hearts that can quickly turn blessings into a means of forgetting the God who blessed us in the first place.

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