Devoloping A Theology of Technology.pdf
Resource for Parents to begin to formulate boundaries with technology in the home. Assess positives and negatives and draw conclusions on what wold be best for their children. Again, this is a launching ground. DNs are different and require different limitations, if any at all.
Content
YOUTH AT CHRIST COMMUNITY CHURCH IN FRISCO
DEVELOPING A THEOLOGY OF TECHNOLOGY
A PAPER PRESENTED TO CONGREGANTS AT CHRIST COMMUNITY CHURCH
BY A. J. SWANSON
FRISCO, TX OCTOBER 2013 9250 PASADENA DRIVE
DEVELOPING A THEOLOGY OF TECHNOLOGY The world has changed. Drastically. Man has forever been known for it’s use of tools. Today we use specific tools much more frequently. The invention of smartphones and tablets linking us immediately to the internet has led us to blur the line the separates mankind from his tools. We are hooked on technology, to the point were some anthropologist go as far as calling us cyborgs.1 The question becomes at what price? This paper will look at the statistical findings, positives and negatives of technology, as well as draw conclusions based on how this affects our spiritual well being. This paper hopes to show that while technology has become continuous part of our everyday life, what is happening in the home outside of our use of a screen has a greater influence then the screen itself. Screen-time amplifies relational and personal positives and negatives. One of the most interesting aspects about this new technological revolution is how quickly it has happened. How Quickly the World Turns How quickly the world turns, or how quickly the world changes before the next turn. While relatively new contributions to our lives Facebook, twitter, instagram, text messaging, itunes, netflix, have quickly become staples. Think about it. The first iphone was introduced in 2007. Text messaging blew up the same year, with more text messages sent than phone calls for the first time. In 2010 the average American teenager sent 3,339 texts a month. Thank God for unlimited plans, right?
1
Amber Case: We Are All Cyborgs Now. TED Talk
In 2008, Facebook only had 100 million users, yet today it boasts over 1.1 Billion. That’s over 10 percent of the world’s population. Twitter flew onto the scene in 2008, with Instagram taking its shot in 2010. Netflix instant streaming began to take control of the market in 2011. While most of us, don’t participate on all these on the same day, think how life was different only 5 years ago. And now every morning I get up, check Facebook, send a text or two to finalize meetings for the day, pop up songs on my itunes and go to work. But technology is not the only thing that is being rewired. Our brains are being rewired. The Rewiring of the Brain When I picked up a hammer for the first time as a child and took a swing I missed. Surprise! Luckily I still have all my fingers. It took me years of swinging a hammer to feel confident enough to believe that I would hit the nail on the head every time. It took time for my brain to rewire and my muscles to gain memory. In the same way, technologies are affecting the wiring of our brain. “When we learn a new skill or do a task a repeated number of times, the brain molds itself to do that task faster. Think of it like muscle memory. Athletes practice a certain motion repeatedly so their muscles will perform that action faster, better and more consistently. Your brain does the same thing. The more you use your brain in a certain way, the more your brain remolds itself to expect that kind of input. Neuroscience calls this attribute plasticity and its something we carry throughout our lives. No matter our age it’s still possible to learn new skills, adapt to new environments and use new technologies.”2 The same process takes place as we continue to use new tools to interact with our environment. But what is the cost? What We Have Learned Barna Group has done some amazing research on the family and technology. I would definitely point you that way if you want hard data. I will share a little with you now, especially
2
Adam Robinson. Fast Zombies Around Us. In MORF Magazine. Issue 9. 2013. 28-32.
the stuff that I found most surprising. While tweens and teens, which I will now refer to as Digital Natives (DNs) are growing up in a world where they have never known anything else, it is not just them that are driving this technological revolution. Parents Are Just as Dependent on Technology Three major statistics bear out Parents and Children’s use of technology. 1)“Parents are more likely than their DN3 offspring to report regular use of cell phones and desktop computers. They are just likely as their DNs to use laptop computers and tablet-like devices. 2) Parents watch just as much television and movies, use the Internet for as many minutes per day, and spend more time on the telephone and emailing than do their DN children. 3) The technology and media-related tasks that young people do more often than their parents are listening to music, texting, and playing video games. Even in these categories, most parents are surprisingly active.”4 Parents, you drive the use of technology in your home. You make the decisions, and most of the time you set the tone. It just might be a different type of screen that you are staring at. This leads me to an overall theme I noticed over the course of writing this paper. What is happening in the home outside of a DNs use of a screen has a greater influence then the screen itself. Screen-time amplifies relational and personal positives and negatives. We Can’t Get Away From It One third of parents and nearly half of DNs say they don’t have any specific times where they make the choice to disconnect from their technology. Only 10% of parents and 6% of
3 4
Digital Native – Modern Day Tweens and Teens
BarnaGroup. How Technology is Influencing Families. https://www.barna.org/familykids-articles/488-how-technology-is-influencing-families. May 2011
teenagers say they take one day off a week from their tech screens.5 What on earth did people do before Cell Phone Apps and TV Shows? What is possibly more disturbing is our inability to get away from it. Its not that we just don’t unplug, but how hooked on the motherboard we are. “Nearly half of both parents and teens said they emailed, texted or talked on the phone while eating in the last week. Two out of five youth and one-third of parents have used two or more screens simultaneously during this time period. And half of students and one-fifth of parents have checked email or text messages in bed in the last seven days.”6 Who is the remote control and who is controlling the remote? The Desire to Escape Is Minimal While some parents and children regularly fight about technology. They are in the minority. Only 1 in 4 have strong disagreements about the limits of technology every week. About the same number says that technology causes tension within the home. Even though the minority are in open conflict, half of parents (49%) worry that technology is wasting their children’s time. And when it comes to communication between parents and their children, only 39% of parents and 27% of tweens and teens say technology makes it hard to have conversations. “The conclusion stemming from the research is that technology seems to amplify the relational patterns and problems already in place: families that have healthy and frequent conversations find technology aiding that process, while families without such healthy interactions find that technology exacerbates the isolation of its members.”7 What is happening
5 6 7
Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.
in the home outside of a DNs use of a screen has a greater influence then the screen itself. Screen-time amplifies relational positives and negatives. We Aren’t Nearly as Friendly as Facebook Says An average user on Facebook has about 120 friends. But that person only engages in twoway conversations with about four to six people on a regular base, depending on the gender. Instant messaging shows the same trend. While people might have about 100 people on their phone, they actually chat with less than five. Further, when it comes to audibly hearing ones circle of influence, 80 percent of calls are made to four people.8 I spoke to several of my students who are constant texters and they confirmed the above statistics. So at least in my sphere of influence, it seems the statistics bear out. Not Just Consumers but Creators Pew Internet and American Life Project on online usage reports that “half of the teenagers in the US are not merely passive consumers. They are Content Creators, making their own web pages or posting their artwork, photos, stories, or videos online. 9 This is both positive and negative depending on the content and the motivation. Are they content creators for the sake of content, or for the sake of being known as content creators? Why are they so compelled to share personal moments? The Positives Technology can be defined as tool use that impacts human problem solving. Smartphones and tablet are tools we use to solve problems, acquire information or distract ourselves. We live at a time in history were people have access to more information, are able to
8 9
Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet Enables Intimacy. TED Talk. Mark Bauerlein. The Dumbest Generation (New York: Penguin, 2008), 73.
connect and keep up with more individuals and are proficient enough to accomplish more through multitasking.10 We are Connected More Than Ever Prior to the industrial revolution about 150 years ago the work sphere and family sphere of someone’s life were intricately connected. The vast majority of people lived where they worked. A farmer could go in for lunch with his family or the blacksmith could put down the iron if his four year old son wandered in wanting to know what his father was making. After a 150-year hiatus this is taking place again, effecting jobs that never had the ability to connect with family before. Think about it, someone can be hunting terrorists on the other side of the world in the morning, then come back to base and read his son a bedtime story over skype. The Pew Institute states that 50% of anybody with email access at work is actually doing private e-mail from their office. In Stefena Broadbent’s research the number is closer to 75%. And 75% of people admit doing private conversations from work on their mobile phones.11 The potential for, can we say it, more ancient family interaction is more possible today than it was 15 years ago; when the only access to home from work was a payphone on the wall. The Negatives Whether the positives outweigh the negatives will probably be a discussion we have for years as the world continues to evolve closer to being even more interconnected; even more public. Change this rapid will probably be looked at 500 years from now as another turning point in history much like the advent of Guttenberg’s printing press. What was such an amazing result of the printing press was the then vast exchange of public discourse that could take place
10 11
Robinson. Broadbent
between a much larger set of people. Access to knowledge sped up the advent of many of our greatest scientific advancements. Imagine what Guttenberg did for the information exchange and multiply that 100 fold. What will be the cost of such quick information exchanges? Are You Driving While Reading this Article? Multitasking. According to a Stanford Study, people today are better at multitasking then ever before. But the cost comes at proficiency. “Heavy Multitaskers were much more easily distracted by ‘irrelevant environmental stimuli’ and are much less able to focus their concentration on a particular task.”12 Head researching Clifford Nass added “Intensive multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy. Everything distracts them.”13 And when he says everything, he means everything. Even what seems the most irrelevant. Hyperactive Hyperlinks Researcher Erping Zhu has found a direct link between the amount of hyperlinks in an online article and the amount of information people comprehend. The more links, the less we know because every time we see a hyperlink, our brains must decide whether to click on it or not. Even if we don’t click on any of them, our brains must actively choose to not explore 10-20 times. Those constant interruptions impede our brains ability to learn.”14 Constant buttons available to the DN create stress on the brain because choices have to be made, even if they are as small as a blue underlined word. The constant barrage of quick decisions has led many to believe it has something to do with the rising diagnosis of A.D.D.
12 13 14
Robinson. Ibid. Ibid.
The New A.D.D. Titled the “Extensive Television Viewing and the Development of Attention and Learning Difficulties During Adolescence” in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The study tracked children in 678 families in upstate New York at ages 14, 16, and 22 years. The article abstract summarizes. Frequent television viewing during adolescence was associated with elevated risk for subsequent attention and learning difficulties after family characteristics and prior cognitive difficulties were controlled. Youths who watched 1 or more hours of television per day at mean age 14 years were at elevated risk for poor homework completion, negative attitudes toward school, poor grades, and long-tern academic failure. Youths who watched 3 or more hours of television per day were the most likely to experience these outcomes. In addition, youths who watched 3 or more hours of television per day were at elevated risk for subsequent attention problems and were least likely to receive postsecondary education. (Johnson et al.)15 It’s a very similar result to the prior Hyperactive Hyperlinks section. Just because the brain is processing things faster does not mean its processing it more proficiently. Just watch an old movie, may I suggest Casablanca, and then a newer film. Make it one in the same genre. The dialogue is greatly lessened, the cuts between camera shots are almost tripled in frequency, because our brains can’t seem to slow down. You can see the same thing when you watch the Cosby Show, compared to modern day family dramas on the same channel. This however does not necessarily take into account other activities that take place outside of television exposure. Another study later in the paper sheds light on what happens when the TV is turned off has an effect on what happens with student grades. Leading to Boredom The lack of creativity, and the reliance on a handheld device for amusement has led to smart phones being just as addicting as drugs. In my 10 years of working with tweens and
15
Baurlein, 90
teenagers it has gotten harder every year to ask them to put away their cell phones during classroom time, and its even worse when I ask them to leave their cell phones at home during group trips. Jason Perlow shares this story. I got to see all of this first-hand back in December 2012, when my wife and I went on a seven-night Caribbean cruise on the NCL Epic. This massive vessel, which can accommodate over 4,000 passengers, had hundreds of families on board, many with teenage and pre-teen children, who brought their smartphones, hoping they would still be able to text and access their usual social networks and apps and whatnot. The Epic, in fact, like most modern cruise ships, does have Wi-Fi and internet access, but it is so prohibitively expensive that most families chose not to pay for it. So what did these kids do? Well, the ship did have entertainment options — it had a club for kids that includes their own disco and video-game arcade, a giant water park, as well as activities specifically geared for teens and pre-teens. But more often than not, I found many teens and pre-teens lying around deck and looking bored out of their minds.16 While I haven’t personally seen this specific reaction, every time I go on trips with DNs and they leave their cell phones behind, it is always followed by a roughly 48 hour period of complaints, wishful thinking, and cries of boredom. It wanes for most after that initial 48 hours, but for some with a real addiction, they talk about their phones all week. And when they get back from their week away, there is the immediate need to update their “Second Self”. Maintaining the Second Self You are starting to show up online. When you type in your name, depending on the frequency of your name, you are going to be showing up on google’s list. Your business, your profile, your pictures, and God-Forbid any videos are at the world’s fingertips. And while you have already showered, brushed your teeth, and put on deodorant for the first self, you constantly have to maintain your second self. So instead of going through one adolescence, youth today
Perlow, Jason. Your Children are Slaves to their Smartphone. http://www.zdnet.com/ your-children-are-slaves-to-their-smartphones7000016442/?s_cid=e539&ttag=e539
16
have to go through two.17 They feel the need to update their digital self so other Second Selves can interact with it. Mind you, these are rarely honest second selves. While face time usually leads to people being exposed to other’s flaws, Second Selves can be pruned like a flower bush. Someone posts a poor picture of you, you can untag yourself. You can delete poor thought out messages. Second Selves are the most manicured pictures of people they can maintain. Isn’t it hard enough to already maintain our first selves? Making Us Dumber The amount of information available to us is making us dumber. I know, that sounds like a contradiction. Not dumb as in the number of brute facts that we know, but the ability to connect those brute facts and posit logical reasoning, as well as the ability to express those reasons in a creative way. We have substituted knowledge of the stars at the expense of the constellations. The National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP] – conducted by the U.S. Department of Education is nicknamed “the Nation’s Report Card.” It gathers a respondent group of 10,000 to 20,000 students. On the 2001 NAEP history exam, most of high school seniors scored a 57%, in a category classified as “below basic.” What is sad is that “basic” is only defined as a partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that allow for proficient work at a 12th grade level. Only one out of every one hundred students reached the “advanced” level. One is led to believe that these questions should be difficult if the vast majority are flunking. A look at a few questions shows the following: 52% chose Germany, Japan or Italy over the Soviet Union as a U.S. ally in World War II. Sixty-six percent could not explain a photo of a theatre whose portal reads “Colored Entrance.”
17
Case
One excuse might be that they are not supposed to know these things until college. A test was designed to see how much better the students at the top 55 colleges in the country would do. Remember these are the “top” 55 colleges. Many of these questions were drawn exactly from the NAEP high school exam. This made the results even more appalling. Nineteen percent of the students scored a C or higher on the assessment. 29% knew what “Reconstruction” referred to. Only one-third correctly identified the American general at Yorktown. Less than 25% identified James Madison as the “father of the Constitution.” These test scores emerge despite the fact that young people receive more exposure to history in popular culture than ever before.18 Even worse is that the Millenials believe that they are doing everything in their power to succeed in life. They believe they are doing what is best for themselves and the country. A 2004 U.S. Department of Education report says that 47 percent of high school seniors believe it is “very important” to be an active and informed citizen, yet in the 1998 NAEP civics exam, only 26 percent scored “proficient” or “advanced.” Forty-five percent could not understand basic information on a sample ballot.19 As Bauerlein writes, The abundant material progress in an adolescent’s life hasn’t merely bypassed or disengaged him or her from intellectual progress, but has, perhaps, hindered it. Greater spending power for teens and 20-year-olds has steered them away from books, museums, and science shows, not toward them. The Internet doesn’t impart adult information; it crowds it out. Video games, cell phones, and blogs don’t foster rightful citizenship. They hamper it. Maybe it is true, as the Ad Council declares in a report on youth volunteering, that “young adults today are fiercely individualistic, and are media-savvy to a degree never seen before. . . .” Those positives, though, only underscore the intellectual negatives. . . . The enhancements and prosperities claimed to turn young Americans into astute global citizens and liberated consumers sometimes actually conspire against intellectual growth.20
18 19 20
Bauerlein, 14-19. Ibid., 35-36. Ibid., 36.
Technology and constant multitasking are leading to a dumber population. A 2009 study at UCLA found that while people today are better at mentally visualizing objects, they’re getting worse at critical thinking, creativity and reflection.21 “Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows: What the internet is Doing to our Brains,” makes the case that we are gaining cognitive skills but they’re lower level reflex skills. All the while we’re trading higher level skills like true creativity and deep reasoning.”22 It is not only the head that is suffering, it is also the heart. Empathy For decades The University of Michigan has studied empathy of college freshman. With over 14,000 students on file, they have seen empathy levels drop 40 percent since 2000. Citing this along with other studies have some researchers lamenting a rampant “Narcissism epidemic.” “Our increased reliance upon devices and social networks to communicate at the expense of face to face communication is one of the factors contributing to this drop in empathy.”23 Issues once discussed face to face with the attempt at clarity have been replaced by sharing a story from a website that supports someone’s perspective. Instead of researching a diverse array of perspectives, most people hover to those who share their particular world views. While this isn’t new to people, this is heightened. Screen-time amplifies already established relational positives and negatives. It isn’t just the Internet though. From the University of Winnipeg website, one of their recent studies found that “students who are heavy texters place less importance on moral, aesthetic and spiritual goals, and greater
21 22 23
Robinson Ibid. Ibid.
importance on wealth and image. Those who texted more than 100 times a day were 30 percent less likely to feel strongly that leading an ethical, principled life was important to them, in comparison to those who texted 50 times a day or less.”24 The ability to remove face time from interaction has allowed bullies to be bullies, and would be bullies the opportunity to live out their fantasies. Where To Go From Here My personal views have evolved since I began this study. My initial reaction was to reenact the premise of the NBC TV show Revolution, where power is cut off to the United States, and people are left to deal with the face to face honesties they have been hiding from. Slowly, an overriding theme seemed to present itself to me as I researched. I’ve already stated it several times. What is happening in the home outside of a DNs use of a screen has a greater influence then the screen itself. Screen-time amplifies relational and personal positives and negatives. Below are a couple factors a play and what I think should be our responses. What Do Students Do when Not Watching TV? Studies have not shown that an abundance of tech time leads to lower grades alone. It is what students are doing with the time away from the TV and electronics that affects them too. Kaiser report Generation M is a startling finding about different media use and student achievement. It shows that leisure reading of any kind correlates more closely with a student’s grades than any other media. While either to 18 year olds with high and low grades differed by only one minute in TV time. (186-187 minutes), they differed in reading time by 17 minutes, 46-29 – a huge discrepancy in relative terms. One that suggests that TV doesn’t have nearly the intellectual consequences that reading does.25
24 25
Ibid. Baurlein, 89.
This is a category that needs to be studied further. But its clear that what happens away from the TV is more important. One of the things that need to happen away from technology is Self Reflection. Self Reflection Anthropologist Amber Case makes fears that the technology we are using now will have some scary affects on the DN. And so there are some psychological effects that happen with this. One... ... people aren’t taking time for mental reflection anymore, and that they aren’t slowing down and stopping... ... They’re not just sitting there. And really, when you have no external input, that is a time when there is a creation of self, when you can do long-term planning, when you can try and figure out who you really are. And then, once you do that, you can figure out how to present your second self in a legitimate way, instead of just dealing with everything as it comes in... ... I’m really worried that, especially kids today, they’re not going to be dealing with down-time, that they have an instantaneous button-clicking culture, and that everything comes to them, and that they become very excited about it and very addicted to it.26 I don’t know Amber Case’s standing on religion. But I think she touches on a very human quality when she talks about what we find in those moments when our minds can be silent. When our mind can process questions about who we are, and who God is. I’ve done a test with students several times were I purposely put a large group of them in an absolutely silent environment. It lasts 5 seconds before someone feels compelled to make a sound. They fear silence. I think a lot of it comes down to whom they will interact with in that silence. Not only is Self Reflection and Discovery thwarted. Inter-personal discovery is also hampered. False Sense of Communication It is so much easier to send a text. You are done in a 150 characters or less. And many times there is no need for a response. I’ve even heard about people breaking up with their
26
Case
significant others via text message. It’s so much easier than dealing with a conflict face to face. Let me make one thing clear, there is no substitute for face-to-face communication. Only 7 percent of communication happens through our words. The other 93 percent comes through our tone, facial expression and body gestures. Here is a really sad story I recently read. A mom spent the night texting with her daughter off at college. They shared B-IG hugs and comments of love and affection by text for hours. So it came as a shock to the mother to find out her daughter tried to commit suicide late that night. The words just don’t convey who and where we are spiritually.”27 Not only is it easy to hide our motives when we text, it just as easy to hide our responses. When you text, or IM, or tweet, you are interacting with someone’s second self more than his or her first self. Symptoms of a Greater Issue It would be easy to say, you should do x and y so that your technology addiction can be handled. I could offer to set up Alcoholic Anonymous type meetings for tech addicts. Maybe call it iTECH (Internet TV E-mail Compulsion Help). I think it could stick. But the more I think about the issue the more I’m convinced of my original thesis. What is happening in the home outside of a DNs use of a screen has a greater influence then the screen itself. Screen-time amplifies relational and personal positives and negatives. The Fact is fear of man motivates much of our reliance on technology. We hide behind texts, our Facebook profile, our shared news stories and memes, because they are adequate in affording us the illusion that we are better connected. It’s all about risk. We don’t have to risk the potential for conflict when we use our second person instead of our first. We also don’t have to know something ourselves, but can posit someone else’s opinion instead of our own. The
27
Robinson.
same goes for self-reflection. It is much easier to manicure our second self than to create our first. It’s no wonder that there is a sharp increase in the number of “put together” twenty something’s who are currently in therapy because they just don’t seem to find fulfillment in what they are doing.28 Of course they don’t, they don’t even know who they are. They have refused to interact with the quietness and engage those deep questions. Instead they lean on short, pithy tweets to establish their worldviews instead of logically reasoning through the harder questions that take more time and concentration to come to a conclusion on. This is not new though. We hide behind tweets and poorly thought out catchy statements, yet the Pharisees hid behind a litany of laws so they wouldn’t have to engage with the sin in their own hearts. Jesus speaks boldly about the fear of man in Luke 12. Luke 12: 1b-3, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. 2 Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 3 Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops.”29 We cannot escape our sin, but we can be distracted away from dealing with it. I see this all the time with DNs. Instead of dealing with a conflict within their own hearts, or dealing with conflict with a friend or family member, they are content to either 1) send their second self to deal with it via text to IM; 2) ignore it by switching on a screen; 3) ask their peers for advice, most of which are just as unprepared to handled as they are, but are more than willing to offer their opinion. My former professor used to refer to this process as cultivating our ignorance.
28 29
Ron Alsop. The Trophy Kids Grow Up. (Josey Bass Press, 2008). ESV.
Surrounding ourselves with “knowledge” from people who are as equally inept at solving the problem. So when there is conflict at home, how is technology used as a tool to handle it? Do you search for answers on the internet (many of which will come from our teenage content creators). Do you type up an email? Do you have hour-long conversations through text? Do you put it off for one more round of Angry Birds? Or do you grow face-to-face with someone even if it means risk. As BarnaGroup said earlier, “families that have healthy and frequent conversations find technology aiding that process, while families without such healthy interactions find that technology exacerbates the isolation of its members.”30 So What Should I Do? Start the conversation with your families. There is not a one size fits all approach. Parents: Model Proper Technology Use. If you spend all your free-time in front of a screen you don’t get to be angry that your local DN does too. Yes, yours might legitimately be for work, but they just see it as screen time. Turn off the TV and make face-time for each other. Play a game, go for a walk, play catch, or kick a ball. Set Times for Face-time: Don’t be a Pharisee with this but it is a good practice. One of my friends told me that when he goes out to eat with his other friends, they all put their phones in the middle of the table, and whoever grabs theirs first has to pick up the tab. Try to have meals together... at a table. A Purdue University study in 2003 show that “the percent of teens who got A’s was 20% of those who ate with their families five or more times per week compared to only
30
BarnaGroup
12% of those who ate with their families two or less times per week.”31 According to a CASA study, “teens who have frequent family dinners are more likely to be emotionally content, work hard at school, and have positive peer relationships, not to mention healthier eating habits.”32 Seek help if needed. Some of your children have technology addiction problems that impede their ability to think rationally, and more importantly deal with some of the sin that has happened to them, and that they are doing to others. Like any other addictive substance, technology offers a smorgasbord of options for diversion. Some students probably do need counseling to get their fears out in the open and begin to build a bridge to the other first selves around them. Read up on technology, be culturally aware of the types of tech your child us using and/or abusing. Establish your own Theology of Technology, and help your DNs to establish their own. We cannot go back to pre-Guttenberg times. We cannot send Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to take out Zuckerberg or Vint Cerf (at least not yet). Welcome to the next information revolution. If you think yesterdays rules will work to fix today’s problem’s you will be sorely mistaken. Relational and Personal realities have been heightened by the use of technology, and unless we figure it out, our second selves will forever dominate our first.
Purdue University Center for Families. www.cfs.purdue.edu/CFF/ promotingfamilymeals
32
31
Ibid.
DEVELOPING A THEOLOGY OF TECHNOLOGY
A PAPER PRESENTED TO CONGREGANTS AT CHRIST COMMUNITY CHURCH
BY A. J. SWANSON
FRISCO, TX OCTOBER 2013 9250 PASADENA DRIVE
DEVELOPING A THEOLOGY OF TECHNOLOGY The world has changed. Drastically. Man has forever been known for it’s use of tools. Today we use specific tools much more frequently. The invention of smartphones and tablets linking us immediately to the internet has led us to blur the line the separates mankind from his tools. We are hooked on technology, to the point were some anthropologist go as far as calling us cyborgs.1 The question becomes at what price? This paper will look at the statistical findings, positives and negatives of technology, as well as draw conclusions based on how this affects our spiritual well being. This paper hopes to show that while technology has become continuous part of our everyday life, what is happening in the home outside of our use of a screen has a greater influence then the screen itself. Screen-time amplifies relational and personal positives and negatives. One of the most interesting aspects about this new technological revolution is how quickly it has happened. How Quickly the World Turns How quickly the world turns, or how quickly the world changes before the next turn. While relatively new contributions to our lives Facebook, twitter, instagram, text messaging, itunes, netflix, have quickly become staples. Think about it. The first iphone was introduced in 2007. Text messaging blew up the same year, with more text messages sent than phone calls for the first time. In 2010 the average American teenager sent 3,339 texts a month. Thank God for unlimited plans, right?
1
Amber Case: We Are All Cyborgs Now. TED Talk
In 2008, Facebook only had 100 million users, yet today it boasts over 1.1 Billion. That’s over 10 percent of the world’s population. Twitter flew onto the scene in 2008, with Instagram taking its shot in 2010. Netflix instant streaming began to take control of the market in 2011. While most of us, don’t participate on all these on the same day, think how life was different only 5 years ago. And now every morning I get up, check Facebook, send a text or two to finalize meetings for the day, pop up songs on my itunes and go to work. But technology is not the only thing that is being rewired. Our brains are being rewired. The Rewiring of the Brain When I picked up a hammer for the first time as a child and took a swing I missed. Surprise! Luckily I still have all my fingers. It took me years of swinging a hammer to feel confident enough to believe that I would hit the nail on the head every time. It took time for my brain to rewire and my muscles to gain memory. In the same way, technologies are affecting the wiring of our brain. “When we learn a new skill or do a task a repeated number of times, the brain molds itself to do that task faster. Think of it like muscle memory. Athletes practice a certain motion repeatedly so their muscles will perform that action faster, better and more consistently. Your brain does the same thing. The more you use your brain in a certain way, the more your brain remolds itself to expect that kind of input. Neuroscience calls this attribute plasticity and its something we carry throughout our lives. No matter our age it’s still possible to learn new skills, adapt to new environments and use new technologies.”2 The same process takes place as we continue to use new tools to interact with our environment. But what is the cost? What We Have Learned Barna Group has done some amazing research on the family and technology. I would definitely point you that way if you want hard data. I will share a little with you now, especially
2
Adam Robinson. Fast Zombies Around Us. In MORF Magazine. Issue 9. 2013. 28-32.
the stuff that I found most surprising. While tweens and teens, which I will now refer to as Digital Natives (DNs) are growing up in a world where they have never known anything else, it is not just them that are driving this technological revolution. Parents Are Just as Dependent on Technology Three major statistics bear out Parents and Children’s use of technology. 1)“Parents are more likely than their DN3 offspring to report regular use of cell phones and desktop computers. They are just likely as their DNs to use laptop computers and tablet-like devices. 2) Parents watch just as much television and movies, use the Internet for as many minutes per day, and spend more time on the telephone and emailing than do their DN children. 3) The technology and media-related tasks that young people do more often than their parents are listening to music, texting, and playing video games. Even in these categories, most parents are surprisingly active.”4 Parents, you drive the use of technology in your home. You make the decisions, and most of the time you set the tone. It just might be a different type of screen that you are staring at. This leads me to an overall theme I noticed over the course of writing this paper. What is happening in the home outside of a DNs use of a screen has a greater influence then the screen itself. Screen-time amplifies relational and personal positives and negatives. We Can’t Get Away From It One third of parents and nearly half of DNs say they don’t have any specific times where they make the choice to disconnect from their technology. Only 10% of parents and 6% of
3 4
Digital Native – Modern Day Tweens and Teens
BarnaGroup. How Technology is Influencing Families. https://www.barna.org/familykids-articles/488-how-technology-is-influencing-families. May 2011
teenagers say they take one day off a week from their tech screens.5 What on earth did people do before Cell Phone Apps and TV Shows? What is possibly more disturbing is our inability to get away from it. Its not that we just don’t unplug, but how hooked on the motherboard we are. “Nearly half of both parents and teens said they emailed, texted or talked on the phone while eating in the last week. Two out of five youth and one-third of parents have used two or more screens simultaneously during this time period. And half of students and one-fifth of parents have checked email or text messages in bed in the last seven days.”6 Who is the remote control and who is controlling the remote? The Desire to Escape Is Minimal While some parents and children regularly fight about technology. They are in the minority. Only 1 in 4 have strong disagreements about the limits of technology every week. About the same number says that technology causes tension within the home. Even though the minority are in open conflict, half of parents (49%) worry that technology is wasting their children’s time. And when it comes to communication between parents and their children, only 39% of parents and 27% of tweens and teens say technology makes it hard to have conversations. “The conclusion stemming from the research is that technology seems to amplify the relational patterns and problems already in place: families that have healthy and frequent conversations find technology aiding that process, while families without such healthy interactions find that technology exacerbates the isolation of its members.”7 What is happening
5 6 7
Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.
in the home outside of a DNs use of a screen has a greater influence then the screen itself. Screen-time amplifies relational positives and negatives. We Aren’t Nearly as Friendly as Facebook Says An average user on Facebook has about 120 friends. But that person only engages in twoway conversations with about four to six people on a regular base, depending on the gender. Instant messaging shows the same trend. While people might have about 100 people on their phone, they actually chat with less than five. Further, when it comes to audibly hearing ones circle of influence, 80 percent of calls are made to four people.8 I spoke to several of my students who are constant texters and they confirmed the above statistics. So at least in my sphere of influence, it seems the statistics bear out. Not Just Consumers but Creators Pew Internet and American Life Project on online usage reports that “half of the teenagers in the US are not merely passive consumers. They are Content Creators, making their own web pages or posting their artwork, photos, stories, or videos online. 9 This is both positive and negative depending on the content and the motivation. Are they content creators for the sake of content, or for the sake of being known as content creators? Why are they so compelled to share personal moments? The Positives Technology can be defined as tool use that impacts human problem solving. Smartphones and tablet are tools we use to solve problems, acquire information or distract ourselves. We live at a time in history were people have access to more information, are able to
8 9
Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet Enables Intimacy. TED Talk. Mark Bauerlein. The Dumbest Generation (New York: Penguin, 2008), 73.
connect and keep up with more individuals and are proficient enough to accomplish more through multitasking.10 We are Connected More Than Ever Prior to the industrial revolution about 150 years ago the work sphere and family sphere of someone’s life were intricately connected. The vast majority of people lived where they worked. A farmer could go in for lunch with his family or the blacksmith could put down the iron if his four year old son wandered in wanting to know what his father was making. After a 150-year hiatus this is taking place again, effecting jobs that never had the ability to connect with family before. Think about it, someone can be hunting terrorists on the other side of the world in the morning, then come back to base and read his son a bedtime story over skype. The Pew Institute states that 50% of anybody with email access at work is actually doing private e-mail from their office. In Stefena Broadbent’s research the number is closer to 75%. And 75% of people admit doing private conversations from work on their mobile phones.11 The potential for, can we say it, more ancient family interaction is more possible today than it was 15 years ago; when the only access to home from work was a payphone on the wall. The Negatives Whether the positives outweigh the negatives will probably be a discussion we have for years as the world continues to evolve closer to being even more interconnected; even more public. Change this rapid will probably be looked at 500 years from now as another turning point in history much like the advent of Guttenberg’s printing press. What was such an amazing result of the printing press was the then vast exchange of public discourse that could take place
10 11
Robinson. Broadbent
between a much larger set of people. Access to knowledge sped up the advent of many of our greatest scientific advancements. Imagine what Guttenberg did for the information exchange and multiply that 100 fold. What will be the cost of such quick information exchanges? Are You Driving While Reading this Article? Multitasking. According to a Stanford Study, people today are better at multitasking then ever before. But the cost comes at proficiency. “Heavy Multitaskers were much more easily distracted by ‘irrelevant environmental stimuli’ and are much less able to focus their concentration on a particular task.”12 Head researching Clifford Nass added “Intensive multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy. Everything distracts them.”13 And when he says everything, he means everything. Even what seems the most irrelevant. Hyperactive Hyperlinks Researcher Erping Zhu has found a direct link between the amount of hyperlinks in an online article and the amount of information people comprehend. The more links, the less we know because every time we see a hyperlink, our brains must decide whether to click on it or not. Even if we don’t click on any of them, our brains must actively choose to not explore 10-20 times. Those constant interruptions impede our brains ability to learn.”14 Constant buttons available to the DN create stress on the brain because choices have to be made, even if they are as small as a blue underlined word. The constant barrage of quick decisions has led many to believe it has something to do with the rising diagnosis of A.D.D.
12 13 14
Robinson. Ibid. Ibid.
The New A.D.D. Titled the “Extensive Television Viewing and the Development of Attention and Learning Difficulties During Adolescence” in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The study tracked children in 678 families in upstate New York at ages 14, 16, and 22 years. The article abstract summarizes. Frequent television viewing during adolescence was associated with elevated risk for subsequent attention and learning difficulties after family characteristics and prior cognitive difficulties were controlled. Youths who watched 1 or more hours of television per day at mean age 14 years were at elevated risk for poor homework completion, negative attitudes toward school, poor grades, and long-tern academic failure. Youths who watched 3 or more hours of television per day were the most likely to experience these outcomes. In addition, youths who watched 3 or more hours of television per day were at elevated risk for subsequent attention problems and were least likely to receive postsecondary education. (Johnson et al.)15 It’s a very similar result to the prior Hyperactive Hyperlinks section. Just because the brain is processing things faster does not mean its processing it more proficiently. Just watch an old movie, may I suggest Casablanca, and then a newer film. Make it one in the same genre. The dialogue is greatly lessened, the cuts between camera shots are almost tripled in frequency, because our brains can’t seem to slow down. You can see the same thing when you watch the Cosby Show, compared to modern day family dramas on the same channel. This however does not necessarily take into account other activities that take place outside of television exposure. Another study later in the paper sheds light on what happens when the TV is turned off has an effect on what happens with student grades. Leading to Boredom The lack of creativity, and the reliance on a handheld device for amusement has led to smart phones being just as addicting as drugs. In my 10 years of working with tweens and
15
Baurlein, 90
teenagers it has gotten harder every year to ask them to put away their cell phones during classroom time, and its even worse when I ask them to leave their cell phones at home during group trips. Jason Perlow shares this story. I got to see all of this first-hand back in December 2012, when my wife and I went on a seven-night Caribbean cruise on the NCL Epic. This massive vessel, which can accommodate over 4,000 passengers, had hundreds of families on board, many with teenage and pre-teen children, who brought their smartphones, hoping they would still be able to text and access their usual social networks and apps and whatnot. The Epic, in fact, like most modern cruise ships, does have Wi-Fi and internet access, but it is so prohibitively expensive that most families chose not to pay for it. So what did these kids do? Well, the ship did have entertainment options — it had a club for kids that includes their own disco and video-game arcade, a giant water park, as well as activities specifically geared for teens and pre-teens. But more often than not, I found many teens and pre-teens lying around deck and looking bored out of their minds.16 While I haven’t personally seen this specific reaction, every time I go on trips with DNs and they leave their cell phones behind, it is always followed by a roughly 48 hour period of complaints, wishful thinking, and cries of boredom. It wanes for most after that initial 48 hours, but for some with a real addiction, they talk about their phones all week. And when they get back from their week away, there is the immediate need to update their “Second Self”. Maintaining the Second Self You are starting to show up online. When you type in your name, depending on the frequency of your name, you are going to be showing up on google’s list. Your business, your profile, your pictures, and God-Forbid any videos are at the world’s fingertips. And while you have already showered, brushed your teeth, and put on deodorant for the first self, you constantly have to maintain your second self. So instead of going through one adolescence, youth today
Perlow, Jason. Your Children are Slaves to their Smartphone. http://www.zdnet.com/ your-children-are-slaves-to-their-smartphones7000016442/?s_cid=e539&ttag=e539
16
have to go through two.17 They feel the need to update their digital self so other Second Selves can interact with it. Mind you, these are rarely honest second selves. While face time usually leads to people being exposed to other’s flaws, Second Selves can be pruned like a flower bush. Someone posts a poor picture of you, you can untag yourself. You can delete poor thought out messages. Second Selves are the most manicured pictures of people they can maintain. Isn’t it hard enough to already maintain our first selves? Making Us Dumber The amount of information available to us is making us dumber. I know, that sounds like a contradiction. Not dumb as in the number of brute facts that we know, but the ability to connect those brute facts and posit logical reasoning, as well as the ability to express those reasons in a creative way. We have substituted knowledge of the stars at the expense of the constellations. The National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP] – conducted by the U.S. Department of Education is nicknamed “the Nation’s Report Card.” It gathers a respondent group of 10,000 to 20,000 students. On the 2001 NAEP history exam, most of high school seniors scored a 57%, in a category classified as “below basic.” What is sad is that “basic” is only defined as a partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that allow for proficient work at a 12th grade level. Only one out of every one hundred students reached the “advanced” level. One is led to believe that these questions should be difficult if the vast majority are flunking. A look at a few questions shows the following: 52% chose Germany, Japan or Italy over the Soviet Union as a U.S. ally in World War II. Sixty-six percent could not explain a photo of a theatre whose portal reads “Colored Entrance.”
17
Case
One excuse might be that they are not supposed to know these things until college. A test was designed to see how much better the students at the top 55 colleges in the country would do. Remember these are the “top” 55 colleges. Many of these questions were drawn exactly from the NAEP high school exam. This made the results even more appalling. Nineteen percent of the students scored a C or higher on the assessment. 29% knew what “Reconstruction” referred to. Only one-third correctly identified the American general at Yorktown. Less than 25% identified James Madison as the “father of the Constitution.” These test scores emerge despite the fact that young people receive more exposure to history in popular culture than ever before.18 Even worse is that the Millenials believe that they are doing everything in their power to succeed in life. They believe they are doing what is best for themselves and the country. A 2004 U.S. Department of Education report says that 47 percent of high school seniors believe it is “very important” to be an active and informed citizen, yet in the 1998 NAEP civics exam, only 26 percent scored “proficient” or “advanced.” Forty-five percent could not understand basic information on a sample ballot.19 As Bauerlein writes, The abundant material progress in an adolescent’s life hasn’t merely bypassed or disengaged him or her from intellectual progress, but has, perhaps, hindered it. Greater spending power for teens and 20-year-olds has steered them away from books, museums, and science shows, not toward them. The Internet doesn’t impart adult information; it crowds it out. Video games, cell phones, and blogs don’t foster rightful citizenship. They hamper it. Maybe it is true, as the Ad Council declares in a report on youth volunteering, that “young adults today are fiercely individualistic, and are media-savvy to a degree never seen before. . . .” Those positives, though, only underscore the intellectual negatives. . . . The enhancements and prosperities claimed to turn young Americans into astute global citizens and liberated consumers sometimes actually conspire against intellectual growth.20
18 19 20
Bauerlein, 14-19. Ibid., 35-36. Ibid., 36.
Technology and constant multitasking are leading to a dumber population. A 2009 study at UCLA found that while people today are better at mentally visualizing objects, they’re getting worse at critical thinking, creativity and reflection.21 “Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows: What the internet is Doing to our Brains,” makes the case that we are gaining cognitive skills but they’re lower level reflex skills. All the while we’re trading higher level skills like true creativity and deep reasoning.”22 It is not only the head that is suffering, it is also the heart. Empathy For decades The University of Michigan has studied empathy of college freshman. With over 14,000 students on file, they have seen empathy levels drop 40 percent since 2000. Citing this along with other studies have some researchers lamenting a rampant “Narcissism epidemic.” “Our increased reliance upon devices and social networks to communicate at the expense of face to face communication is one of the factors contributing to this drop in empathy.”23 Issues once discussed face to face with the attempt at clarity have been replaced by sharing a story from a website that supports someone’s perspective. Instead of researching a diverse array of perspectives, most people hover to those who share their particular world views. While this isn’t new to people, this is heightened. Screen-time amplifies already established relational positives and negatives. It isn’t just the Internet though. From the University of Winnipeg website, one of their recent studies found that “students who are heavy texters place less importance on moral, aesthetic and spiritual goals, and greater
21 22 23
Robinson Ibid. Ibid.
importance on wealth and image. Those who texted more than 100 times a day were 30 percent less likely to feel strongly that leading an ethical, principled life was important to them, in comparison to those who texted 50 times a day or less.”24 The ability to remove face time from interaction has allowed bullies to be bullies, and would be bullies the opportunity to live out their fantasies. Where To Go From Here My personal views have evolved since I began this study. My initial reaction was to reenact the premise of the NBC TV show Revolution, where power is cut off to the United States, and people are left to deal with the face to face honesties they have been hiding from. Slowly, an overriding theme seemed to present itself to me as I researched. I’ve already stated it several times. What is happening in the home outside of a DNs use of a screen has a greater influence then the screen itself. Screen-time amplifies relational and personal positives and negatives. Below are a couple factors a play and what I think should be our responses. What Do Students Do when Not Watching TV? Studies have not shown that an abundance of tech time leads to lower grades alone. It is what students are doing with the time away from the TV and electronics that affects them too. Kaiser report Generation M is a startling finding about different media use and student achievement. It shows that leisure reading of any kind correlates more closely with a student’s grades than any other media. While either to 18 year olds with high and low grades differed by only one minute in TV time. (186-187 minutes), they differed in reading time by 17 minutes, 46-29 – a huge discrepancy in relative terms. One that suggests that TV doesn’t have nearly the intellectual consequences that reading does.25
24 25
Ibid. Baurlein, 89.
This is a category that needs to be studied further. But its clear that what happens away from the TV is more important. One of the things that need to happen away from technology is Self Reflection. Self Reflection Anthropologist Amber Case makes fears that the technology we are using now will have some scary affects on the DN. And so there are some psychological effects that happen with this. One... ... people aren’t taking time for mental reflection anymore, and that they aren’t slowing down and stopping... ... They’re not just sitting there. And really, when you have no external input, that is a time when there is a creation of self, when you can do long-term planning, when you can try and figure out who you really are. And then, once you do that, you can figure out how to present your second self in a legitimate way, instead of just dealing with everything as it comes in... ... I’m really worried that, especially kids today, they’re not going to be dealing with down-time, that they have an instantaneous button-clicking culture, and that everything comes to them, and that they become very excited about it and very addicted to it.26 I don’t know Amber Case’s standing on religion. But I think she touches on a very human quality when she talks about what we find in those moments when our minds can be silent. When our mind can process questions about who we are, and who God is. I’ve done a test with students several times were I purposely put a large group of them in an absolutely silent environment. It lasts 5 seconds before someone feels compelled to make a sound. They fear silence. I think a lot of it comes down to whom they will interact with in that silence. Not only is Self Reflection and Discovery thwarted. Inter-personal discovery is also hampered. False Sense of Communication It is so much easier to send a text. You are done in a 150 characters or less. And many times there is no need for a response. I’ve even heard about people breaking up with their
26
Case
significant others via text message. It’s so much easier than dealing with a conflict face to face. Let me make one thing clear, there is no substitute for face-to-face communication. Only 7 percent of communication happens through our words. The other 93 percent comes through our tone, facial expression and body gestures. Here is a really sad story I recently read. A mom spent the night texting with her daughter off at college. They shared B-IG hugs and comments of love and affection by text for hours. So it came as a shock to the mother to find out her daughter tried to commit suicide late that night. The words just don’t convey who and where we are spiritually.”27 Not only is it easy to hide our motives when we text, it just as easy to hide our responses. When you text, or IM, or tweet, you are interacting with someone’s second self more than his or her first self. Symptoms of a Greater Issue It would be easy to say, you should do x and y so that your technology addiction can be handled. I could offer to set up Alcoholic Anonymous type meetings for tech addicts. Maybe call it iTECH (Internet TV E-mail Compulsion Help). I think it could stick. But the more I think about the issue the more I’m convinced of my original thesis. What is happening in the home outside of a DNs use of a screen has a greater influence then the screen itself. Screen-time amplifies relational and personal positives and negatives. The Fact is fear of man motivates much of our reliance on technology. We hide behind texts, our Facebook profile, our shared news stories and memes, because they are adequate in affording us the illusion that we are better connected. It’s all about risk. We don’t have to risk the potential for conflict when we use our second person instead of our first. We also don’t have to know something ourselves, but can posit someone else’s opinion instead of our own. The
27
Robinson.
same goes for self-reflection. It is much easier to manicure our second self than to create our first. It’s no wonder that there is a sharp increase in the number of “put together” twenty something’s who are currently in therapy because they just don’t seem to find fulfillment in what they are doing.28 Of course they don’t, they don’t even know who they are. They have refused to interact with the quietness and engage those deep questions. Instead they lean on short, pithy tweets to establish their worldviews instead of logically reasoning through the harder questions that take more time and concentration to come to a conclusion on. This is not new though. We hide behind tweets and poorly thought out catchy statements, yet the Pharisees hid behind a litany of laws so they wouldn’t have to engage with the sin in their own hearts. Jesus speaks boldly about the fear of man in Luke 12. Luke 12: 1b-3, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. 2 Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 3 Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops.”29 We cannot escape our sin, but we can be distracted away from dealing with it. I see this all the time with DNs. Instead of dealing with a conflict within their own hearts, or dealing with conflict with a friend or family member, they are content to either 1) send their second self to deal with it via text to IM; 2) ignore it by switching on a screen; 3) ask their peers for advice, most of which are just as unprepared to handled as they are, but are more than willing to offer their opinion. My former professor used to refer to this process as cultivating our ignorance.
28 29
Ron Alsop. The Trophy Kids Grow Up. (Josey Bass Press, 2008). ESV.
Surrounding ourselves with “knowledge” from people who are as equally inept at solving the problem. So when there is conflict at home, how is technology used as a tool to handle it? Do you search for answers on the internet (many of which will come from our teenage content creators). Do you type up an email? Do you have hour-long conversations through text? Do you put it off for one more round of Angry Birds? Or do you grow face-to-face with someone even if it means risk. As BarnaGroup said earlier, “families that have healthy and frequent conversations find technology aiding that process, while families without such healthy interactions find that technology exacerbates the isolation of its members.”30 So What Should I Do? Start the conversation with your families. There is not a one size fits all approach. Parents: Model Proper Technology Use. If you spend all your free-time in front of a screen you don’t get to be angry that your local DN does too. Yes, yours might legitimately be for work, but they just see it as screen time. Turn off the TV and make face-time for each other. Play a game, go for a walk, play catch, or kick a ball. Set Times for Face-time: Don’t be a Pharisee with this but it is a good practice. One of my friends told me that when he goes out to eat with his other friends, they all put their phones in the middle of the table, and whoever grabs theirs first has to pick up the tab. Try to have meals together... at a table. A Purdue University study in 2003 show that “the percent of teens who got A’s was 20% of those who ate with their families five or more times per week compared to only
30
BarnaGroup
12% of those who ate with their families two or less times per week.”31 According to a CASA study, “teens who have frequent family dinners are more likely to be emotionally content, work hard at school, and have positive peer relationships, not to mention healthier eating habits.”32 Seek help if needed. Some of your children have technology addiction problems that impede their ability to think rationally, and more importantly deal with some of the sin that has happened to them, and that they are doing to others. Like any other addictive substance, technology offers a smorgasbord of options for diversion. Some students probably do need counseling to get their fears out in the open and begin to build a bridge to the other first selves around them. Read up on technology, be culturally aware of the types of tech your child us using and/or abusing. Establish your own Theology of Technology, and help your DNs to establish their own. We cannot go back to pre-Guttenberg times. We cannot send Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to take out Zuckerberg or Vint Cerf (at least not yet). Welcome to the next information revolution. If you think yesterdays rules will work to fix today’s problem’s you will be sorely mistaken. Relational and Personal realities have been heightened by the use of technology, and unless we figure it out, our second selves will forever dominate our first.
Purdue University Center for Families. www.cfs.purdue.edu/CFF/ promotingfamilymeals
32
31
Ibid.
