Ministry Audio

Digital harms and restless hearts

by Zane Yi

 

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You have likely had a parishioner express her exasperation with her kids who are “always on their phones” or “won’t come out of their room.” Maybe you are a parent yourself and have noticed your kids constantly looking at their phones and wondered if it is related to the drastic change in attitude you have observed in them. They just do not seem to be interested in anything else anymore.

All this, it turns out, is part of a wider mental health emergency. It is becoming apparent that the constant virtual connectivity provided by phones adversely impacts health, especially in youth and young adults. They are suffering. Parents are struggling. Schools, communities, and governments are grappling with what to do. As a result, it presents pastors and congregations who care about whole-person health with the opportunity to provide timely resources to individuals and families, helping them navigate the excesses and persistent intrusions of the digital world.

The rise of the digital age

The problem is even worse than many of us have thought. It has led Vivek H. Murthy, the US surgeon general, to recommend the placement of warning labels, akin to those required on cigarette packages, on social media sites.1 Catching many by surprise, this recom­mendation may have seemed to some to be an overblown reaction. But the statistics he draws on are striking, troubling, and difficult to dismiss.

A dramatic increase in mental illness among adolescents and young adults has occurred in the past decade or so. Since 2010, major depression in teens has increased by 150 percent. Anxiety and depression among college students have more than doubled, along with noticeable increases in other mental health diagnoses. Emergency room visits for self-harm have nearly tripled among 10-to-14-year-old girls, and this parallels suicide rates, which actually began to spike a few years before 2010.2

Such changes correspond to the advent of what sociologists refer to as the digital age. The digital age began in 2007 with the release of the iPhone. It marked a global and seismic shift in society, essentially putting the internet in everyone’s pocket 24 hours a day. The development of mobile apps made profitable through advertising led to the rise of “the attention economy,” powered by sophisticated algorithms that keep users engaged in swiping, scrolling, and clicking from one image, video, or site to the next.3

Another key development that occurred in 2010, one that further fueled the growth in popularity of social media apps, was the front-facing camera. That led to the trend of taking and posting “selfies,” amplifying a culture of self-promotion and constant comparison.

All this combines to become a force that is difficult, if not impossible, to resist, as almost all of us have experienced. Digital distraction is a real problem for everyone. The reason is physiological. “The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation,” writes psychiatrist Anna Lembke.4 Thankfully, there are resources for busy adult professionals seeking to recapture their ability to focus and get things done.5 However, the frontal lobes of youth are still developing, so self-control, which is hard enough even for adults with fully developed brains, often goes out the window.

It helps explain why many teens spend up to 9 hours a day viewing screens.6 That’s over 60 hours a week, and it does not count the time they spend thinking about what they have seen or are missing on social media.

As youth spend all this time on their devices, four foundational harms are inflicted on them, according to Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation. These harms—social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction—contribute to declining mental health.7 Simply put, as young people spend more time on their phones, they have less in-person contact with others and do not get much-needed sleep. The distraction is intrusive and constant—an average of 237 or more notification alerts coming each day—making focus impossible.8 Teenagers are hooked to an intentionally designed system of virtual triggers and rewards, and they experience actual withdrawal symptoms when deprived of them.

Navigating the digital age

Jesus expressed deep concern and appreciation for children when here on earth (Matt. 19:13–15; Mark 10:13–16; Luke 18:15–17). I believe He is even more concerned for them today. The young are particularly susceptible to the powerful technologi­cal and economic forces currently shaping them. But turning back the clock to a simpler time is impossible. Disciplining, lecturing, and shaming will not work. The bans and restrictions at school that are being enacted by more and more states apply only during school hours. What happens when students go home and no one is watching?

Churches have adapted to the development of smartphones and social media as a valuable medium for ministry, releasing sermons, podcasts, music, and social media posts that can be shared widely and quickly. While these positive media can provide a healthier alternative to other options, they leave the excesses and dangers of the medium unaddressed.9 As such threats become more and more evident, how might pastors and the congregations they lead help address this societal crisis?

Educate. For starters, address this issue in your preaching and teaching, but avoid the temptation to be moralistic—“What’s wrong with this genera­tion?”—or an idealistic Luddite—“We should get rid of smartphones!” People often feel shame and despair over the issue. Help youth and their families understand they are not alone and that God loves them. Provide them with hope.10 Explain through workshops and seminars what is hap­pening to them and why. Organize a small group using some of the resources noted in this article.

Resource. A sermon series or a weekend seminar, however, will not undo the damage done to young people through the years. Anxiety, depression, addiction, and suicidality are serious mental health issues. Beyond offering pastoral counseling and prayer, connect people to mental health professionals in the congregation or community. As needed, recommend and make referrals to social workers, marriage and family therapists, or psychologists.

Network. Many churches already host support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Celebrate Recovery. Such groups leverage the power of connection and community to help individuals in their journey to greater wholeness. In like manner, pastors can create support groups for youth and parents to share their challenges with digital distraction and addiction. Encourage conversations about best practices and shared norms between families to create a healthy digital counterculture.

Organize. Provide opportunities for young people to digitally disconnect together, as well as to experience deeper interpersonal connections. Help kids discover the great outdoors through hiking or camping trips. Or, as pastor and author Darren Whitehead recently did, organize a digital fast for your church, challenging people to experience the “joy of missing out” (JOMO rather than FOMO—the fear of missing out).11

Advocate. Tech companies, who know how their products impact people (but are allured by advertising revenue), have delayed regulating themselves, and politicians have been sluggish in passing necessary legislation. Congregations can help bridge remaining gaps by becoming one of the voices advocating for regulation in the interest of public health. Encourage parents to get involved in making a difference by advocating for balanced policies, more mental health resources, and public education.

Model. Become aware of and address unhealthy digital use and habits in your own life. Incorporate healthy practices into spiritual disciplines like Sabbath observance and prayer. Then introduce them to your congregation, now based on your own experience, as an alternative to digital exhaustion. Pastor John Mark Comer, for example, shares in a winsome way how he and his family begin Sabbath each week by turning off their phones on Friday evening and together putting them away for 24 hours. He explains prayer as a way to be present in the present and to be attentive to reality rather than being constantly distracted and mentally elsewhere.12

Proclaim. “Our hearts are restless, until they find rest in You,” Augustine once prayed.13 His prayer identifies spiritual longings that predate the digital age—longings that only the gospel and a relationship with God can fill. God con­tinues to offer both digital natives and victims His living water that can truly satisfy. Preach on such texts as Ecclesiastes 3:11 (“He has also set eternity in the human heart,” NIV), Jeremiah 2:13 (“ ‘They have forsaken me, the spring of living water,’ ” NIV), Psalm 42:1 (“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you,” NIV), Psalm 131:2 (“I have calmed and quieted myself,” NIV), and John 4:13, 14 (“ ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him [or her] will never thirst,’ ” NIV). We can connect our digital searching to our legitimate, deeper spiritual desires and invite people of all ages to find rest and satisfaction in what only Christ can provide.

A ministry of reconciliation

Theologian Paul Tillich has characterized the human condition as one of estrangement. We are estranged from ourselves, from each other, and ultimately, from God.14 Today, we witness how smartphones and social media, utilized uncritically, amplify and intensify such estrangement, even as they promise to alleviate it. Communities of faith are called to play a crucial role in—to borrow the words of the apostle Paul—the ministry of reconciliation, helping people become fuller versions of themselves, their faces reflecting more of God’s image and less of the soft, cold glow of their phones.15 By identifying and addressing the relevant issues and providing healthier alternatives, pastors can help others experience what Jesus came to give—“life to the full” (John 10:10, WE).

 

 

  1. Vivek H. Murthy, “Why I’m Calling for a Warning Label on Social Medica Platforms,” New York Times, June 17, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/opinion/social-media-health-warning.html. See also The US Surgeon General’s Advisory, Social Media and Youth Mental Health (2023), https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/sg-youth-mental-health-social-media-advisory.pdf.
  2. Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2024), chapter 1.
  3. James Williams, Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 5–40, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108453004
  4. Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in an Age of Indulgence (New York, NY: Dutton, 2021), 1.
  5. See, for example, Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (New York, NY: Portfolio/Penguin, 2019).
  6. "Screen Time and Children," American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, updated May 2024, https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/Children-And-Watching-TV-054.aspx.
  7. Haidt, Anxious Generation, chapter 5.
  8. “Constant Companion: A Week in the Life of a Young Person’s Smartphone Use,” Commonsense Media, September 26, 2023, https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/2023-cs-smartphone-research-report_final-for-web.pdf.
  9. James K. A. Smith observes, “Rather than properly countering the liturgy of consumption, the church ends up mimicking it, merely substituting Christian commodities.” Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 103.
  10. See, for example, a sermon series preached at the North Hills Church of Seventh-day Adventists by Pastor Angel Smith, “Solid Ground—North Hill’s Church Live Stream 8/24/2024,” YouTube video, 1:23:17, starting at 29:59, https://www.youtube.com/live/PZtDGaFuhhc?si=aDGQSqtuTKZGiJjb&t=1799.
  11. “The Digital Fast: A 28-Day Challenge,” Thinq, https://events.thinqmedia.com/digitalfast. See also Darren Whitehead, The Digital Fast: 40 Days to Detox Your Mind and Reclaim What Matters Most (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2024).
  12. John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry (Colorado Springs, CO: WaterBrook, 2019). See also the free resources for churches provided by Practicing the Way at https://www.practicingtheway.org.
  13. Augustine, Confessions 1.1.5.
  14. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, Existence and The Christ (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 45.
  15. See 2 Corinthians 5:18–21. Or as Tillich writes, “Love as the striving for the reunion of the separated is the opposite of estrangement.” Tillich, 47.