your attention is being held hostage; here’s how to get it back

“It is no coincidence that ours is a time afflicted by a widespread sense of attentional crisis, at least in the West - one captured by the phrase 'homo distractus,' a species of ever shorter attention span known for compulsively checking his devices."
Tim Wu

“In our interconnected society, perpetually online and bombarded with stimuli, digital technology has taken our focus hostage…”
Darren Whitehead

Last year I sensed my attention being stolen away in small increments. I actually felt my focus being taken hostage. When I got my weekly “screen time” updates on how much time I was looking at the small glowing screen, it simply amazed me.

We talk about tech all the time and the way it robs us of our passion and presence, but I noticed it this past year. I actually felt my attention span shrinking.  

• I couldn’t watch a documentary all the way through without taking a break.

• I couldn’t sit at dinner with my wife without picking my phone up to “just check a few things.”

• I’d be in the prayer room and get distracted by an alert, only to lift my eyes 10 minutes later and realize I was in a wormhole, unable to remember why I originally even looked at my phone. 

Have you felt small things like that? 

Small things that if left unattended may become big things. 

Small things that are slowly eroding how you show up in the world?

So with Lent coming up, I am doing something I have never done before. I am doing a digital fast. People have talked about this in the past. Lots of people “fast social media for Lent,” but I am hoping this will lead to something more permanent and transformative than that.

You see, this past year I fell in love with intermittent fasting. Somehow the thing I did for Lent made its way into my life. The practice became permanent. Not in a crazy way, but in a way that has stuck. 16/8 may not mean anything to you, but it has changed my intentionality and relationship with food. The Lent season became a lifestyle transformation, and I am hoping the same thing sticks with tech on this digital fast.

I got this idea from my mate Darren Whitehead, who took his whole church through a “Digital Fast.” He has a large church and somehow managed to get thousands of people to reorient their attention away from their devices and back on Jesus. It was a kind of move of God. Teenagers with dumb phones playing outside are a sign and wonder in the modern world. I was so intrigued by the sociological and spiritual dynamics; I knew this was what I was going to do for Lent this year.

(BTW He wrote a book about this experience that you can check out here. And he has a way for churches to do this as a communal experience if you are interested. Click here for more details.)

A digital fast can take many forms. Some go full send and don’t touch any tech. That approach isn’t going to work for me. But I am going to reduce and restrict my tech and media consumption in ways I never have before. And I am doing this because I am trying to make some shifts in my life.

MOVING FROM THE SHALLOWS TO THE DEPTHS

John Eldredge talks about the 3 layers of the heart. The shallows, the midlands, and the depths. My take on that is the shallows are about cultural chatter, the midlands personal struggles, and the depths are the things we are afraid to mention.

Devices keep us caught up in cultural chatter and trivia, which we often use to medicate the challenges of the midlands of our lives. But I want to get to the depths this year. I want to get below the surface of my life to what the Spirit may be whispering to me. And that is going to require space and boredom. 

We are terrified of being bored today, but it turns out boredom is a portal to the depths. 

According to Dr. Felicia Wu Song, boredom has many benefits. When we are bored, part of our brain awakens. This is the part of our brain that activates self-reflection, empathizes with others, and galvanizes creativity. Research has found when we remove boredom from our lives, there is certain brain activity that remains unstimulated. Self-reflection. Empathy and creativity.

Distraction is robbing us of our sense of self, empathy for others, and creative contribution from our hearts. I am doing a digital fast to get to the depths. 

I want to feel more deeply, listen to more life with more attention, and recover some of the creativity that has been crowded out with all the chatter. 

CONSUMER TO CREATOR

Tim Wu has pointed out, "When an online service is free, you're not the customer. You're the product."

I’m sick of being the product. I’m sick of customized ads getting more precise with every click and like I make.  

"One man, after receiving a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, found himself followed everywhere with ‘insensitive and tasteless’ ads for funeral services.” 

What a moment of clarity of what is really happening in all of our lives. 

I’m sick of the illusion that consuming things is the same thing as caring about things. That watching something is the same thing as working for something.

I want to reset the consumption-to-creation ratio and create more space for what God has put in my heart and try and get out to bless the world. 

DISTANCE TO INTIMACY

Wu goes on to talk about how tech has changed the nature of our relationships. 

In 1956, two psychologists, Donald Horton and Richard Wohl, would conclude that television's representation of celebrities was carefully constructed to create an "illusion of intimacy" —to make viewers believe that they actually were developing a relationship with the famous people on TV. Certain techniques…  produced this effect: recourse to small talk, the use of first names, and close-ups, among others, acted to close the gap between the audience and the guests, engendering the sense in the viewer of being "part of a circle of friends."

The two coined the term “para-social interaction” to describe this "intimacy at a distance."

I don’t want a life of para-social interaction. I don’t want to know more about what brand athletes are wearing than the classes my daughter is taking. I don’t want to know where a celebrity likes to eat if I am too busy to take my wife out for a meal.

I want true social interaction. I want intimacy up close. I want to be a better husband and father by knowing the depths of my family’s hearts, not the details of strangers’ lives. 

A FASTED LIFESTYLE

Just like intermittent fasting stuck around after Lent last year, I’m hoping digital fasting will too. I’m hoping it will make me more conscious about tech consumption and help me reclaim my attention. As Mary Oliver notes, attention is the beginning of devotion.

Devotion to God.

Devotion to family.

Devotion to friends.

I hope you’ll join me on my digital fast.

Thanks for reading.

Here for the depths.

Cheers.

Jon.