by Nancy Sleeth
The particular set of decisions the Amish make can vary from community to community. But no matter how variable some community standards may be, the intent remains constant: technology should serve as a tool, not rule as a master. By establishing boundaries and living within them, the Amish are able to preserve a traditional way of life centered on God, family, and neighbors rather than be at the mercy of technology “i-gods.”
How do the Amish communities determine their boundaries? By looking to Scripture for guidance. One key touchstone is Paul’s advice to the Roman people, more relevant today than ever: “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:2).
As the pace of change increases, we, too, would be wise to make conscious choices based on eternal wisdom rather than recklessly surfing the digital wave.
Something Amiss
No one doubts the power of technology to enable us to do astounding things today; it’s so easy to revel in the power that is literally at our fingertips. Yet something is wrong, terribly wrong, about our time. We feel it, like a splinter in our hearts. There’s no room for margin: we Twitter while we drive, talk while we text, and surf until we fall asleep—but even while in bed, we stay plugged in, available 24/7. People tell me they could not live without their cell phones or the Internet or e-mail—and they mean it. Yet in many ways, these technologies lead us to more disconnected—rather than connected—lives.
Can we resist these trends? Are we doomed by the Fall to live broken lives—not only in the inner sanctum of our hearts, but played out on reality TV, where viewers can vote us out of Eden?
Lots of questions, few answers. But I take that as a good sign: Jesus often teaches with questions, and living in tension often means that God is at work. C. S. Lewis says that “sometimes you do have to turn the clock back if it is telling the wrong time.” If we realize that we are traveling in the wrong direction, the only sensible thing to do is to admit it and retrace our steps to where we first went wrong. As Lewis puts it, “Going back can sometimes be the quickest way forward.”
Opting Out: Or, Sleeping with Your Good Ear Down
One way of “going back” is cheap, simple, and readily available: opt out. We don’t have to do everything that technology enables us to do—do we? At least, not all the time? The way I look at it, as ubiquitous as smartphones and social network accounts are, we still do have a choice in how we use them. Or, as I like to put it, I can sleep with my good ear down.
You know that ringing you sometimes get in your ear when you fly, and the temporary lack of hearing? Well, ten years ago, that happened to me, only it’s permanent. Flying home after attending the birth of my nephew, David, I lost most of the hearing in my left ear and gained a constant high-pitched ringing called tinnitus.
Although I still can’t hear much in my left ear—hearing aids won’t work for me—I’ve learned that deafness has its advantages: not everything is worth hearing.
Over the years, I’ve grown judicious about asking people to repeat something. Especially at a noisy gathering, I usually can get away with smiling and nodding my head. Although on occasion I smile and nod to some pretty strange things, this can have its upside, too—people think I’m a little daffy, and low expectations are easy to exceed.
Another advantage: if my beloved starts to snore, I can sleep with my good ear down. Who’d have thunk that the ability to tune out could add to marital bliss?
Metaphorically, I’ve found that putting my good ear down also can add to personal bliss. The world has grown increasingly noisy since my nephew’s birth. First, Internet. Next, message boards. And then the rapid-fire onslaught: chat rooms, e-mail, IM, text messaging, iTunes, Bluetooth, YouTube, Twitter—most of these did not exist a decade ago when David was born, but they now control much of our lives, and our kids’ lives. I’ve passed children younger than David texting as soon as they step off the school bus, not even glancing up at the trees and birds and open sky as their fingers dash across the touch pad.
Is there anything wrong with offering our ears to every available technological device? How does spending more than six hours in front of a screen each day affect a child’s brain development? It’s a billion-person experiment, and the initial reports are not promising: physicians, psychologists, and educators are sounding alarms about potential negative outcomes of a digitally addicted generation.
But my greatest concern is not physical, emotional, or social—it’s spiritual. How can we hear the voice of God if we are multitasking nonstop? How can we see the face of God in still waters and green pastures when we are chronically refreshing the screen? The digital generation is a distracted generation.
On the other hand, what might we gain by choosing to use less technological power than we can—just as the Amish do?
More than a quarter of the world’s population is hooked up to the Internet. China has the highest total number of Internet users, with the United States and Japan having the highest percentage of users (more than 75 percent). What are they all doing?
• 2.5 billion images are uploaded to Facebook each month.
• 247 billion e-mails are sent daily. About 80 percent (some websites report up to 97 percent) of these are spam.
• 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, which, in terms of running time, is the equivalent of Hollywood releasing 86,000 new films each week.
• More than 50 million tweets are sent every day.
Each day! Who has the time? Teens, I guess . . .
• Teens who check social networking sites more than 10 times a day: 22 percent.
• Parents who believe kids are checking that much: 4 percent.
• Teens who admit to having a profile with a false identity: 25 percent.
How do they do it all?
• About 60 percent of Americans use the Internet and TV at the same time.
• People aged 12 to 24 are accumulating up to 23 hours of activity a day, engaging in up to 5 activities simultaneously.
Now, these statistics change quickly, and inaccuracies readily propagate on the Internet. But the general message is clear: Internet usage is huge and only getting larger.
Do you find the stats disturbing? I do. They sure seem to be saying that the Internet is taking over our lives. Here’s an even more disconcerting fact: according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American spends just nine minutes per day in religious and spiritual activities. This disparity between how much time we spend with technology and how much time we spend with God says much about our priorities. I think it indicates that technology is supplanting God in our hearts and affections. We are pursuing technology with an abandon and intensity that should be reserved for God alone.
Breaking the Dependency
Matthew and I have made many conscious decisions to limit the role of technology in our personal lives. No fifty-inch plasma HDTV screens, no cable networks, no video games. We don’t follow friends on Facebook or Twitter, nor do we send text messages.
Our work, however, is Internet dependent. It’s easy to forget that ten years ago I could not navigate the on-ramp to the information highway; today I rarely go a day without it. But when we started our nonprofit, I made a rule for myself: no e-mail on the Sabbath. The world could be coming apart, but I do not answer e-mails on Sundays. Recently, I decided to try extending that rule to all Internet usage. One way to end a dependency, of course, is to just take a regular break from it. A day a week without Internet—how easy is that?
Not very, as it turns out. Ninety percent of the time, I use the Internet for work. But much of that remaining 10 percent happens on the weekend. It’s when I look for new recipes. Or check my Netflix queue. Or do geeky Christian stuff that I don’t make time for during the week, such as comparing Psalm 24 in a dozen translations. Not bad things—but not necessary things.
And not things centered on anyone but myself.
On one of my first Internet-less Sabbaths, Matthew and I took a long walk down to the Kentucky River. It’s a steep trail, with the downhill part coming first. Eugene Peterson, best known for The Message, has described his Sunday walks with his wife. They don’t speak for the first hour. Matthew and I did the opposite: we talked on the way down, knowing that we’d have no breath to spare for words on the uphill return.
As we started the descent, I asked Matthew for his thoughts on Internet dependency. Matthew knelt beside a tree stump to retie his shoelace. “Well, you know how I feel about time spent on the Internet. It’s kind of like incandescent lightbulbs: 10 percent useful, 90 percent wasted energy.”
“Exactly! Lots of excess heat, but not much useful light.”
I offered Matthew my hand as he stood up. He kept holding it as we continued down the path to the river: “Here’s the question I ask myself: When Jesus returns, do I want him to find me asleep—wasting hours on YouTube or playing Spider Solitaire? No. I’d rather have him find me sharing a meal. Listening to a friend. Planting a tree.”
I squeezed his hand, then let go. “Ditto.” Am I lucky to be married to this guy, or what?
After skipping some stones on the river—Matthew scored nine skips to my three—we headed back up, this time on a trail that demands walking single file. Matthew took the lead, I followed. Even if the trail were wider, it would be difficult to speak—the trail is that steep.
So, instead, I reflected on our conversation. I prayed that I would not be like an inefficient lightbulb, wasting 90 percent of my life on e-mail and Internet—or any other interesting but largely empty pursuit. I prayed that God would help me be a light on the hill and that I wouldn’t hide that light under a basket out of habit or laziness or fear.
I prayed that I would learn to keep my mouth shut and listen—to God, to my husband, to friends and family. For the moment, I simply listened to the squirrels scampering along the branch highway above our heads, the woodpecker searching for insects in a dead tree, and the snapping of twigs as we walked out of the dense woods and into the late afternoon sunshine.
After we got home from the walk, I intentionally spent an hour in silence. Not reading. Not listening to music. Not on the computer. Simply shifting from a human doing to a human being.
The Almost Amish Way: Embrace Technology with Caution
Of course, fasting from the Internet—or from anything else that we find has distracted us or captured too much of our attention—is based on the biblical principle to keep the focus on God. I like to think of temporary fasts as a try-before-you-buy way to approximate the Amish experience—tasting the benefits of that lifestyle without adopting it wholesale. Here are some other practical tips for making conscious choices about technology:
“Turn off your cell phones, please . . .”
We all know how distracting it is to hear a cell phone go off in a formal meeting, whether at work or church or anywhere else. But what about in more-casual gatherings? We have an acquaintance who is truly wonderful, save one thing: he is addicted to his cell phone. This man is a devoted husband and father; he is great about initiating friendly gatherings and is fully committed to the ministry he leads. However, every time we are with him, his phone buzzes almost constantly. We are not the only ones to notice this almost Pavlovian response to the cell phone. His wife and friends tease him about it, but the humor is tinged with frustration.
Unfortunately, this friend’s cell phone tether is not an anomaly. I remember going out to dinner with some young music-industry leaders. Every few minutes, one of them wandered off, cell phone in hand, to answer a call or return a text or check an incoming e-mail. The conversation was disjointed, and the meal we shared was anything but relaxing.
If you cannot go cold turkey, start by setting healthy boundaries. The Amish often joke that visiting is their “national pastime.” What a lovely concept, and a living statement on the priority they place on presence. Because children do not lead the family, adults can actually sit, uninterrupted, and talk. The phone does not buzz, the computer does not beep, and the carpool horn does not bellow. By drawing boundaries, the Amish have access to something technology can only loosely mimic: real-time-and-space connection.
What are some first steps in that direction? Well, if the dentist’s office can request that we turn off cell phones, so can you. Make mealtime a phone-free time. Tell teens to turn off the cell phones after 8:00 p.m., or whatever time you decide is reasonable, and be sure that it happens. Think long and hard before giving your youngster or tween a cell phone at all; generations upon generations have gotten along just fine without them, and we may later learn that they contribute to health issues in developing bodies. But make sure you remove the plank from your own eye first. Children learn more from what we do than what we say. Only when our own vision is clear can we help others remove the specks from their eyes.
To go a little further, you might try putting a few limits on your usage, in order to reduce temptation to always be available to everyone you know and maybe even some people you don’t know. For example, I have a cell phone, but I keep the list of contacts to about a dozen names—only family and a couple of close friends have my number. I don’t even know how to send a text message. And thus far, I have also resisted being “upgraded” to a smartphone: being hooked to the Internet anywhere, anytime is just too seductive for me, and an ounce of prevention is worth many gigabytes of cure. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory” (Matthew 6:13, KJV). Amen!
Don’t get me wrong: cell phones are not intrinsically evil, any more than an old-fashioned land line is intrinsically evil. Being available to answer the phone at all times, however, can make you its slave, and that can interfere with real-time-and-space relationships with God, family, and friends.
Limit (or eliminate) TV
Even before the American Academy of Pediatrics came out with their recommendation of no TV before age two (and extremely limited before age five), my husband made it clear that our preschoolers should not watch TV. We owned only one television, which we kept behind a cabinet door in the family room. The family room was connected in an L-shape to the kitchen, so no one could watch TV without everyone knowing.
To further limit TV use, we prerecorded shows—and then we chose when the children would watch them. I don’t think it’s terrible for school-aged kids to watch a thirty-minute program every so often—especially during the bewitching hour when Mom is preparing dinner. However, let’s call a spade a spade. I was using the TV as an electronic babysitter. If I had been a better disciplinarian, or a little less tired, I would have encouraged them to do something more creative with their time. Turning on the tube to keep the peace was a cop-out.
Our family has been without TV for more than a decade. I believe that this is one of the best gifts we have given to ourselves and to our kids. Matthew and I enjoy watching movies now, but we are selective. Not having cable television removes the temptation to channel surf. When we watch a film or documentary, it is a conscious choice—something we do together or with the kids and their friends.
Again, TV is not inherently bad, but if it is interfering in your relationships with God, family, and friends, then you need to hit the pause button. These days, such restrictions should include computers and phones as well—anything that can provide on-demand, solitary entertainment. Establish clear boundaries for children. Keep TVs out of the bedrooms, where you cannot monitor what and how much they are watching. And set a good example yourself. Falling asleep with the twenty-four-hour news show on or snoring through a football game wastes energy and dampens the love life. If these restrictions seem harsh, consider their upsides: calmer homes, healthier kids, and more meaningful couple time. That’s the goal—isn’t it worth it?
Cut back on computer games
I have played a computer game only once, for less than two minut
es. The game was Tetris, and I probably scored lower than any neophyte in gaming history. I stunk. But sour grapes is not why I quit. I just did not see the point: I’d rather answer a client satisfaction survey on our home-owner’s insurance policy. In my analog brain, the allure of computer games just does not compute.
I am, once again, in the minority. Nearly 70 percent of US households include gamers. Forty percent of these are women. Among families in which one or more parents play computer games, 93 percent of their children do too.
Can video games fuel health problems? Yes, according to a recent report in the medical journal Pediatrics. The study tracked two thousand elementary- and middle-school-aged children for two years. The conclusion: the greater the frequency of gaming, the greater the possibility of reduced social skills, poor school performance, and depression. When their gaming addiction was stopped, the depression, anxiety, and social phobias got better.
And what about physical health? A recent study conducted by the World Health Organization cites video games as a major contributor to childhood obesity. Forty-two million children under the age of five are now overweight or obese; these children are more likely to remain obese into adulthood and to develop diabetes and cardiovascular diseases at a younger age. The report cites “sedentary lifestyle,” including computer games and television, as a key factor. Only 25 percent of boys and 15 percent of girls in the thirty-four countries surveyed are getting enough exercise. Even here in the United States, our youth are not as fit as we might think. Despite many opportunities to participate in organized sports, a recent survey found only 15 percent of American high school students meet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations for aerobic activity.
After one of our workshops on simplicity and creation care, a young mother approached me. Her second grader’s birthday was coming up, and he had asked for the latest and greatest computer game. The mom thought her son already spent way too much time on the computer, but she felt torn. “All his friends are playing it. I don’t want him to feel ostracized.”