About a month ago JwJ began a new series called Conversations — interviews at the intersection of faith and culture.  In our first installment, "Habits of the Digital Heart," I interviewed attorney Carrie LeRoy about her pro bono work that's focused on educating teens about laws relating to social media usage and sexual assault.

Whether it's one of our kids who's texting, sexting, or just "phubbing" — a combination of the words phone and snubbing, meaning to be preoccupied with your smart phone while having a conversation, or a colleague who's checking his email during a meeting, I think that we've started to understand some of the troubling consequences of how we use our digital devices.

What's clear is that our captivity to technology degrades many of our important human relationships, from dinner table conversations to bath time with your baby to a walk on the beach with your lover.  These are just a few of our sacred human moments that are not the time to check our smart phones.  

Our capacities for self-reflection and creativity are diminished.  Increased productivity from multi-tasking is now known to be a myth.  Studies show drastic decreases in empathy among college students the last twenty years as measured by standard psychological tests.  We're connecting more, says Sherry Turkle of MIT, but conversing less.

It's easier to curse the darkness than to shine a light, so, more recently, my interview with LeRoy and these two new books have also started me thinking about how I can develop healthier habits in the ways that I use technology.  Here's what I've come up with so far.

Understand the power of technology.  Technology isn't a neutral tool.  It enchants.  "It makes us forget what we know about life," and exerts a "seductive undertow" on us, says Turkle.  She observes the "profound effects" of technology upon us.  To take just one example, the average adult checks their phone about every five minutes — over 200 times a day.   And that figure might be too low, because many of us under-report because we think we're better than we really are. Digital technologies, by design and intent, create emotional needs and habit-forming behaviors in us, then turn around and offer us the illusions of technological solutions — like fake "friends" on Facebook.

Admit my vulnerability.  We're not bad people, says Turkle, and in some ways we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves.  Rather, many of the ways that we use digital media are normal responses to powerful socially engineered tools: "We are exhibiting a predictable response to a perfectly executed design." Most of us have experienced FOMO — the fear of missing out.  Facebook has admitted that it manipulates our emotions.  Experts now know that the best background for writing apps is a combination of software architecture, applied psychology, and behavioral economics, that is, "using what we know about human vulnerabilities in order to engineer compulsion." (Weisberg).  Understanding and admitting our vulnerabilities is a success, not a failure or a tech shaming.

Don't give up or give in.  We're not helpless.  Turkle doesn't like to use the language of addiction to describe our techno-behaviors, even though "internet addiction disorder" was almost included in the 1996 DSM-IV.  In her view, addiction means that we're helpless before our nemesis, which is something she refuses to admit, and that we must give up the cause of our compulsions, which isn't going to happen.  Getting rid of our digital devices isn't a reasonable strategy.  But there are practical ways we can make positive changes.

Look for new beginnings.  These are the first steps toward changing our behaviors and living more intentionally with our digital devices.  Then, all sorts of small steps become possible, like device-free times and places — like no phones at the dinner table.  I have a friend who tries to take one "screen free" day a week.  A few years ago I quit Facebook.  I have a Twitter account, but I never use it.  Buy a retro phone that does the bare minimum of what you need.  Find a like-minded friend for mutual encouragement.  And here's a radical idea — turn it off!

Follow the leaders.  If Google's CEO Eric Schmidt admits that he no longer reads books on airplanes because he's so digitally connected, if the Harvard law professor Carol Steiker now prohibits all digital devices in her classes, and if Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ives (Apple's Chief Design Officer) limit the screen time of their children — all these are examples from Turkle's book, then we can learn from their own fears and reclaim a significant part of what makes us human — talking to each other.

Consider a contract.  In her Conversations interview, LeRoy suggests that parents enter into an agreement with their teens that explains the teen's obligations (e.g., no bullying, profanity, or inappropriate content or violation of any website's terms of service), and that makes it clear that adherence to such obligations is a condition of having a phone or social media accounts. 

Share your stories.  Talking about our successes and failures is simple but also powerful.  It demythologizes the beast.  LeRoy encourages parents to share stories of technology and social media misuse with their children, and to discuss the associated fallout for victims, perpetrators, and bystanders — all teens will fall into one of these categories at some point, she says, and yet few teens actually know what they should do when presented with technology and content-specific challenges.

The last few years I've especially appreciated the prophetic warnings of Jaron Lanier.  For the last thirty years, he's pioneered all sorts of computer technology.  In 2010 Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Back in the 1980s, he was one of the inventors of virtual reality, and what he calls "one of the merry band of idealists."

But in his 2010 "manifesto" You Are Not a Gadget, he describes how his early "sweet faith" in the internet revolution has turned sour, and why he is now mostly a "humanist softie." He especially laments what he calls the new religion of "cybernetic totalism."

Lanier contrasts "the lifeless world of pure information" with the rich mystery of being human. He defends human intelligence, judgment, and artistic creativity against the pseudo-wisdom of computer algorithms, search engines, and aggregators.

Information technology, he says, is necessarily a form of social engineering, and the results have been horrible. He gives dozens of examples, but they are "really just different aspects of a singular, big mistake. The deep meaning of personhood is being reduced by illusions of bits."

Facebook has given us fake friends. Google gives us free stuff, but by linking search with advertisement the user is really the used who has become the product. YouTube is little more than a platform for "juvenilia." Gadget fetishism is everywhere.

In Lanier's view, these are spiritual failures that degrade us, and they lead to all sorts of bad behavior. A very few people have made millions on the internet, but for the vast majority Lanier says it's been a "disaster." In sum, "cybernetic totalism has been bad for spirituality, morality, and business, resulting in a creeping degradation of our own qualities as human beings."

But it doesn't have to be that way.  We can all start today by taking small steps to healthier digital habits.  It will make a difference.

1. Jacob Weisberg, "We're All Hooked," New York Review of Books (February 25, 2016).  My italics.

Image credits: GOV2020.