Last year, during the season of Lent, I decided to try to do something different. Usually, I tend to give up Diet Coke for Lent. For those who know me, that seems a pretty big ask.
Honestly, however, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I surprisingly had no trouble giving up my go-to beverage for that time. It wasn’t much of challenge
So last year, I tried to do something new.
For Lent, I wanted to give up social media. Also, I wanted to limit phone use to simply making phone calls and texts, and maybe for taking photos.
That turned out to be a whole lot trickier.
Frankly, it was a disaster.
I would catch myself unthinkingly scrolling on a near daily basis. Every idle moment, I’d thoughtlessly reached over to grab it and take it for a, um, scroll. One day, a student walked in and caught me scrolling and I felt like I just been nabbed selling state secrets.
All things considered, I would have rather given up Diet Coke.
Within hours, I realized just how addicted I was to social media.
Which is very ironic, well, given how much I hate social media. My disdain for social media grows more all the time. There’s so much I hate about it.
Studies are beginning to regularly show that social media makes people—particularly teens—more depressed. It seems to be the common denominator for mental illness and loneliness today.
The blatant censoring of conservative voices on social media was especially troubling over the last several years. It was inexcusable.
The tracking really bothers me as well. I heard a great summation of my apprehension from former Navy Seal and author, Jack Carr: “A cell phone is a surveillance device that occasionally makes phone calls.” I don’t want the convenience of marketing following me around to give me more accurately targeted ads.
News flash: I have never clicked on a sponsored ad on Facebook or Instagram. Absolutely nothing crosses my screen that makes me say: “Hunh. I need that.”
Yet, knowing all these things, as well as being uncomfortably aware that I am merely the product of social media, I would constantly catch myself going over that sad scroll of death on Facebook and suddenly wondering what I did with the last sixty minutes of my life.
So, given my new founded addiction, I decided to try giving up social media again this year.
The discipline for giving up something for Lent is to focus on the cross. In other words, when your flesh desires the thing you are giving up, you turn your thoughts to Jesus.
It should be easy: when you feel the urge to scroll, reflect on Jesus. It makes sense. After all, isn’t he more trustworthy and gracious than social media?
The problem is that I never feel the urge coming. I never really recognize it. It’s a very passive process.
Every day, I would need to do something menial like check the time and wind up going through every app at least once.
Truly, I don’t understand this addiction. How can one become addicted to something so pointless? It offers so much that is so utterly meaningless: reels created by “influencers” who don’t have the depth or capacity to influence; life and relationship advice by someone standing in their own dumpster fire; comedic videos that are essentially using another already-viral joke and punchline and reproducing it in their own format; lip-syncing comedic lines—What is with the lip-syncing?!
So little value, such a waste of time—yet here I am, constantly defaulting to that stupid activity.
This Lent season, as my disgust and disillusionment grows, this objective seems a tad more manageable, even though I will admit I have already blown it a few times.
However, here rises a conundrum. This is tough, because I am a writer, and this is my only platform on which to write. So is it ethical to allow myself to quickly log on to social media, post an essay, and hopefully get off without scrolling? I don’t think Lent is designed to be a legalistic activity.
Still, I want my life back. I want to exercise my mind. I want to read more books (my annual number of books read last year is over half from previous year). I want to cut the leash between my phone and I—I want to be the master of my social media, not the other way around.
Lent is about the struggle between the spirit and flesh. It is a season to prepare my heart for the cross, to acknowledge my helplessness to sin. Perhaps, I can come out of Lent with a renewed passion for Christ and a blunted desire to watch stupid reels.
Whatever the case, I lean on his grace. I reflect on my addiction to something so mind-numbing. And I realize that I can’t do anything without that beloved cross
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