Skip to main content

Smartphones and Solitude

Image
By
Sherry Turkle, in her book Alone Together (New York: Basic Books, 2011), comments on the relationship between smart phones, constant connectivity, and solitude. “But a stream of messages makes it impossible to find moments of solitude, time when other people are showing us neither dependency nor affection. In solitude we don’t reject the world but have the space to think our own thoughts. But if your phone is always with you, seeking solitude can look suspiciously like hiding” (203).

For Turkle, solitude means having time to ourselves wherein no one is giving to us or taking from us. Solitude is being alone with our own thoughts and feelings. This discipline is crucial for emotional and spiritual health, and for creativity, but she is concerned that ceaseless connectivity is diminishing our desire for it, and damaging our ability to do it. Constant attachment to our smartphones is training us not to be alone even for a few minutes, indeed, some can’t even be alone for a few seconds.

The underlying issues here are partly internal and partly external. On the one hand, we are complicit in the plague of constant connectivity and part of us doesn’t want to be without our smartphones. On the other hand, the world around us has come to expect nearly instant response to texts, emails, and phone calls so that if we do not make ourselves available we are made to feel guilty. Like we’re hiding. Like we’re being irresponsible.

So there are psychological and sociological reasons why solitude is drowning in the ocean of connectivity, but the reasons are not as compelling as they might seem and in any case they are surmountable. So let me close this post by asking a series of questions:
  1. As Christians we would alter Turkle’s definition of solitude to include time spent alone with God. Do you see the value of having uninterrupted time with God? With your own thoughts and feelings?
  2. Do you make time for solitude each day, or at least several times per week? 
  3. What distractions most impede your desire and practice of solitude? How can you remove them?
  4. What aspects of solitude most feed you when you’re alone, and how can you enhance them?

I pray that as we reflect upon these things, we will learn to value what God values (time spent with him) over what this world values (constant connectivity). I pray that we will learn to desire what God desires, and to overcome our false, internal desires.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God Displays His Beauty While Lifting Heavy Burdens by Pastor Kevin

By
I know I am a little bit overweight. My doctor tells me so. The mirror that I look into affirms it and the scale (that I mostly avoid) reminds me every time I step on it. All of that makes what I am about to say so much more impressive. I had the privilege of sitting on the beaches of Florida's Atlantic coast for 8 days on our most recent family trip. For me there is something magical about the beach, especially on the Atlantic side with the waves washing up against the shoreline. We have been lucky enough to find a sleepy beach town to vacation at. A nook, if you will, that typically features retired folks or families with kids. Out of the way of those who want to party, the beach is truly a relaxing place for me.  Let me tell you something that I gleaned this time around that never quite landed on me. This last week it landed on me, almost literally. My son Ben and I are the more adventurous specimens in the Feder five. We actually get into the salty water where there are jelly f...
2 comments
Read more

To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord, by George Muller

By Anonymous
To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord By George Muller “It has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of which I have not lost for more than fourteen years. The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord, but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. “I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God—not prayer, but the Word of God. And here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God so that it only passes through my mind just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what I read, pondering over it, and applying it to my heart. To meditate on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed. And that thus,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rejoicing in the Wrath of God: Part 1 by Pastor Charlie Handren

By Anonymous
This Sunday we resume our study of the book of Revelation and within the first eight verses of chapter 6 we will encounter the wrath of God being poured out upon the world. In one sense, being confronted with the reality of God’s wrath is uncomfortable at best, but in another sense, it fills the believing heart with joy.  One of the first essays I wrote in college was on the wrath and love of God, and probably the main effect it has had on my life is to cause joy to rise up in my heart whenever I contemplate God’s wrath. Sometime ago I shared this with a pastor friend of mine and though he said nothing in response, he looked at me as if to say, “If you knew anything about the wrath of God, you would not rejoice in it.” At the time, I wasn't sure how to respond, but I knew that the joy in my heart was not stemming from a belittling of the horror of the wrath of God. Then several years ago, as I was reading through Revelation, I came across a couple of passages in chapters 15 and 16 ...
Post a Comment
Read more