Anxiety and Technology: Tools or Treasures?
This past Sunday, we studied the relationship between our anxiety and smartphone/social media usage. You can listen to that sermon here.
Research shows that when we are anxious, many of us run to our phones as a coping mechanism. When our needs are unmet in the real world, we turn to the virtual world to satisfy our anxious hearts. However, instead of satisfying our anxiety, our phones keep us in a positive feedback loop of anxiety. They are designed to convince us that the only relief from our anxiety is to keep turning to our phones.
As followers of Jesus, we know this isn’t true, but can often find ourselves turning back to our phones and social media rather than doing deep work and investigating why we are anxious.
In this recent sermon, we ended by providing practical steps you can take to have a healthier relationship with your smartphones and social media. This list is not exhaustive and for context, we recommend that you listen to the sermon in its entirety if you have yet to do so. After you do that, here is a reminder of the helpful tools and practices we’d recommend implementing to have a more appropriate relationship with your smartphones and social media.
Find someone to hold you accountable.
Fast from your phone. (Take inventory this week //What do you reach for in anxiety?)
Commit to memory, verses like 1 Peter 5:6-7 and Hebrews 4:14-16.
Preach the gospel to yourself. When you are weak, then He is strong. Boast in that!
Abstain from screens 1 hr/day, 1 day/week, 1 week/yr. (See Andy Crouch’s The Tech-Wise Family)
Don't take your phone to bed.
Commit to be in the Word or in prayer each morning before you touch your phone.
Intentionally leave it behind when you go places.
Commit to deleting social media apps from your phone and only check them from a computer. (99% of all social media users do so from their phone – making it more difficult to regularly check it)
Set limits! (screen time/downtime/passcodes)
Turn your notifications off.
Delete accounts and apps that only steal your joy and rob you of the flourishing that God has meant for you.
Consider getting a dumb phone.
Learn more about what your phone is doing to you. (See Tony Reinke’s 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You)
