# Screen Time A WORD FROM THE DOCTOR Language: en Author: Vincent “John” Waldron, MD Gladys, VA Original issue: The Heartbeat of the Remnant, Autumn 2024 Source pages: 16–19 Read article: Original PDF: Autumn\-2024\-Remnant\_web\.pdf [The Heartbeat of the Remnant, Autumn 2024]() ![Hands holding a smartphone above a desk]() “I want your phone\!” The little girl said firmly to her mother\. “Not now, Josie,” her mother said\. “We’re at the doctor’s office\.” “I NEED your phone\!” The three\-year\-old girl demanded\. I wasn’t sure what Josie needed with the phone\. Since she was only three, it was unlikely that one of the European heads of state would be trying to contact her, and I doubted that she had many business connections who were likely to be urgently trying to text her\. Josie continued to demand the phone until her mother, tired out by her daughter’s insistence, handed the device over to the girl\. Expertly, Josie opened the phone, typed in the password, and began to browse the internet, looking for videos that fit her mood at that given moment\. Unfortunately, I was anything but shocked\. Most parents use devices to keep their children quiet during office visits, and it is not unusual for young children to have their own tablet to play games or do whatever they please\. Ephesians 6:4 says, “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord\.” I wonder what the Apostle Paul would have had to say about using screens to keep children quiet\. My guess is that he would have been negative on the subject\. The American Academy of Pediatrics \(not the most conservative organization in the world\) has written a statement saying that children under the age of two should have no or very limited exposure to screens \(including both TV and mobile devices\)\. Even with older children, they recommend that the amount of time they spend on devices be limited\. They mention in their statement that too much screen time can lead to weight problems \(due to lack of exercise\), body image issues, mood issues, and problems from exposure to violent and sexual content\. Of course, all of this is present not just in movies, but also on the internet as a whole\. Undoubtedly, digital spaces are more dangerous than the real world for children\. It is far more likely that they will encounter a predator online than in other parts of their life\. I think most of us do well with limiting screen time in our younger children’s lives\. And yet, I wonder if we do it in our own lives as well? Do we realize the power of the computer in our hands and the danger that it brings with it? ## The Internet There was no specific inventor of the internet, nor an official date that we can say when it began\. Instead, it came about slowly as various private and public networks on college campuses and other locations began to tie together to allow for the better sharing of information and communication\. In the beginning, the internet was mostly text, and it ran very slowly\. Dial\-up modems could download information at a snail’s pace, and the idea of sharing large images, much less video, was a crazy thought for most people\. They were just happy if they could get their emails downloaded in fifteen or twenty minutes\. Over time, it sped up, and the volume of information sharing exploded\. Old, out\-of\-copyright books were digitized and made available for free\. News sites opened to share up\-to\-the\-minute reports from around the world, and people were now able to make video calls anywhere in the world\. At present, the internet is accessed by over 4 billion people and the amount of data that is moved by them is estimated to be about 717 terabytes per second\. Christians are using the internet too, and many are unaware of how this use affects them\. ## Pornography Sexual content is a problem\. On their website, Covenant Eyes states that 68 percent of Christian men view pornography on a regular basis\. The numbers for women are only half that, but clearly, it is still a problem\. Matthew 5:28 says, “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart\.” The internet is a dangerous place to attempt to maintain a pure mind and heart\. Jesus understood that purity was not just about action—it was about heart and mind\. Satan understands the same thing, and he works hard to make temptation as easily available as possible\. Later on, Jesus told His listeners that it was better to cut off your hand or gouge out your eye\. It is better to lose one of your members than to be cast into hell\. The point is clear\. Moral purity is extremely important\. Nothing is too extreme to do in order to gain victory in this area\. I would argue that for some people, casting their smartphones far from them would avail significantly more than cutting off their hands\. For, if thy smartphone cause thee to sin, it were better to toss it into the nearest garbage can than to carry that phone to the depths of hell\. ## Time Wastage I was out the other day and saw a group of four young people seated at a table\. Oddly, none of them was conversing or making eye contact with each other\. Instead, they were all bent over their smartphones\. It is hard for adults to criticize young people because the adults have the same issues\. A recent study showed that the average American spends 7 hours a day looking at screens\.1 They spend over three and a half hours on their phone\. Even if we are not looking at anything immoral or sinful, this simply is not the best use of our time\. Ephesians 5:16 says, “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil\.” We buy various things with our time\. Good things could include things like reading a book, spending time in prayer, or reaching out to people who need encouragement\. While we have our internet browser open, we are doing none of these things but are simply passing \(or wasting\) time\. Each day has only 24 hours in it\. Our focus must be on using these seconds and minutes for things that have real value, not activities that simply allow us to float along with as little contact with the people around us as possible\. ## News I am surprised by how many people are proud of the fact that they use the internet to keep up with the day’s current events\. A couple hundred years ago it could have taken weeks for events happening in out\-of\-the\-way corners of the globe to reach the headlines of newspapers\. Now, it is unusual if breaking news doesn’t hit news websites within minutes\. People can now follow political campaigns with high precision and listen to every tiny gaff of their favorite politician’s opponent\. More than that, they can post videos of such things to social media with the click of a button\. Of course, there are dangers with this sort of focus on news\. For one thing, most of the news we get has some kind of bias\. We are good at picking up bias that disagrees with our own preconceptions, but news stories that agree with our chosen perspective are simply added to reinforce our ideas\. People talk about the internet as an “echo chamber” that simply repeats back at us the sorts of things we want to read about\. Search engines and social media platforms know us better than we know ourselves and deliver up steaming morsels of news that precisely fit our appetite and keep us from expanding our world view\. It is said that news organizations operate under the mantra, “If it bleeds, it leads\.” That is, the more violent and terrible the story, the more attention it will draw to a website\. It is no wonder that many who read a lot of news tend to have a bleak view of the world around them\. I had a patient who struggled to fall asleep at night and admitted to me that she spent time right before getting into bed reading news articles\. “I just have so much anxiety and anger after reading these stories,” she told me\. Before prescribing any medication, I asked her to stop reading any news in the evening hours\. Amazingly, without any pills, her sleep patterns improved\. From a Christian standpoint, there is a lot of danger to consider\. These sites are all trying to whip up support for one side or another\. Every election is THE election on which the hope of Christians depends\. Whether it is George W\. Bush versus John Kerry or more recent elections, pundits have a way of making Christians believe their freedom depends on the right candidate making it into the White House\. This saddens me\. The reality is not only that Jesus is not a Republican or Democrat—He isn’t even an American\. He told Pilate just before the crucifixion that “My kingdom is not of this world\.” God wants to see Christians love their fellowmen regardless of what country they were born in or where they live now\. More than that, reading the news overly much has a tendency to get us to overestimate Satan’s power\. I am amazed at how many Christians struggle with depression and anger, believing that Satan is winning\. Of course, he is powerful\. He is the prince of the power of the air, one of the greatest beings that God created\. There is no reason for fear\. We serve a mighty God, and He will triumph despite all of Satan’s efforts\. ![An open Bible beside a small potted plant near a window]() ## Health Risks of Internet Usage As time passes, researchers discover the harmful effects of spending too much time online\. There is even something known as Internet addiction, where people exhibit the same need to be online as people experience who are addicted to drugs\. While they may not physically go through withdrawal when they spend too little time online, they still think about it all of the time and experience negative emotions when they try to step away from it\.2 Even for people who don’t have an actual internet addiction, time on the internet has a lot of negative repercussions\. For one thing, the more time that people spend online, the higher the rates of depression and loneliness\. The issue seems to be that people are replacing face\-to\-face relationships and time together with digital replicas, and while they may seem to fill the same space, the digital replicas are not the same\. God made us to need Him, but He also made us in such a way that we need human contact too\. Even the most introverted person has a need to spend time with other humans, make eye contact, and feel heard and understood\. Having a post liked on social media is a poor substitute\.3 One of the things that is made clear by the studies is that younger people—particularly those in their teen years or younger are more likely to struggle with limiting their internet time and are also more likely to experience mental health issues related to their internet usage\. There is no doubt that the number of young people diagnosed with mental health disorders is climbing very high\. I am sure there are many reasons, but spending too much time in digital spaces contributes to it\. Beyond this, there are physical issues related to spending too much time online\. Quite simply, our bodies are not made to sit for an hour or two on end\. People who spend hours in front of screens are more prone to backache, neckaches, headaches, and eye strain\. A small study looked at Russian adolescents and found that heavy internet usage was associated with increased blood pressure levels\.4 These blood pressures seemed to return to normal when the youths exercised, so no permanent damage was done\. Perhaps one last thing to mention is sleep issues\. A study that looked at internet users in Bangladesh during COVID\-19 found that over 40 percent of those who reported heavy internet usage experienced difficulty sleeping\.5 There certainly was a lot of negative news and fear going on at that point, so that might be all that was going on there, but there is also an effect from exposure to “blue light” that we have seen\. Screens emit blue light\. The problem is that this light gives a message to our brains that it is time to wake up and decrease the level of melatonin that is made\. Using a smartphone or screen right before bedtime could negatively impact your sleep simply because the hormones that tell your brain that it is time to rest are at much lower levels than they should be\.6 ## Conclusion Although the New Testament was written long before the advent of the internet age, we can still find various principles that should direct our actions\. Galatians 5:22, 23 says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law\.” Most of these qualities are absent from dialogs found on social media\. More than that, the last fruit mentioned, temperance \(self\-control\) is extremely important in this context\. The question really is if we are in control of our internet browsing or if it controls us\. We need to answer this question honestly\. The Rich Young Ruler would never have said that his riches controlled his life, and yet when Jesus asked him to give them away and follow him, he went sorrowfully away, unable to truly follow the Master\. In the same way, many people believe that they are in control of their internet use\. They point to the good things, the news they read, the ways in which they stay in contact with people who are far away, and the recipes they can easily access with the touch of a button\. Their work and business require the use of computers and the internet\. All the while, they are not in control\. In idle moments during the day, they pull out their phones and start scrolling\. They look at things they shouldn’t and do not realize how the culture and views of the world around them are shifting their vision from kingdom\-centered to one focused on much more transient things\. We need to protect our children from these risks, but we need to protect ourselves as well\. It would be better to eliminate our technology and live a life fully dedicated to following Christ than to follow the current events of this world and in the end lose our eternal life\. 1 *18 Average Screen Time Statistics \[2023\]: How Much Screen Time Is Too Much? \- Zippia* 2 *Internet Addiction: A Brief Summary of Research and Practice \- PMC \(nih\.gov\)* 3 *Associations Between Problematic Internet Use and Mental Health Outcomes of Students: A Meta\-analytic Review \- PMC \(nih\.gov\)* 4 *Cardiovascular response to physical exercise and the risk of Internet addiction in 15–16\-year\-old adolescents \- PMC \(nih\.gov\)* 5 *Internet Use Impact on Physical Health during COVID\-19 Lockdown in Bangladesh: A Web\-Based Cross\-Sectional Study \- PMC \(nih\.gov\)* 6 *Analysis of circadian properties and healthy levels of blue light from smartphones at night \| Scientific Reports \(nature\.com\)* ## Magazine citation - [Hands holding a smartphone above a desk](): Adobe Stock - [An open Bible beside a small potted plant near a window](): Photography By Laurel