Transcript
Ben Fallon: Well, I have a question for you today, Paul, that I would be embarrassed to answer publicly myself, so I'm glad this is called Ask Paul Tripp, “What is your screen time average?” But I'm not actually going to ask you to go into the settings on your iPhone and disclose that proprietary information, so how about this instead? “What is your relationship with your iPhone or iPad or laptop, the struggles as well as the helpful ways you seek to use it?” And then “What are some habits or guardrails that you use to limit your addiction to your screen?” And then another question that we got pertaining to the subject, “What do you do to remain embodied in the offline physical real world?”
Paul Tripp: Well, of course, like every other modern human being, I struggle not to fall into believing that I need to be in constant contact with the world around me through the powerful media machine that I have in my pocket or on my desk. It's just such a delusion. You know, I'm old enough to remember that my contact with the world was the newspaper in the morning and the evening news at 6:30. And we just don't need the constant contact with whatever that we think we need. In terms of my screen time average, I mean, it's off the charts because I do everything, from my devotional time, to my writing, to my preparation research, it’s all done on my iPad. And so, other than when my brain is totally drained, I'm on that thing.
Now for that, I'm very thankful. I mean, it's just amazing to me that I'll be writing a chapter of a book and I have a question, and I can connect myself to incredible biblical theological resources that are right there at my fingertips without even getting out of my chair. That's a wonderful thing. But even “Good things become bad things when they become ruling things.”
Some habits for me, I've gotten rid of rabbit holes that I don't need to be part of. Like, I've gotten rid of Instagram. Instagram for me, I'm a visual person, that visual medium was like, I would start and two hours later, it felt like five minutes to me. And so, I'm done with that. I try not to spend time with my phone the first thing when I awake; it's always, “Just grab it and you're off.”
Third, I never engage in conversations on Twitter. It's probably my main social media thing that I use. That can just get you in all kinds of trouble and you lose so much time. I commit to stay away from my phone when I'm exercising. I stay away from my phone when I'm having my devotional time. I stay away from my phone when I'm writing. All the people that try to contact me know that I never answer the phone. My sound on my phone is always turned off because, you know, news services give you that click and you pick up your phone and all of a sudden, that leads to that, leads to that, leads to that, leads to that, leads to that, and you're losing time.
In terms of embodied life, I try to occupy myself with the physical real world; daily exercise is that for me, for me, that's a rowing machine. I love to cook–that whole thing of planning a meal, shopping to get the food, preparing it, is real physical, it's time consuming, it's wonderful for me. I'm a painter by avocation, so time in my studio is wonderful and meditative. I meet with people every week for physical conversation. I did that on Tuesday, I did that on Wednesday, I'll do that tonight. Those are times when there is no media involved. And my best resource of help for not being addicted to my iPad or my phone, is marriage. Luella is very faithful and very quick to let me know when I'm spending too much time on the phone or on my iPad. And she will say, “Are you on your phone again?” And, although I have to admit sometimes that irritates me, it is something I really need and I'm thankful for that; I'm thankful for her love and care.
So you have to say, “I want to manage my phone or my computer or iPad and not be managed by it.” In order for that to happen, these are the habits that I need to institute in my particular life to keep that from happening. I would say some things. It's probably better in your devotions to use a physical Bible because you can't scroll. It's probably better to read physical books because you can't scroll. And it may be, for some people, to actually set a time limit for the amount of screen time you're going to allow yourself to have every day.
This is a huge, huge, huge problem for us. And studies are saying now it's rewiring our brains; it's setting a whole level of expectation for people; it's creating huge amounts of anxiety because we know things that we don't need to know about, and we carry burdens for those. So, there are real spiritual, emotional, physical effects to this that we ought to be aware of, and we have the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us to help us to not live under bondage to anything. We have His empowering grace. It's possible to say, “No,” and to turn and go in another direction–and we just need to do that more!
BF: Well, Paul Tripp Ministries is a ministry that is grateful for the invention of digital technology, social media, and the internet because every single day we are reaching hundreds of thousands around the world with Paul's gospel teaching. And we know that behind every analytic of reach is a story of grace, but we need your generous support to do that. So, if you have been blessed by our library of gospel resources, would you prayerfully consider partnering with us? You can learn more about supporting our mission at paultripp.com/give.
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