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Are smartphones causing depression. It'due south difficult to imagine isn't it? In some means information technology'south difficult to even say it.

Smartphone Addiction. Now, that's not so hard to believe, merely surely it's not going to happen to yous, right? It's hard to imagine.

A smartphone has no emotions.

A smartphone is not the enemy [no matter how much I actually do believe at times that a smartphone actually is my enemy]. There is such a a thing every bit smartphone habit, and yep there is such a thing as smartphones aiding in rising depression rates.

And yes, all of that is spiritual at its root.

Google it and meet for yourself. USAToday has several interesting reads on the issue of smartphone depression and smartphones causing feet.

"Screen time" is something that is a household word these days, and it is fifty-fifty a discussion in our household, likewise.

Tin smartphones be addictive? Absolutely.

Can smartphones crusade depression? Only if you allow them. That'due south often caused by a comparison of your life to the lives you see your "friends" living on social media. And that issue alone … social media causing depression … is a real, real, existent upshot.

Social media isn't the problem. Social media is just a symptom of a problem.

And nosotros dearest to blame things in America. So nosotros are often blaming social media for our own insecurities. Recently the thought of social media obsession and anxiety came up in a mail from a Anxiety and Depression Association Of America and they reported:

Overall, about 30% of those who utilize social media spend more than xv hours per week online. This can greatly reduce your power to enjoy real life. – Anxiety and Depression Clan of America

The vicious truth is that low is real, and addiction is real … in many areas of life – but that'southward not what I desire to get at in this moment.

I think there is a deeper event at stake here, and it is that God did not … He did non .. create us to walk around with a device that is constantly telling our encephalon, "Look at me! Agree me! Hey, I need your attention, at present! Hey. Ding. Ding, Ding. Ding. Expect, something just happened in Cathay and Fob News says you'd better stop your life correct now and look at it. Ding: your son wants y'all to see his sandwich and how awesome it is and so hither's a flick. Ding: your former BFF from 25 years ago in high school just updated her profile."

My heartbreak over smartphones not smartphone depression and my heartbreak is non whether or not smartphones are addictive or that smartphone addiction is a reality. My heartbreak is that our minds, literally, are never able to rest, breathe, blot life, or enjoy whatsoever single uninterrupted moment … considering our lives are under abiding interruption from a device.

My word, we cannot even watch our sons stand up in the batter's box and swing or our daughters do a gymnastics routine?

Why? Because we are too busy filming that moment instead of being in that moment! We want to document everything now … and so we tin post it on social.

We are losing our sanity. And I'k non joking.

By the way, if you desire a stellar podcast on this, check out Donald Miller'southward conversation with Cal Newport. Miller founded a visitor called StoryBrand here in Nashville. Miller has what I consider the best podcast out in that location today, and it covers a wide array of topics. This i with Cal Newport on what'south happening to our brains and the ataxia that smartphones bring our way is incredibly worth your fourth dimension.

I am fully convinced – fully convinced – that every 1 of us have let our minds be immobilized past mobile devices.

We were created by God to have a personal relationship with Him. He sent His son, Jesus Christ, to dice on a cross, go to a grave, come up out of that grave to show His power over expiry and sin, and He did all of that to bring us nigh to Him.

Jesus paid for our relationship with God with His very ain life.

Merely God demonstrates his ain love for us in this: While we were withal sinners, Christ died for united states. [Romans 5:8]

And so the Bible tells us that because a believer in Christ has access to God, therefore God does speak to us. [John 10:27]

God'south Word as well tells united states of america that we can approach Him … with confidence! [Hebrews four:xvi]

My life, literally, my very life depends on my human relationship with God the Father. And He has sent me the Holy Spirit to empower my daily life. I am called to be filled with and empowered in thought by the Holy Spirit.

And and then how tin can that happen – how tin can I be near to God – when the average United states of america smartphone user gets 46 notifications a day? That's just on your phone, friend! That doesn't include your MacBook, or y'all iPad, or your Surface Pro.

The New York times has research that says the average American checks their phone once every 12 minutes. Honestly … I call up that is super bourgeois.

I recollect, based on what I see in meetings with my own team, watching people at football game games, looking around at restaurants … it'south far more than every 12 minutes. Why? Ding. VIBRATE. DING. RINGTONE … it never stops.

Then the existent question is what do we do virtually it? Smartphone addiction and smartphone low are not fake news. It'due south real.

Here's some honest assessments I've installed into my own life. My goal is to help you retrieve through your own life and get your life dorsum. What I'm about to tell you really did make a deviation in my life.

Showtime Over With Your Telephone.

About two years ago I was actually, actually, and I mean really seriously considering going back to a flip phone. In that location was no app I couldn't live without. I could purchase a TomTom for a GPS. I could just as easily keep a calendar on an old schoolhouse planner, though information technology might be cumbersome, information technology's non out of the question.

The more than I thought it through, I actually needed only to talk and to text.

I worked difficult for days and thought from the ground up nigh my telephone and my apps.

The one thing, even so, that stored and ran and calibrated my entire professional person life was Evernote.

Literally, Evernote was and is the lifeline to my daily workflow. All the same does. Evernote honestly did change my professional life. In all transparency, I cannot recommend it enough.

I've used it for over a decade now and cannot imagine not having it. [side note: if you practice get Evernote get the premium version; worth every penny].

So considering I did need the full footprint of Evernote, I did the next logical affair.

Strip Downward The Telephone.

I literally took all the apps off my phone and started over.

I now have the dumbest smartphone you might ever meet! I only use these apps:

  • WeatherBug
  • Podcast
  • Maps
  • Dropbox
  • Spotify
  • iCalendar

And, of grade. Evernote.

That'southward it. [I'll go to social media in a second].

Notice something else that is missing from that super short listing of functionality on my stripped downward telephone? Email.

I disconnected all electronic mail from my telephone. I tin but get email when sitting at my MacBook or if I login online which is cumbersome and frustrating – which makes me not do it.

Guess what happened? Nobody fifty-fifty knew it! Nobody yelled at me. The Digital Constabulary didn't show upwardly at my door and forcefulness me to reconnect my e-mail to push it to my telephone.

Now, many of you lot are thinking, "My employer would never, ever let me do that?"

Really? I bet that'south not true. I bet you [think] you couldn't do that … but in reality … your employer doesn't know if your answering your email via phone or by desktop. And just how productive are you when all you do is answer email?

And if you take a boss that demands you respond the moment they send an email: information technology's time to become a new boss or accept a super honest conversation with them about narcissism. Which may lead to y'all getting a new job – merely then again – in that context it doesn't sound like such a bad matter!

Turn Off Notifications.

I hope you. If you exercise it, you lot'll never, ever, always regret it. There's honestly no real reason to exist notified for stuff that doesn't add value to your day, like a news alert, a friend's post, weather alerts, ad infinitum.

Find A Dissimilar Pathway To Social Media.

I'k experimenting with something.

I've got a Twitter following that is quite large, and in the strangest fashion, I often feel like I should mail service something. Isn't that weird? Anyway, our Digital Missions Director, Dillon Sherlock, who is a Millennial himself, and I were in a conversation not long ago well-nigh how Millennials communicate.

I was telling him that I really did want to connect with that generation, and though I don't experience out of touch at all, I'm a GenX person and they are Millennials; which means I'm non nearly equally connected as I think I am. Millennials are using far different means to communicate than I am normally used to using in my daily life.

Dillon suggested I get back on Instagram. And he told me of the several reasons why. So, I did.

It has worked for sure, especially in helping me connect with students and younger generations.

Notwithstanding, I did not and do not want to go dorsum into a lifestyle of checking my feed 5 times a mean solar day and finding that dopamine blitz. Which is 1,000% true, by the way – that dopamine hit is no joke. [Harvard Enquiry correct here; not bad read].

My manner to crush that was to check out social media from my desktop.

Literally I postal service images and practise any "scrolling" from my desktop – so what picayune time I do spend there – I'chiliad non mindlessly scrolling while waiting in a lobby, or on an elevator, or when I get 18 seconds of reanimation that I don't know how to fill! (Is this not tragic for us all?)

And see, that's the existent consequence if you ask me. Information technology'due south that nosotros're filling our minds with no moment at all to rest or just expect around and notice clouds, or talk with a stranger for a second. We've filled those 19 seconds waiting on traffic lights to turn green with a 17 second rush to run across what electronic mail we might accept missed.

Start paying attention to how ofttimes yous reach for that phone the moment your brain gets a lull. It'll stagger you.

End Taking Phones To Meetings.

I have an incredibly talented team at my church. And nosotros interact – a lot!

It is not uncommon at ClearView Baptist Church to have strategy sessions that ascension upwards organically, concluding fifteen minutes, and so we movement on from it. Nosotros do a lot of strategic thinking about what's on the horizon.

In those meetings, I desperately need the creative mind of the people in that room. They are non merely my friends – they are people our church depends on to make decisions nearly the Kingdom of God and our church's future.

So in early on 2019 we instituted a new standard: no smartphones in strategy meetings.

We actually power them all the way off. Not on silent – all the manner off.

When we go offsite once a month to strategize our team tells their spouses the landline number to where e'er the offsite is located and if there'south an emergency, someone volition come get us. That's how the whole globe used to work, yous remember?

No, the fear is "what if my son needs me? What if something happens and my wife needs to tell me something?" True, but 999 times out of ane,000 what your son wants to inquire you, or what your friend needs you for, is something completely trivial similar "hither's a video I took of an idiot riding backward on a motorcycle today."

I also don't have my telephone to luncheon. Information technology stays in the vehicle.

And why is that? It's considering I want to requite that upwardly to proceeds something else. I want my life and my soul back.

Constant notifications rob me of that.

Giving Up Your Telephone Attachment Allows You To Be In The Moment.

Friend … be where your feet are!

How can y'all hear from God when you're constantly beingness notified? How tin you hear your friend'south deep hurt when you're merely halfway listening considering you're trying to text and swallow lunch all at the same fourth dimension? Yous. Cannot. Successfully. Practice. That. [Go back and listen to Cal Newport's research on "residuum" with Donald Miller.]This is absolutely a true (and brusque) story.

Not long ago a friend of mine asked me to go to lunch with him because, to use his ain words, "Jason you seem to work toward a healthy soul, and to be honest, I'thou then overloaded. I'd love some insight."

And so we had a long tiffin talking near the things we really struggle with in a life of constant overload.

I asked him to tell me what he felt to exist the true burden, and he said it was pressure level and having no "infinite" in his life. For some reason, and I don't know why, but I noticed he was interrupted often in the first 12 minutes past notifications.

Then at the 10 infinitesimal mark of our conversation well-nigh his overloaded soul, I started a mental scoreboard.

From minute x to the 22 minute of our conversation, he'd received 12 notifications of some kind, either a call, a text alert, a news alarm, or a vibration. One every 60 seconds.

I stopped him at the 22 minute mark and told him I'd been keeping count. And I told him he was averaging being interrupted from life every 60 seconds. I said, "Is this normal?" He said, "Actually, no, it's usually more."

And his soul was depressed. Compressed. And oppressed. Talk about smartphone depression!

His phone literally owned him.

And every time "the primary" called, or dinged, or vibrated … he obeyed.

Your Soul Matters To God Because You lot Matter To God

Jesus said we have an enemy. That enemy is out to "steal, kill, and destroy."

Jesus said in the very next breath, "Merely I have come to requite you lot life." (John x:ten)

You can take control of your life by guarding your soul.

Phones are not your enemy. The enemy is your enemy.

So protect your soul!

And hey, by the manner, if any of this helped you would you lot listen doing me a favor? Would yous post this on your Facebook feed, tweet it, or email it to a friend that needs information technology.

The digital age isn't going away. We must larn to constantly cope and get our lives back, and perhaps if any of this helped you it volition aid someone you lot care virtually that is in your circle of influence.

Seriously, if you need us at ClearView, or if you just need someone to talk, nosotros can help you protect your soul by surrounding you with the family of God and wisdom to get yous out of the ditch.

Requite u.s. a shout and nosotros will be there for yous.

Past the way … your soul is your listen, your heart, your will, your emotions. According to the Scriptures yous accept a Body, a Soul, and the eternal side of you is your Spirit. [1 Thessalonians 5:23] If you aren't super familiar with what your "soul" actually does, there's a short series where I covered that very thing called Overcoming Overload.

If you want to listen to session 1 on that it on the IOS podcast app: Protecting My Soul

If yous want to sentinel it on YouTube:

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