Ep. 203: Yes, Your Phone Has Changed You

Kourtney Cromwell:
Welcome to the indoubt Podcast where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s Word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Hey everyone, it’s Kourtney. On this week’s episode of indoubt, we’re joined by author and non-profit journalist, Tony Reinke. Isaac has the opportunity to talk with him about technology and faith in today’s culture. Tony actually released his third book a couple of years ago called 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You, where he celebrates and critiques the smartphone. So that’s where we’re going with this conversation. Isaac and Tony take the time to break down the pros and cons of our smartphone use, the connectedness and the disconnectedness of technology today. It does bring us to ask this question: if smartphones are so bad why do we even use them? Instead of going to the extreme, you’ll hear how Tony urges us to understand that smartphones can be a tool to help us flourish, as long as we’re not misusing them. So, I hope that you enjoy this episode as you hear from Isaac and Tony Reinke.

Isaac Dagneau:
With me today is Tony Reinke. Tony’s an author. He’s a journalist, a senior writer for Desiring God, and you may recognize him as the host of the Ask Pastor John Podcast and that’s with John Piper. So, it’s great to have you with us today, Tony.

Tony Reinke:
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me along, Isaac.

Isaac Dagneau:
Firstly, can you just tell us a bit about who you are? People might be more familiar with the tone of your voice than who you actually are, so. Also how did you come to know and love Jesus?

Tony Reinke:
Yeah, great. I’m a non-profit Christian journalist. So, I was trained as a journalist back in college and then was converted after college and sort of merged my love for the gospel and my love for journalism into a career. I’ve been married now longer than I was single, which is crazy. That still hasn’t sunk in yet. My wife and I, we live in Phoenix with our three kids who are 18, 14 and 12 years old. I’m the author of five books now, two on technology and media, and I work for desiringgod.org as you said, get to host a popular podcast Ask Pastor John with John Piper. That podcast is now like 1,400 episodes in or about to turn seven years old and so that’s been quite a ride.
I came to Christ at the age of 21 out of a very sort of obedient-centric Lutheran background. I was a good kid. I was very churchy. I thought I could appease God and save myself essentially by my own righteousness and came to understand that no, that’s absolutely impossible. Only the righteousness of Jesus Christ could save me. This all came alive to me in a sermon on the Pharisee and the tax collector, that story Jesus tells in Luke 18 verses nine to 14, and that just hit me like a freight train. It changed my life forever and that was the moment that I cried out to God, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” A pretty nice churchgoing, good grade-getting sinner and that’s when it dawned on me. So yeah, age 21, everything changed.
So background in journalism and then got converted, and then sort of merge those two interests together, my love for Christ and my love for journalism, and that’s where I’m at now.

Isaac Dagneau:
That’s so good. Thanks for sharing that with us. One thing I should say, I think people might enjoy this a little bit. I think it was yesterday when I was preparing to have this conversation. I was reminded of, I’m not sure maybe it was a year or two ago, listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast. One of the podcasts was about John’s love for Grape-Nuts cereal. I’m sure you get a lot of people talking about that, but it completely caught me off guard. I listened to it again yesterday and it just cracked me up so much. So, I appreciate that you’ve just inserted maybe one or two podcasts in your thing that are that fun. So, if anyone’s listening, you can go check that out. Maybe we can put that on the episode podcast page and listen to that, because I’m sure it’s one of your favourites, too, Tony.

Tony Reinke:
It is. It is that one, and then How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse. You got to listen to that one, too. I try to introduce some fun into the podcast.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yes.

Tony Reinke:
It’s risky business trying to introduce fun around John Piper, but every once in a while we succeed.

Isaac Dagneau:
Well, I think the hard part is that he explains his love for the Grape-Nuts as if he’s explaining some theological doctrine, which makes it so good. But anyways-

Tony Reinke:
He’s very serious, serious joy.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yes, exactly. There you go. You’ve written a book, Tony, some years ago now called 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You, just a couple of years ago, a few years ago now. So, what brought you to write a book about a phone?

Tony Reinke:
Yeah. Well, my own bad smartphone habits brought me to write this book really. I wanted to help my kids act wisely in social media and with their smartphones, but I kept facing this reality that I had not done enough work myself on my own heart really. Of course, there’s growing concerns now more generally that the more addicted you become to your phone, the more prone you are to depression, anxiety, the less able you are to concentrate at work, sleep at night. So digital distractions are no game. So, I wanted to sort of look at my own life and my own habits and my poor habits. I wanted to jump into the cultural discussion on habits. I also wanted to celebrate the smartphone as something that reflects the glory of the Creator. So, I wanted to celebrate the smartphone and critique the smartphone at the same time, and that’s really hard work. I wanted to jump in and see if I could do it.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. I guess this may be a silly question, but you kind of mentioned a little bit of some of the problems that you saw in your own life and other people’s lives. Why was it necessary what you did in your book? Why was it necessary to provide some kind of solution to that at this point in history?

Tony Reinke:
Yeah. Well, I mean, smartphones are so captivating. They are so captivating that you can get lost inside a labyrinth of things that are beautiful and awesome and also outrageous and sinful, outright sinful, and some things that are simply entertaining and some things that are simply fun. You can lose a sense of the weight of eternal things. So, the question that we face as Christians is very simple, what is the best use of my smartphone in the flourishing of my life right now and in my joy to come eternally? How is the smartphone a tool for me to use? How am I misusing it? Because if we get stupid with our phone, that’s when we become a slave to our phones. When we become stupid with our phones, we become slaves to our phones. So, we’ve got to be smart with these technologies. So that was really the necessity that I felt that led me to write the book.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, that’s so good. I think it would be good just for this conversation that we’re having, out of the 12 ways that our phones change us that you’ve researched, that you studied, I’m thinking of maybe two or three that you could maybe share with us today. Maybe these are the ones that even since writing your book, you’ve seen them. Okay, these are the top ones, maybe they’re very important, things like that. So yeah, just feel free to take time to develop these, but maybe give us two or three that you’d like to share with our audience today.

Tony Reinke:
Yeah, that’s good. I’ll give you three basic takeaways from my book, so not necessarily chapters but just general takeaways.
The first one is smartphones are black mirrors. So, what we do with our phones is a pixelization on a screen of what we most want in our hearts. That’s true. If we’re narcissistic, that’s what we’re going to find online. We’re going to see a reflection of ourselves. We’ll be searching for things online that bolster our self-image, that bolster our self-glory. So that black mirror is going to reflect what my heart most wants right into my eyes. If the heart is driven by an unquenchable desire for sexual lust, pornography, it’s going to be the thing you see on your screen. The phone discloses what your heart most wants. You can tell yourself that you’re a nice person, morally good, don’t hurt other people, but at some point there’s this almost like Kafka-like nightmare awakening.
When you look into the screen of your phone and you look directly into your own heart, just like you’re making eye contact with your deepest desires. For a lot of people, if they’re hardened to their sin, it won’t bother them. As soon as God starts working on your heart and you start to realize this is the essence of who I am, looking at what’s on the screen, that can be a real wake up call. So, at some point deep down, if you know that you were made to love God above everything else, this reality is going to drive you to your knees. Because what you’re going to see reflected in the black mirror in your hand is not that. It’s going to be sin. So, smartphones are black mirrors and that is very scary at one level.

Isaac Dagneau:
Absolutely. What is it about smartphones that cause us to see in it our sin? Why not something else? Why is it a smartphone?

Tony Reinke:
Well, we put pass codes on it. Because if you got into my phone or if I got into your phone, I would be able to look into what is it you’re about, what apps are you using, how do you use them. If we can get into each other’s browser histories, we can get into each other our clicking history, if you start to get into there, those are deeply, personal intimate places that disclose the things that drive us. So again, for a lot of people who are just kind of hardened to sin, they’re not going to really see a problem with that. Once you start to awaken to the fact that God has called me to desire him above all things, then you start to look at, okay, what is it that I’m really looking at on my screen? Your screen doesn’t lie. If you want pornography, that’s what you’re going to find. If you want self-glory, that’s what you’re going to find. Your phone screen does not lie to you. It is you looking directly, making eye contact with the deepest desires of your heart, and that is absolutely frightening.
The second takeaway from the book is that the local church is irreplaceable. Online, we tend to follow people who are just like us, who are similar to us socioeconomically, similar adoption to technology, people who have the same kind of apps that we use. In reality, we need people around us that are different, different races, different age brackets, different socioeconomic groups. I need to be shaped by elderly people. The mentally, physically handicapped, I need those people in my life. The poor, I need in my life. All those people that will never appear on my social media feeds, I’ll see them, I’ll meet them at my local church. So, there’s a really beautiful takeaway and I think an application of a number of the different 12 ways in the book is that we need the local church because we need that sort of the diversity speaking into our lives, and we don’t find that in social media. So that’s kind of the second takeaway.
The third takeaway is that we need to realize that we live inside of a digital paradox. We want to be known and we want to hide. This is something David Foster Wallace in his novel, Infinite Jest talks about. This is back in I think 1994 he published that novel. In his storyline, he’s got these telephones that went from traditional voice telephones that were mounted on a wall. You picked them up and held it to your ear, and the transition was moving towards video phones. So, he said that answering the phone became less like answering a traditional phone and more like answering the door. So, you’ve got people quick putting on more clothes and brushing their hair and putting on toupees and prosthetics and makeup. All of our media is always like trying to expose more of us to which we put up more and more digital facades.
So what Wallace was talking about even in the mid 1990s is there was a market for filters that you physically put over the video phone camera that made you appear more fit, more beautiful than you really are. I mean, he really foresaw Bitmojis, sort of speaking through a modified me.
Here’s the reality. If I get in an elevator and there’s other people in that elevator and strangers, what do I do? I grab for my phone, right? What do I do when I’m alone at home? I grab for my phone. So, the smartphone causes this social reversal. There’s this two-sided desire. On one hand, there’s a desire to be alone in public, and at the same time there’s a desire to never be alone in private. Yet there’s this reality is that we are becoming the loneliest generation. It’s just not working. This desire to be alone in public and never alone in private does not alleviate our loneliness. So those I think are the three sort of takeaways for me as I look at the book, and sort of how people have talked to me about the book is that our phones are black mirrors. They reflect what we most want. The local church is irreplaceable; it does something that our smartphones, social media will never do. Third, that we live in this paradox that we want to be alone when we’re in public and we don’t want to be alone when we’re in private.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s so good, Tony. Thank you for that. Thinking back to you just briefly talked about this idea of filters and you’ve mentioned David Foster Wallace and things like that, I think all of us kind of know intuitively that putting filters on and stuff like that we kind of know there’s something wrong with that. Maybe can you just lay it out kind of simply like how does doing that on Instagram and Facebook and on our phones, how does that actually impact our hearts, this constant putting on filters? How does that play out in our real lives and impact us?

Tony Reinke:
Well, I think because of the ubiquity of social media and smartphones, because it’s such a part of our lives and we’re so used to editing our lives in social media, we’re so used to putting on Instagram a certain version of who we are. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be fake and all together, because there are people on Instagram that are more real, more honest. Still even in that case, you’re still putting a very small sliver of who you are online. We all become actors. We all become actors in front of a screen. We all sort of play act this side of us that we want other people to approve of, and that’s always been the case.
I mean if you work on Wall Street, you’ll dress a certain way. You’re always going to seek the approval of your peers by sort of trying to match the fashion of the peers that you want to impress. If you want to try to impress the goth community, what are you going to wear? You’re going to wear goth, right? Because you’re trying to fit into that community.
Well, we do something like that on Instagram where we’re trying to put forward a modified or a selected portion of who we are to be approved by a certain subculture. Now I think what happens over time is because this is so ingrained in our patterns, is that who we try to be on social media becomes a sort of reality. We try to live out. So, we’re an actor or an actress on Instagram then we take that image that we’re trying to project and we try to live that out, and so I think it does.
I especially see this in my teens as they struggle with this. There’s this way in which social media conditions them to be a certain type of person “in real life”. It’s because of the play acting on social media is so potent that it then bleeds over into their daily life and they try to put on this image that they’re trying to project. So, it works both ways, I mean, you had this sliver of who you want to be projected in social media that sort of becomes what you’re aspiring to be in the rest of life.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s so good. As you kind of share some of these things, some people may be listening and might be thinking, well, if phones are causing so much harm, then why do we need them? I mean, I was thinking of this kind of silly arguments saying, “Well, if Jesus was the most human ever to exist and abundantly and he never had a smartphone, then why don’t we just toss these things if it’s causing so much harm?” How do you respond to people that kind of want to kind of monkify the idea of just getting away?

Tony Reinke:
Yeah. Well, the first arguments to make there is that this desire for either self-glory or the desire for wealth or the desire for image of any kind has been a challenge since the days of Jesus. He warned about the four soils. One of the soils there that won’t let the gospel grow in a heart is this overconcern with worldly things. So, the smartphone doesn’t necessarily create these temptations, but it does amplify them. So, I think that’s one of the things to say that there are no new heart issues around today.
The second thing I think to say and this is something that Christians struggle with as well is to see that technology is a revelation of God’s glory. That doesn’t baptize every use of technology, but I typically go through like Isaiah 54 and talk about war technology is being something that’s given as a gift from God. You can go to Isaiah 28 and look at agricultural technology as a gift from God. Technology reflects the Creator’s brilliance in giving us the natural order that we have. So much so that one of the arguments that I make out of Isaiah 54 is that God controls the future. God is sovereign over the future, because he’s sovereign over the creation of the innovators of the future.
So it’s not like the smartphone just came about because Steve Jobs was brilliant and all glory to Steve Jobs. We have smartphones because in 1955 God determined that Steven Paul Jobs would be born, and he would bring about the smartphone. So, there’s more of a God-centred, a big God vision of technology that I’m trying to help Christians with that helped to balance this sort of like let’s not just dismiss technology but let’s not go overboard and just adopt all technology. One of the ways to do that is to see that God has sovereignly given us these gifts and these gifts are good for some wonderful things. I mean, to have a smart phone is unbelievable. I mean, when I travel having a smartphone, having a map, being able to find restaurants that are well-ranked in Yelp, I mean, those kinds of things are phenomenal technologies. I stand back and think, “My goodness, Lord, thank You for this technology.” Then there’s also times when I see that I’m using it sinfully and I repent for those things.
So I think when it comes to technology, and really this is true of a lot of ethical dilemmas in the Christian life, is you have to learn where to celebrate and where to critique. You oftentimes are going to find yourself somewhere in the middle with technologies, and that’s been true since the dawn of time. I mean, every technology has pros and cons, especially in a fallen world, and we as Christians need to navigate that.
So, if Christians don’t know what to do with a smartphone, I mean, what’s going to happen when we talk about genetic modifications of humans, what do we do when we talk about domestic robots, self-driving cars? I mean, the technologies are just going to come in the next 20 years really quickly at us. We have to think through these things and smartphone is just one sort of little area where it can start to get our feet wet and like what does this look like for a local church, for parents and pastors and teens to come together and sort of start thinking about these things.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. Well, we’ll be relying on people like you to help us through that, Tony, so keep doing what you’re doing that really help. That stuff-

Tony Reinke:
Oh, I’m doing my very best.

Isaac Dagneau:
… scares me. So anyways, that’s good. At the beginning of your book, you quote two passages from first Corinthians 6:12 and 10:23. Let me just quickly read them just so our listeners can get the context here. Paul writes, “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.” Then again in quotes, “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.” And then in chapter 10 verse 23 again, “All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up.” I guess the question is what is being said here? Because I don’t think you would’ve put it there if you didn’t know what was being said, and-

Tony Reinke:
Yeah, that’s a mouthful, isn’t it?

Isaac Dagneau:
It is. It is. Then how does that relate to your book and our phone usage? If you put them at the beginning of the book, there must be the reason there.

Tony Reinke:
Yeah. So, I use 350 Bibles citations in this book. It’s my way of saying that the Bible is immediately relevant for the digital age. In this particular case, in the ancient city of Corinth, there was a motto and that motto went something like this, “all things are lawful for me.” In other words, don’t tell me what I can’t do. I’m free to do what I want. It sounds like a lot like present day in North America actually. The Apostle Paul in that culture and responding to that cultural model to help the church through that echoes back, “But not all things are helpful.” Then comes back the refrain, “All things are lawful for me,” but then Paul pushes back and says, “I will not be dominated by anything.” Then comes the Corinthian motto once again, all things are lawful, and then Paul says, “But not all things are helpful.”
So the point is that when we find freedom in Christ, it’s not a freedom to fall back into the bondage of this world. So, freedom in Christ gives us sure-footed, a self-reflection to avoid cultural bondage. So, my freedom in Christ gives me eyes to see that not all the things in this world are helpful for me or helpful for others or acceptable for my witness in the world. That’s directly applicable to my smartphone on how I use it. So, Christians can honestly ask themselves, are my social media habits, one, beneficial to my soul; number two, helpful to others; and number three, supportive of my witness in the world. If the answer to those questions is no, your freedom in Christ does not vindicate your smartphone addiction. So, there’s an end to it. You’re free to use a smartphone, but you have to use it in a way that has eternal eyes and not just trying to score a point today, glorify yourself on Instagram, whatever it is. So yeah, that interaction between Paul and Corinth is really helpful, because our freedom in Christ does not vindicate us if we’re using our smartphone unwisely.

Isaac Dagneau:
Right, no. That’s so helpful. That’s so good. That can be obviously applied to so many things-

Tony Reinke:
Oh, yeah.

Isaac Dagneau:
… right?

Tony Reinke:
Right.

Isaac Dagneau:
So that’s so good. Tony, what’s the hope for those of us, maybe who are listening, who’ve since talking with you and maybe it’s kind of being in the back of our minds for a while, we’ve realized that our phones have changed us maybe for the worse that we become fake a lot of the time what we’re posting, we are seeking out that glory that you were referring to as well. What is the hope that we have, and I guess what is the hope that you offer in your book as well?

Tony Reinke:
Yeah. Well, the hope is not in myself and the hope is not in yourself. Our hope is not in a life-hacking app. Our hope is not in tracking our time spent in apps. It’s a lot deeper than this, because each of us are led along by our own native appetites and tastes and desires, again going back to those desires that are deep inside of us. This is true of every creature. So, like a fish is swimming along, swims past a lobster and doesn’t think, “Ooh, lobster equals food.” If a fish swims by a worm, it says, “Ooh, worm equals food,” right? If we see a worm, we don’t say, “Food.” If we see a lobster, if you like lobster, you say, “Food,” right? So, there are these instinctual deep appetites that work inside of each of us, and this is true for every creature. We especially, we experience this for sexuality, for wealth, for self-glory. We feel these appetites. Those appetites for sex, for wealth, for self-glory, those are the three of the most potent native impulses that drive us inside each of us. It drives us how we use our phones.
So what is our hope? Well, it’s not a hope in just trying to be a better person or a little nicer person or being more civilized or looking at porn less or looking less self-consumed on social media. Because these native desires inside of us for sex and wealth and self-glory, those create a magnetic field in which all of the other desires in our lives orbit.
So what’s needed is not merely to throw away a smartphone or go for a dumb phone. Our truest need is so deep. It’s deeper than a digital detox. I mean, we each have these native instincts and we need to see beauty where we’ve only seen ugliness before, and we need to see ugliness in what we thought was previously attractive. In other words, we have to die at the selfish desire for sex, for wealth, for self-glorification. The whole orbit of our desires has to be destroyed and recreated. We have to be brand new people. We have to become brand new people at the very inner most part of our being in our desires. We have to be born again to see what is truly beautiful and satisfying.
So we have to have new hearts. If we’re going to dethrone lost, if the desire for wealth is going to be put aside, if that desire for self-glory in social media is going to die, our only hope is in God. He is our desperation. He must awaken us to see the beauty of His Son Jesus Christ and then in Him to find the new true centre of all of our desires. That is the message of Christianity, and that’s why Christ came to shed His blood for us. It is so real. It’s just as relevant in the digital age as it’s ever been, and so that’s our only hope. It is not in more apps. It is not in more life-hacking. It is not in digital detoxes. It is in Christ alone.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s so good, Tony. It’s funny as you say that, I’m like, how many times have I fallen for the new productivity app? It’s come out and I’m like, “Oh, this is it. This is going to be the easy… I’ll set up an account and it’s all fun at the beginning,” and then it just… It’s a heart change. It’s a new heart change like you just said. I think about this, too. In my past, I remember struggling with different things and I had this opportunity. If I’m remembering this correctly, I had this opportunity to go work at a church in a different country, in your country. I went down there and I remember, I think, it was my pastor, my mentor at that time just said, “Hey, just changing your environment is not going to change your heart.” It’s so easy to feel like it will.

Tony Reinke:
Right.

Isaac Dagneau:
So changing those little habits, maybe for a little while, but it’s not going to change your heart. I read recently, as well, someone saying that you can get really good at looking good on the outside. In fact, you can do quite well. You can actually be quite disciplined, and there’s lots of very hard-hearted, well-disciplined people. We have to remember that as well that it’s still not going to change those true heart issues that are in. So I appreciate that that, Tony, so thank you.
What are two or three practices, as we finish up here, what are two or three practices that we as Christian smartphone users, as I’m assuming that most listening are, what can we do to begin to ensure healthy phone usage? I’m maybe asking that as people that have had their hearts changed and now, they’re just in that sanctification process.

Tony Reinke:
Yeah, exactly. There’s no replacement for that, right. So, the change has to come from God Himself, but then once the change happens, there’s still a call for discipline. So, I think there’s just one really big one that comes to mind and that is the digital detox. Find time to get offline, get away from screens. For me, that’s at least one day a week. For me, that’s a two-week span once a year. Find space between you and the digital media of this age. So, a digital detox is a type of fasting.
Fasting is how Christians say, traditional fasting, food is not my God. Food is not my comfort. Food is not the basis of my happiness, God is. So, we use food rightly when God is at the centre of our lives, not food. So, in a consumer-driven age of abundance, there’s just so much food and so many things. In this consumer-driven age that we live in, you can imagine how fasting becomes even more urgent. Food is a powerful habit and so are our smartphones. So, every day, we habitually turn to our phones more often than we turn to sugar. Smartphones are like a virtual form of candy.
So, a digital detox is a way of saying the vast array of spectacles that are available to me. All these things that I can see on my screen, those are not my God. The self-affirmation and acceptance that I seek in social media is not the basis of my happiness. It’ll never make me happy. God’s acceptance of me in union with Jesus Christ is the only basis of my happiness. Only when our lives are re-centred on God can we learn to use our phones in an honourable way and with eternal purpose.
So, digital detox is, it’s not rocket science. They are essential only because we have been showered with new gifts from God in the form of technology and media, and there are spectacles that are wonderful gifts from God. I enjoy watching movies with my family, but our eyes, what our eyes naturally look for is leading us into a temptation, leading us into sin. We have to be careful with what it is that we’re looking for. What is it that truly has got my heart? Is it my affection for Jesus Christ, or is it my affection for this world?
So, like all fasting, digital detox is like a sanctified gratitude. It’s a way to ensure that our lives are centred on the Gift Giver, not on His gifts, and in this case the smartphone is a wonderful gift. What we’re saying in that digital detox is we’re saying the Gift Giver, One who gave us the smartphone is greater than His gift.

Isaac Dagneau:
That’s so good. Quick two responses that question response is firstly, we are so attached to our phones that when you say, “Do a digital detox,” I think many are like, “Okay, but how do I do that? What do I do if the phone’s in the cupboard for two weeks let alone a day? What do I do?” Then after that, maybe just encourage us by explaining how this has personally affected you, these digital detoxes what they have done for you.

Tony Reinke:
Yeah. So, if you work online like me, it’s not easy. You can do things like just deleting social media apps off of your laptop or off your computer and then deleting those apps off your phone. I’ve got a spouse; my wife is a wonderful help on this. So, I can do email, I can respond to work-related text messages. I can do that without then being drawn into Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. So those are my sort of my big-time consumer, so those social mediums. So, I mean, you’re just going to have to work around like there are going to be some essential things that you’re going to have to do. Like I can’t travel without my smartphone, so that’s just always going to be there.
Usually I will map my… Especially my two-week digital detox, I’ll map that onto a vacation. So, the first day of that digital detox will be the first day of a vacation. If I need to use a smartphone on the road for travel apps, I will, but I’ll have deleted all my social media apps from there. Then when I get back home four or five days later, then it just continues on. I usually map that onto a big project, like a writing project. So I’m off social media because I’m working on something big.
I think that’s one of the big takeaways, too, is that in my research what I realize is that the two college students that don’t really have a problem with smartphones are pre-med majors and pre-law majors. I mean, it’s a no brainer why.

Isaac Dagneau:
Right.

Tony Reinke:
Because a pre-med major and a pre-law major, they have a vision in mind of what they want to do that is so huge and so demanding. They’re putting in so many hours in school and trying to apply to get into apprenticeships and trying to get into law school. They’re driven by this vision that’s all-consuming vision of what they are called to do and to be that social media for them is really not a problem. I think we can all takeaway from that this idea that if you… This is what drives me crazy with so many of the sort of digital minimalism books and digital detox books that we have in the world today. It’s just kind of a small industry trying to get people off of social media. The challenge is the goal is not about just going on a digital detox. The goal is to reorient your life so that you’re working on something that is so much bigger and so much more significant and has eternal value that it drives then how you view social media.
So if your life does not have purpose, you don’t know what God has called you to do, to be, you are going to have a big challenge trying to break free from the smartphone, because you’re going to keep turning back to the smartphone to find your purpose and to find value and to find meaning, because you’re not driven by a vision that is bigger than the smartphone. So that’s… I mean we could do a whole other podcast just on that, on identifying vocation and what has God called me to do. This is the sort of the black hole of what most digital minimalism books and seminars miss is this is not just about getting offline. It’s about reorienting around something that’s bigger than what you’re trying to accomplish in social media and bigger calling. That calling could be your family if you’re a husband, wife, mom, dad. That vision could be school. That vision could be a career. That vision could be serving in the local church. That vision could be missions. That vision could be a lot of different things.
Until that’s really settled, and I know nobody really has 100% guarantee and I know exactly what God has called me to. We all live with this level of maybe it could be something different in the future. Maybe I’m not in the right career now like we always struggle with those kinds of questions. Until we look up and look out and see what God is doing through us, in us and what he wants to use us for, we’re just going to get lost in that labyrinth of social media of all those promises of what we could really quickly achieve with the one more tweet, one more Instagram post, one more Facebook post. It’s a labyrinth of time-wasting.
So, digital detox. I think if I was going to write a book on digital detoxes, it would basically be a book about finding purpose.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah.

Tony Reinke:
I mean, I think that’s what it would be, because that’s the key.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, no. That’s so good. In the last minute here, Tony, that second part of the question how has this improved your life, how has it helped you?

Tony Reinke:
Yeah, so as a writer, as someone who loves to write books, I mean, I need huge blocks of time to complete books. It just takes hundreds of hours to research and write and edit. Depending on the book, anywhere from between 200 to 400 hours is how much I need. So, I’ve said several times of social media, in the last eight years since I’ve started writing books, is that my book writing has really kept my sanity. Because I go on social media, because I’m looking for specific things. I’m looking for things related to digital detoxes, smartphone habits, things like that. I don’t get caught up into the latest scandal that was stirred up by a Donald Trump tweet. I don’t get pulled into the church debates over she said, he said. I just don’t get carried away into that kind of stuff, because book writing is such a massive project. I’ve got other books that I want to write in the future that it sort of narrows the kind of things that I want to speak into in a helpful way.
So those digital detoxes for me are a reminder like, “Oh yeah, you’ve got a big project that you’re working on.” I think all of us can have a big project that we want to work on. I know a lot of people who are not professional musicians, but they want to create an album and they have the technology to do that. A low budget documentary, a novel, a non-fiction book, people who want to write the story of their family history and kind of write a book about where they came from, like there’s so many things that we could do that are big projects that when it comes to a digital detox, for me it’s a… Those first three days are hard, really hard. I mean, it’s like you’re cutting off an appendage of your life, right? It’s painful and it’s bloody and it hurts.
Then after about like three or four days in that two-week detox that I do once a year, things start to come back to normal. I start to feel more refreshed. I can think more clearly. My concentration returns in a more powerful way and I can just focus on reading books, writing for a long period of time. I realized how invigorating it really is to do that for two weeks, but. Yeah, so that’s what I’m reminded of is just like set big goals on big projects that are going to take years to accomplish and find time to do that and just orient your life towards those goals. That, I think for me, is what brings clarity to social media and what I do and what I don’t do.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, that’s so good. Well, Tony, you and I talked about lots of different things, kind of went into digital detox, which I’m really glad we did. That’s really helpful and I hope you, as you’re listening, are encouraged as well. Anyways, Tony, I just want to say a huge thank you for being with us today.

Tony Reinke:
Isaac, thanks for the opportunity.

Kourtney Cromwell:
I’m glad that Tony was able to join us on this episode, and I hope that this prompts you to look at your own smartphone habits and take the time to do so with the best practices in mind. For more information on any of Tony’s books, including 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You, you can go to tonyreinke.com, or you can check out the episode page at indoubt.ca.
As we’re heading into the Christmas season, I just wanted to add a quick note about our end-of-the-year campaign. There’s only two times that we really push our fundraising goal, and this is one of them. For December of this year, indoubt’s goal is to raise $75,000. If indoubt has impacted you and you’d like to help us to continue to be a resource for young adults like yourself, then I’d encourage you to check out the donate page on our website or you can email me at info at indoubt.ca.
Join us next week as Craig Douglas is talking to Joshua about the role we play in shaping the young lives around us.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes and Spotify or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.