A Technological 'Examination of Conscience'
What am I taking to bed with me?
With Lent fast approaching, it’s a good time to pause and consider how intentional we are with various aspects of our lives.
Borrowing from the Tradition
Traditionally in this season, Christians focus on the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Scripturally, we walk with the Israelites through their 40 years in the wilderness, and Jesus’ 40 days in the desert. We pray to be free of attachment to things that separate us from God: either (1) sinful things that lead us away from what’s good, and/ or (2) good things that we might have forgotten are actually designed to be gifts reminding us of the Ultimate Good, rather than distractions from it.
One thing that I think often separates us from God is technology. Hear me out! I’m not suggesting we throw everything digital away. What I am observing, in myself and in others, is that the digital world is noisy. Sometimes that noise leads to things like, shall we say, less than charitable comments to strangers - or downright use of other people as objects. Other times, that noise might help us find others who seem to be saying similar things, or sharing similar interests. But then sometimes those connections end up taking the place of real people in our real lives - the people God has entrusted to us for this season. Tech can be used well, but even the ancients knew techne is a powerful force and one that humans should handle with care.
So I’d like to borrow a traditionally Christian practice and apply it to our digital lives: a technological ‘examination of conscience.’
If you’re new to the concept, an examination of conscience is a set of questions or list of actions used to help an individual discover and name the areas where they’ve made choices that lead away from God. Formats vary widely, but the most common is probably the 10 Commandments.
The questions I’ve listed in this technological ‘examination of conscience’ aren’t designed to help the user name things that are sinful, per se; they’re designed to help someone identify the ways in which his or her tech use is unhealthy and unhelpful.
A Technological ‘Examination of Conscience’
(Available in printable form below.)
Am I afraid to be without my phone? Do I ever purposefully go out without it?
Is a phone my constant companion in the uncomfortable or boring space between one thing and the next?
If I arrive early to an appointment, do I immediately reach for my phone?
If I am in an awkward or challenging social setting, do I retreat to my phone?
Is it the last thing I see before going to sleep at night?
Is it the first thing to greet me when waking up?
Do I know how much time I spend on it, and for what? Have I measured?
What do I actually need it for?
If all my work calls, messages, and family connections could be magically taken care of, would I really need it?
Am I the boss of it? Or does it have a kind of “pull” or “sway” over me?
If I misplaced it somewhere in the safety of my own home, could I leave the house happily without it?
Do I use it to try to be in two places at once? (Checking work things during family time? Responding to one friend while out with another? Looking at a different event while I attend my own?)
Has it replaced reading real books?
Can I get through – and enjoy – an entire meal without it being present?
Can I get through an entire activity of any kind (exercise, social evening with friends, family games night, work meeting, etc.) without thinking about it?
Have I ever used it to get out of an uncomfortable situation?
What does it “represent” to me? Security? Connection? Safety? Status? Something else? (To find out, ask yourself how you would feel if someone took it away but deleted your personal details without looking and gave you your money back for the cost of the device.)
None of these are sins, per se – but answering these questions honestly can offer a picture of the kind of space our phone takes up in our lives and the place it fills in our souls
This is available in printable form - it’s free to download here:
Making Strategic Changes
Here’s my honest confession: I wrote this examination six years ago, and when I pulled it out last week, I winced. My answers to many of these questions are not ones that I’m proud of, and I’m trying to make some changes to my own tech use.
I’m not above admitting that I see tech having a strangely addictive pull over me - and I’d categorize myself as someone who isn’t very tech savvy. I’ve never gotten past “level 1” of any video game and don’t find them appealing; I hate giving out private information and probably have about three apps on my phone that I actually use besides a browser; and I’m not really on social media, beyond Notes. In short, even for someone who doesn’t care much for the tech world, it’s still a siren song.
A few years ago I gave a talk on the role of tech in our lives, and a woman came up to me afterwards waving her phone. “I’m 90,” she said “and I’m addicted! It’s not just the young people!”
None of us is exempt. But most of us need to navigate the world as it is, and not as we’d like it to be. I can’t move all the people I love, who are flung across oceans, to the same small town. I can’t be available to people only by post. I can’t run my business through a mail-order catalogue. (Wouldn’t that be fun, though?)
So what’s to be done? I don’t have answers for anyone else, but I have been collecting stories and strategies from others. Here are a few ideas that might be helpful in your own discernment.
Some people are ditching smart phones in favor of a flip-phone, or a light phone. Some are trying a device like the Brick, which turns a smart phone into a dumb phone with a physical tap.
Some set boundaries around the time they use technology (“weekends without wifi”); or the places in which they use it (only in public areas of the home, for example).
Some limit what tech can do for them - for instance, they only message someone to set up a time to have a phone call or in-person meeting, rather than ‘chatting’ over messages.
And many work hard to return to reality, so that they aren’t merely giving up tech, but instead replacing it with real-world interactions, hobbies, and skills.
Now, because I like hearing what works or doesn’t for others, I’ll share where I’m at. My phone is permanently on silent or vibrate for calls, and I have notifications off for almost everything (with my husband set as an emergency contact whose calls and messages will come through no matter what.) I’m still on my phone a lot throughout the day - sometimes for reasons that are legitimate to me (like work!), sometimes for reasons that are not (like scrolling Notes for more than 10 minutes without switching over to read a long-form piece), and sometimes for reasons that I’m not sure how to categorise in terms of legitimacy (like shopping for used furniture that we don’t exactly need right now, but would be useful to have eventually.)
In terms of strategic boundary setting, I’ve tried: a holiday from the internet; airplane mode from bedtime until after my morning prayers are finished; ‘do not disturb’ during work hours; deleting the Substack app from my phone; and most recently, reinstalling the Substack app with a daily time limit. These have all met with varying degrees of success, depending on my work schedule and personal season of life.
What I’ve found to be most helpful is regular reconsideration1 of whether the boundaries I’ve set are helpful, and whether I’m actually following them.
I’d love to hear from you: did this technological ‘examination of conscience’ strike any chords? What kind of strategic changes have you made regarding technology? How do you discern what kind of boundaries you want to put in place?
This examination is such a public service, Kerri, thank you! I cringed while I read through out. I feel I've come a long way with my tech use generally and go through periods where I'm *okay* with my phone use, it still occupies an out-of-proportion place in my life. I also find that because I'm expecting the Light Phone to arrive in May, I just sort of don't put the parameters as strictly on the smartphone because "it will be gone soon anyway" - which is a silly excuse, and the time between now and May I do not want simply wasted on my phone! This was a good reminder of that and tech-lite is going to be a big part of my Lent, I think.
Kerri, thank you for this. I posted about this idea last week, so it's heartening to know I'm not alone. Your questions are very helpful and touch on many old habits I noticed resurfacing since joining Substack last fall. I appreciate that you're making it normal to ask these questions, and providing such helpful ones for us.
I unsubscribed from a lot of great publications to quiet things down - I might resubscribe later, who knows? Recently, I got an alarm clock (I haven't had one since high school) to keep the phone out of my bedroom. Thanks to people on Substack, I've started reading more challenging books after a long hiatus due to being a working mom + pregnancies, moving, etc.
Technology fills in a substantial void for many of us -- communion with God, loving community, a disconnect from the joy and pain of the physical world. Lent is a great time to ask God and others to help fill the void. Thank you so much for this timely and thoughtful post.