The more I think about technology and the Christian walk, the more I return to the topic of attention. Almost every time I hear discussions about digital tech, someone points out that it pulls our attention in too many directions, makes us perpetually distracted, and robs us of focus. As Nicholas Carr masterfully detailed in The Shallows, this constant distraction has changed the very structure of our brains.[1]
I’m not immune to the pull. Quitting social media and dumbing down my iPhone didn’t eliminate my propensity for distraction. I’m still prone to bouncing between browser tabs or letting my thoughts ramble in whatever direction they want to go, especially when I’m tired.
Even if I could eliminate every source of distraction from my personal spaces, it’s impossible to escape those in the world at large. No matter where I go — I’m sure you’ve noticed it, too — there’s something to distract the eyes, mind, or heart. Walmart has placed screens in some of its departments. Gas stations have installed screens on pumps. I went through the car wash recently and was subjected to a video of the franchise mascot on a screen inside the wash tunnel. And, of course, every store plays background music, usually something hyper-sexualized, or at least distasteful. Our environments are engineered in such a way so as to never give our minds a moment to pause.
I acknowledge that some distraction is inevitable, and I’m still thinking through how to apply Biblical principles to the matter of minimizing them as much as possible. But we do have a great deal of control over the distractions we allow into our lives — that on which we focus our attention.
I’m convinced attention is a spiritual issue, and therefore a spiritual battle. Winning that battle may be a much bigger deal than Christians often realize.
“Each man hath a mind, and can spend it unweariedly as he is inclined, either to covetousness, ambition, or sensuality; for ‘where the treasure is, there will the heart be also.’” (Matt. 6:21) ~ Thomas Manton, “How May We Cure Distractions in Holy Duties?”[2]
Four hundred years ago, Puritan minister Thomas Manton declared that where we aim our attention directs our hearts and reveals what we love. “We ponder and muse upon that in which we delight”; meanwhile, the “wandering eye causeth a wandering heart.” Thus, attention also directs worship. For what is worship but ascribing value, expressing adoration, or giving reverent attention?[3]
The Bible is clear that God is the sole Being worthy of worship (Ps. 145:3; Rev. 4:11). Worship directed anywhere but to Him is idolatry, often characterized as spiritual adultery and condemned through graphic metaphors, including that of prostitution. Such language repulses our modern sensibilities, as it should. God used it to rouse His people from spiritual slumber, pierce their hardened hearts, and deliver them from practices that would ultimately result in their ruin.
Evidence of idolatry’s ruinous effects is plain throughout Old Testament history, but the downward spiral that led to widespread spiritual and national destruction began with the reign of Solomon, son of King David. Though David himself committed gross sin and suffered many consequences as a result, God still described him as “a man after My own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14; Acts 13:22). Despite all his transgressions, David loved God deeply and never turned to follow another god.
But Solomon, the wisest king of God’s people and builder of a grand temple for the Lord in Jerusalem, allowed his love for “many strange women” to turn his heart from the true God (1 Kings 11:1-2). He capitulated to his numerous wives and erected places of worship to the idols of their nations. He who was meant to set the spiritual example for the entire nation of Israel[4] instead pointed them away from the God they were called to worship and represent (Deut. 4:6, 6:5; c.f. Ps. 81:9).
Solomon’s failure to focus on God also affected his family, including his son and heir, Rehoboam. Arrogant, power hungry, and disrespectful, Rehoboam was wholly focused on himself and what he wanted from his rule. His attitude catalyzed the nation’s downfall: God took most of the kingdom away from him and gave it to his rival, Jeroboam I (1 Kings 11:28-37, 12:20) — who, it turned out, was no less self-focused. In his first act as ruler of Israel’s northern kingdom was to make idols so the people would stay in his domain to worship rather than traveling to Jerusalem in the southern kingdom of Judah three times a year to observe the feasts God had established (1 Kings 12:25-33).
Jeroboam’s actions severed ten of the nation’s twelve tribes from the very celebrations that were meant to orient them toward God. Absent that focal point, both Israel and Judah quickly descended into widespread idolatry, leading to oppression, war, famine, plague, and eventual exile from the land God had given to them (1 Kings 17:5-18, 25:1-21). Scattered among their enemies, God’s people found themselves surrounded by the very idols they’d chosen with no clear way back to their center of worship.
And it all started with misdirecting their attention.
Where we put our attention still matters, especially for those who claim the name of Christ. The Old Testament isn’t simply there to recount history; all things God tells us about the past were recorded for our instruction (Rom. 15:4). The writer to the Hebrews adds gravity and urgency to this truth when he says we must “give the more earnest heed” to God’s warnings lest we find ourselves in the same downward spiral (Heb 2:1).
To “give heed” is, in essence, to pay attention[5] — not just fleeting attention, but earnest attention: abundant, exceeding, all the attention we’re capable of giving. If we fail to do so, our spiritual formation will be warped or nonexistent. We will fall, as Old Testament Israel did, into spiritual adultery and ruin. Though the true Christian cannot lose his salvation, we can be drawn away and become entangled in the things of the world (Matt. 13:7; c.f. 1 Jn. 2:15-16).
These distracting entanglements, says Manton, put the mind in chaos: “…mad men make several relations, and rove from one thing to another, and are gone off from a sentence ere they have well begun it: our thoughts are as slippery and inconsistent as their speeches; therefore what is this but the frenzy of the soul?” A modern writer could hardly craft a more perfect description of today’s digitally oriented, notification-saturated landscape. Of all the things of the world that could distract us, modern technologies are the most pervasive and insidious.
Though written hundreds of years before platforms like Facebook were conceived, Manton’s words aptly capture the experience of being on social media: endless scrolling through disconnected content without pausing to contemplate whether it has any bearing on our lives, tapping rapid-fire comments in bursts of thoughtless reactivity…and forgetting it all the moment we look up from our phones. Should the siren call of a new beep or whistle draw us, we jump to another app and do it all over again. Writer and Bible commentator Alastair Roberts notes that allowing digital distractions to beguile us undermines our ability to be fully present.[6] We’ve lost the capacity to engage with the world, other people, and God as we ought.
Yet God should be the primary focus and recipient of mankind’s attention. We find the precedent and pattern for this throughout Scripture, particularly in the psalms. The psalmist prays “evening, and morning, and at noon” (Ps. 55:17), meditates on God’s Word day and night (Ps. 1:2, 119:97), and praises God at the start and end of the day (Ps. 92:1-2). We, too, are to pray and praise God throughout the day, focusing our minds on Him when we rise, thinking about His Word while awake, and ending the day with eyes and voice lifted to Him (Ps. 5:3).
As Roberts noted in an article for Plough,[7] this theme of recollection, meditation, and remembering runs like a thread throughout the Bible, with particular emphasis in the book of Deuteronomy. Israel was told, repeatedly, to “make [the] commandments an intimate part of their life,” to repeat God’s Word continually and attend to it closely (Deut. 6:6-9), to “internalize” the law so it filled their hearts and minds and permeated their society.
From the moment a child could understand what he was being taught, he was to be raised in the Word. Families were to speak of it among themselves; the nation was to gather regularly for corporate worship and celebration (Deut. 6:6-9). Even the king was commanded to handwrite a copy of the law when he took the throne so it would always be close at hand and on his mind to guide every thought and action (Deut. 17:18-20).
This repetition and meditation wasn’t meant to make God’s people a nation governed by “dos” and “do nots.” Rather, it was an integral part of their covenant relationship with the God Who delivered them from slavery in Egypt (Ex. 20:2; Lev. 11:45) and provided for them as He led them through the wilderness (Deut. 8:1-3) and into the land He first promised to their ancestor Abraham (Gen. 12:1-2, 15:7; Lev. 25:38). God called them, committed Himself to being their God (Ex. 6:6-7; c.f. Jer. 7:22-23; Ezek. 36:25-28), and promised never to fail or forsake them (Deut. 4:31, 31:6). They, in turn, vowed to follow Him as His people (Ex. 19: 5-8), promising to serve Him, worship Him, and show His glory to all the nations (Deut. 4:5-8). By ratifying the covenant in fellowship with Him on Mount Sinai, they bound themselves to Him in that relationship in a solemn pact that was meant to stand (Ex. 24:8-11).
But they quickly forgot their promise, not in the sense that they suffered a kind of amnesia and couldn’t remember God’s law, but in making a deliberate choice to turn away from the law they had committed to keep. The Hebrew word for “forget” in Deuteronomy 8:11 is “shakach,” a word that can convey the idea of “deliberate neglect” involving a “moral and spiritual breach.”[8]
Commenting on this section, Jack S. Deere[9] demonstrates how such a choice inevitably leads to idolatry. For Israel, it started with distraction. They turned their eyes away from God and focused instead on the comfort and bounty they enjoyed in the Promised Land (Deut. 8:11-17). Distraction gave way to neglect as they succumbed to pride, convincing themselves that their prosperity was a result of their own power, strength, or ingenuity. In their pride, they failed to praise God for His deliverance and provision — they forgot. And it didn’t take long to descend from forgetfulness into idolatry as their wandering gaze caught sight of the gods of other nations. Following the lusts of their eyes (1 Jn 2: 15-16), they were enticed (Jas. 1:14) unto utter ruin, both spiritually and as a nation (Ezek. 10:11-4,8-19; c.f. 2 Kings 6:28-29; 2 Kings 17:7-23).
We may think, as modern Christians, that we’re different, that it’s extreme to equate digital technologies with the false gods of old and recast our devices as idols. Yet we live in the era of the “attention economy,” a world that constantly tempts us to put our focus everywhere but on God. As author and legal scholar Tim Wu illustrates in his book, The Attention Merchants,[10] manifold forces of commerce, culture, and entertainment vie for our attention, pulling us in dozens of directions at any given moment.
God’s command to be intentional with our attention takes on greater weight in this cultural landscape. As Roberts points out,[11] whatever captures our attention transforms our affections. It shapes what we value, desire, and pursue, where we direct our time and energy, and whom we model our lives after. The Apostle Paul made the same point when he exhorted the Romans — and all Christians — not to be conformed to the world but transformed by renewing their minds through meditation on God’s infinite riches and mysterious ways (Rom. 12:2; 11:33). Everything is from God and for God (Rom. 11:36), including our attention. It’s a stewardship, a gift to be given back to and used in service of Him.
Yet Roberts notes that we often allow our attention to wander or be hijacked at the whim of the latest distraction. And digital technologies are the most prominent temptation. Rather than giving our attention back to God, we sacrifice it on the altar of our devices. According to Exploding Topics, the average American spends six hours and 12 minutes a day glued to some kind of screen,[12] whether a mobile device or a computer. Add it all up, and it amounts to 43.75 hours per week, or 1.8 entire 24-hour days.
What are we doing with that time? Mostly, we’re binge-watching pointless videos and scrolling through social media feeds. Each week, we spend and average of 11 hours and 30 minutes on videos alone, including over six hours of short-form videos like YouTube Shorts and TikToks. That’s almost two days per month in addition to the nearly 1.2 days we dedicate to social media. (If you’re keeping track, that brings us up to between 10 and 11 days per month.)
Young Americans ages 18-29 pour even more of their lives into their devices. Nearly 25% report average daily screen use ranging from nine to 12 hours,[13] and the majority of them get started as soon as they get up and don’t stop until they fall asleep cradling their phones.[14] Lest the elder among us be tempted to brush this off as a “kids these days” phenomenon, Exploding Topics points the finger at every generation, noting that just under 45% of all Americans use their phones right before bed and check them immediately upon waking.[15]
At the very times when Scripture calls us to focus on God, almost half of us give our attention to our screens. We let an endless wave of inconsequential “content” direct our thoughts, shape our desires, and set the course of our days. We go to sleep thinking not about the depths of the riches of God’s wisdom and knowledge but about the last video we watched, post we saw, or comment we left.
Day by day, the repeated misdirection and misuse of our attention draws us closer to ruin. We become, as those drawn to idolatry in the Old Testament, spiritual adulterers.
To say we prostitute our attention to technology is far from hyperbolic. As researcher Nathan Witkin points out in his essay, “The Leviathan, the Hand, and the Maelstrom,”[16] we essentially sell our attention when we use social media and other ad-driven sites. Every day, these platforms — and the advertisers, celebrities, and influencers who populate them — spend enormous amounts of time and money to acquire our attention long enough to convince us to buy or support whatever they offer.
Their investment, and our willingness to let our attention be bought, pays off. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, made $160.6 billion from ads in 2024,[17] averaging $49.63 in revenue per person.[18] YouTube, infamous for algorithmically curated “watch next” suggestions that beckon us to follow rabbit trails for hours, netted $36 billion in ad revenue the same year.[19] Not to be left out, TikTok leveraged its addictive endless scroll format to bring in $33.12 billion in 2025.[20]
Posts that garner the most attention make the most money. And it’s no secret that people interact more with sensational or outrageous content than anything else, thus prompting the algorithms to display such posts more often. We may initially sign up for Facebook to stay connected with Aunt Ethel and Cousin Frank or join Instagram to see what Our Favorite Food Blogger is cooking, but what we’re really doing is parking ourselves in front of a slot machine that delivers a rotating litany of lies, foll0,y and the worst of humanity. When we pull down to refresh and proceed to scroll, the algorithms ensure we’re more likely to see enraging news headlines and thinly disguised ads than dinner ideas or videos of Frank Jr.’s latest antics.
Roberts warns of the spiritual danger here:[21] Algorithms react to our reactions, confirming and reinforcing what we already believe about the world and the people around us. As we continue to sell our attention to digital platforms, the algorithms “learn” our preferences and feed us more of what we tell them we like. This process often magnifies our biases, yet we often fail to realize how the vortex of endless posts, videos, and headlines, shapes our hearts and minds.
What starts as an apparently benign interest in friends’ or relatives’ lives can quickly become a vicious cycle that distorts the way we see the world.[22] We learn to distrust, ostracize, or hate anyone who disagrees with us, and we begin to see the people around us as enemies, as Other. We take our skewed, judgmental views into the world and, instead of displaying the meekness, humility, and love of Christ, disparage the man next door with the lawn sign that promotes the “wrong” political party or the woman down the street whose bumper sticker celebrates an alternate social agenda. We close our hearts and doors to the Other and forsake the Great Commission to serve what the social platforms gave us in exchange for our attention.
It doesn’t take hours of continuous screen time to disorder our hearts and sabotage our attention. “Micro-moments” shatter our thoughts into hundreds of unrelated fragments throughout the day. These short bursts of smartphone activity, triggered by notifications or the desire for immediate answers, send us plunging into the digital realm for a few seconds at a time, often while we’re in the middle of something else.[23]
Micro-moments divert us from the focus God calls us to with the command to “meditate.” Digital technologies have trained our brains to react to bursts of disparate information without processing them rather than set our minds on something long enough to contemplate and understand it. We get nothing in return for the attention we sell except more bursts, more distraction, more empty and useless content that draws us away from true Biblical meditation and communion with God.
We become like the wicked man who doesn’t seek after God or make God the object of his thoughts (Ps. 10:4). Rather than filling our minds with the eternally significant matters of God’s Word, we pour our preciously finite attention into empty pursuits and pointless frivolities that, at best, do nothing for our spiritual formation and, at worst, lead us away from God. We’re deaf to the Preacher’s cries of “All is vanity!” (Eccles. 1:2), too absorbed in our screens to notice how something that society has normalized is, at its core, grievous sin.
“O consider this natural feebleness of mind, whereby we are unable to keep long to any employment, but are light, feathery, tossed up and down like a dried leaf before the wind, or as an empty vessel upon the waves!” ~ Manton
This “consuming preoccupation”[24] transforms our minds until our very conversations devolve into vehicles for passing on the latest trend or headline rather than building up those around us. We let the distractions of the digital world shape our face-to-face interactions and thus forget God’s calling to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbors as ourselves (Matt. 22:37-29; c.f. Mk. 12:30-31; Lk. 10:27).
Data from the American Time Use Survey[25] paints a sobering picture of what happens when we exchange our focus for endless digital vanities. On average, Americans spend around 19 to 24 minutes per day on civic and religious activities, but between 2 and 3.5 hours watching TV. And while the time we spend on those civic and religious pursuits barely changes as we get older, time devoted to TV soars to as much as 5 hours per day in our 70s.
That is, of course, on top of the time we spend staring at our smartphones and scrolling social media.
Enticed by all that the world behind the screen purports to offer, we happily sell ourselves to endless distractions while our spirits starve for want of communion with the God Who made us.
Poet Wendel Berry’s proclamation that “we become what we behold” is often cited in reference to all-consuming technologies, but Greg Beale, professor of New Testament at Dallas Reformed Theological Seminary, brought the full weight of its meaning home to the heart of the Christian with an entire book called We Become What We Worship.[26] Commenting on the book, author and journalist Tony Reinke warned that where we direct our worship and affection “is either aimed at our ruin, or … aimed at our restoration.”[27]
To worship is to revere, to give something respect or affection because we honor and value it, and we are conformed to the image of what we value (Ps. 115:4-8). If we value the ephemeral digital world with its incongruous cacophony of frivolity and rage, we willingly distort our minds and hearts (Rom. 1:21-22). We take our attention off God and put it on the things of the world, giving our whole lives over to them as we embrace our own destruction (Rom 1:28-31; Jas. 1:13-15).
Yet many of us don’t recognize the downward slide. The road to ruin seems, at first, benign, even beneficial. After all, Pinterest is a great place to find recipes, and family and friends are always close at hand on Facebook or WhatsApp. And what about all the ministry opportunities that might come out of sharing a verse image on Instagram? It can’t possibly be bad if we can do all that, right? Smartphones are just tools, as neutral and innocent as shovels or screwdrivers, not evil idols that lure us into sin.
In making these excuses, we forget what these digital devices and platforms were really made for. Smartphones are, essentially, pocket entertainment, and therefore attention stealers by design. Neil Postman may not have anticipated their advent when he wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death[28], but much of what he said about television applies exponentially to these ubiquitous devices.
Of course, it wouldn’t be fair to say that everything we interact with through our phones leads inevitably to vanity or idolatry. Many well-meaning ministries and individual Christians post biblical content like verse images or short daily devotionals. Some share sermons from their churches or replays of talks from Christian conferences. Apps offer full Bibles in numerous translations, sometimes with extensive libraries of study tools. These can, in their way, be helpful, provided they haven’t been infected with AI.[29]
But when delivered through the lens of a screen, even these resources can be reduced to “content” that undermines the sustained, focused attention we need to properly meditate on and understand God’s Word. Brief posts and short devotionals condition us to see interaction with the Bible as another momentary act, a quick pause in the sea of other contextless, disconnected, spiritually destructive content we encounter moment by moment. We stop just long enough to smile a the verse and perhaps tap “like” or “share,” but we never take our attention off the screen and turn it to God. Our eyes — and our hearts — remain directed toward the glowing idols before us.
Screens have even invaded our Bible reading. The American Bible Society’s 2026 State of the Bible report found that 63% of Americans use digital Bibles or apps at least once a month.[30] Such apps turn the Bible into a convenience and promote an apathetic attitude toward Scripture, worship, and fellowship. When we use an app in church instead of a physical Bible, we open ourselves up to constant interruptions and distractions. We lose our focus the moment a notification appears. Instead of concentrating on the text and the sermon, we either get hung up fighting the temptation to bounce to another app or spend the service anxiously waiting for the moment when we can check what all the buzzing was about.
We take that moment as soon as the pastor says the final “amen” — or even before, if we succumb to distraction during the service. We forsake formative, refreshing, edifying fellowship with other believers in favor of answering Facebook messages, reading comments, and sending texts. We bring our idols into the sanctuary (2 Kings 21:4,7; c.f. 2 Kings 23:4, Ezek. 8:3-17), and mindlessly worship our smartphones even as we make a show of being in God’s house.
If we become what we behold, we are, as Reinke points out,[31] “being molded into one of two images: either into the distortion of creation (an idol) or into the image of the Creator.”
The latter has been God’s intention for His people since before time began (Rom. 8:29, 12:2; Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:10). Christlikeness is our telos, the end goal of the Christian existence. But we can only reach that end when we fix our attention on God as revealed in Christ, beholding the wholeness and holiness that changes us into His image from one degree of glory to another (2 Co. 3:18).
This requires an intentionality that most Christians lack. As a people, we often neglect to exercise discernment (Prov. 2:2; Eph. 5:14-17; 2 Tim. 2:7; Heb. 5:12-14) and instead embrace distraction and succumb to a worldly mindset. True change, true transformation, true conformation to the image of Christ demands diligence. It flows from day-by-day, moment-by-moment prayer to God for help focusing — and staying focused — on the things of Him.
At the same time, we must determine not to misdirect others’ attention. Checking texts during a down moment in conversation or while in church normalizes the misuse of focus. Texting links to friends or hitting “like” on their posts triggers notifications that tempt them to distraction. Even talking about the latest social media trend or clickbait headline encourages others to turn their attention from God to worldly frivolity that has little or no bearing on their (or our, or anyone’s) lives.
Yet these small steps are simply the start of a much more radical process of transformation. To truly focus on God, we must commit ourselves to mortifying the sinful distractions in our lives as God reveals them. Nothing short of heeding Christs call to pluck out the eye or cut off the hand that tempts us to sin will do (Matt. 5:29-30, 18:8-9; c.f. Mk. 9:43-47). We can no longer make excuses about the potential benefits of our social media accounts or the “necessary” conveniences of owning a smartphone. We can no longer allow the allure of content-laden Bible apps to condense our meditations into entertaining micro-moments. Escaping the path to spiritual ruin require following the Old Testament pattern of rooting out every idolatrous, cursed, and abominable thing and — literally or figuratively — smashing it to a powder (Ex. 32:20; 2 Kings 23:6, 15).
Social media. Streaming services. Smartphones. Televisions. Even computers and all that they open the door to. If our vocations require technology, we must not permit it to encroach upon other areas of our lives. Any device, pursuit, or possession that entices us to spiritual idolatry must be put to death. Until we commit ourselves to this, we have little hope of turning our attention fully to God. The digital world will continue to beckon from the edge of our consciousness, waiting for our sinful hearts to heed its siren call.
As Manton preached, “Before the duty, there must be an actual preparation or a solemn discharge of all impediments, that we may not bring the world along with us.”
The world has no place in our worship or service of God — which, for the Christian, is a continuous, whole-life devotion. Our minds are meant to always be fixed on the things of God; His Word, His words, and His ways are to be so present in our attention that we find ourselves meditating on them even when our minds are otherwise unoccupied. We’re to be people whose thoughts and words turn naturally to Him, who rehearse to ourselves and others what He has done, and who overflow with praise in response to all He is. We are to put our attention on Him in this life that we may know Him more and more and that His Spirit may be free to work out His image in us. And when all is made new (Rev. 21:5), worship and service of Him will be the central focus of our eternal existence (Rev. 7:9-12; 19:1,4-6; 22:3).
So how do we reclaim and redirect our attention? How do we avoid falling so deeply into spiritual ruin that we become blind to our predicament and abandon our telos in favor of vanity and idolatry?
Deuteronomy 5:13-15 points our way home:
Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work:
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.
And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.
The Sabbath was established, in part, to help Israel remember who they were as God’s people. Each week, its rhythm returned their focus to God as they ceased work and devoted time to worshiping Him and recalling His deeds on their behalf. We, too, are called to remember as we gather on Sundays to worship God and hear His Word preached.
This rhythm of rest and remembering is meant to be a daily discipline, the driving force that directs our attention. We are to heed the warning Jesus gave His disciples to “Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation” (Matt. 14:38). His words call us to keep ourselves from the habitual, voluntary introduction of distraction into our lives. distraction that entices us to sin or neglect the things of God.
But the same God Who warns of the spiritual destruction that comes from selling our attention to digital idols has blessed us with practices that draw us back to Him. In corporate worship, we lift our hearts and hands as our voices rise in praise. In the preaching and hearing of His Word, we experience the living and active power of the Holy Spirit enlightening our minds and calling us to a closer walk with Christ (Ps. 19:8; Heb. 4:12-13). And through baptism and the Lord’s Supper, we’re reminded of all God is and what He has done in redeeming us through the blood of Christ.
We need these reminders along with consistent private or family Bible reading and sustained meditation on what we encounter in the Word. We’re to bring these studies and meditations with us throughout each day, to have them so ingrained in our minds and hearts that distractions and enticements from the digital world no longer steal our affections. Like Israel of old, we’re to keep God’s Word in front of our eyes at all times and talk about with others or we, too, will forget.
To say we can’t disengage is to say we love our sin more than the God we claim to worship. To make the excuse that we can’t give up our smartphones or social media accounts is to tell God that obedience is an inconvenience not worth the cost. To cling to our digital idols is to despise the high price that Christ paid on the cross to deliver us from sin, including the sin of spiritual adultery — to declare, in essence, that we hate God and love the world (Jas. 4:4).
Thus we must ask ourselves: Christian, what do you truly love?
Further reading:
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu
BibleHub topic: Attention
BibleHub topic: Attention and Focus
“Redeeming Attention” by Alastair Roberts
“Screwtape is Hiding in Your Pocket” by Robert Ordway
“The Rise of the Pocket Gods”, my previous essay on Christians, smartphones, and apps
Notes
[1] Carr, Nicholas. 2010. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. W W Norton.
[2] Manton, Thomas. 2024. “Thomas Manton | Digital Puritan Press.” Digitalpuritan.Net, September 12. https://digitalpuritan.net/thomas-manton/.
[3] Biblehub.Com. 2025. “Topical Bible: Worship.” https://biblehub.com/topical/w/worship.htm.
[4] Biblehub.Com. 2026. “Topical Bible: King: Religious Duties Of.” https://biblehub.com/topical/naves/k/king–religious_duties_of.htm.
[5] Biblehub.Com. 2026b. “Strong’s Greek: 4337. Προσέχω (Prosechó) – to Pay Attention, to Give Heed, to Be Cautious, to Devote Oneself.” https://biblehub.com/greek/4337.htm.
[6] Roberts, Alastair, and Susannah Black Roberts. 2026. “№ 63: Redeeming Attention.” Substack.Com, The Anchored Argosy, April 4.
https://argosy.substack.com/p/63-redeeming-attention.
[7] Roberts, Alastair. 2025. “Warning: The Bible Is Not Just a Book.” Plough.Com, Plough, February 3. https://www.plough.com/en/articles/warning-the-bible-is-not-just-a-book.
[8] Biblehub.Com. 2025b. “Strong’s Hebrew: 7911. שָׁכַח (Shakach) – Forget, Forgotten, Forgot.” https://biblehub.com/hebrew/7911.htm.
[9] Walvoord, John F, and Roy B Zuck. 1985. The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures. Victor Books.
[10] Wu, Tim. 2020. The Attention Merchants : The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads. Langara College.
[11] Roberts, “Redeeming Attention.”
[12] Duarte, Fabio. 2024a. “Alarming Average Screen Time Statistics (2024).” In Exploding Topics. https://explodingtopics.com/blog/screen-time-stats.
[13] Duarte, “Alarming Average Screen Time Statistics (2024).”
[14] Duarte, “Alarming Average Screen Time Statistics (2024).”
[15] Duarte, “Alarming Average Screen Time Statistics (2024).”
[16] Witkin, Nathan. 2025. “The Leviathan, the Hand, and the Maelstrom.” Arachne, June 19.
[17] Bowman, Jeremy. 2025. “What Is the Attention Economy? | The Motley Fool.” In The Motley Fool. https://www.fool.com/terms/a/attention-economy/.
[18] Mcfarlane, Greg. 2022. “How Facebook, Twitter, Social Media Make Money From You.” In Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/032114/how-facebook-twitter-social-media-make-money-you-twtr-lnkd-fb-goog.aspx.
[19] Bowman, “Attention Economy.”
[20] Ruby, Daniel. 2023. “Tiktok Ad Revenue From 2018 - 2023: Detailed Analysis.” In Demand Sage. https://www.demandsage.com/tiktok-ad-revenue/.
[21] Roberts, “Redeeming Attention.”
[22] Snell, Grace. 2026. “Violent Online Extremists Are Luring Teens to Their Death.” World, March 1. https://wng.org/articles/drawn-to-darkness-1770260848.
[23] Duarte, Fabio. 2024b. “Time Spent Using Smartphones (2024 Statistics).” Exploding Topics, June 4. https://explodingtopics.com/blog/smartphone-usage-stats.; Wheelwright, Trevor. 2025. “Cell Phone Behavior Survey: Are People Addicted to Their Phones?”, Reviews.org, April 27. https://www.reviews.org/mobile/cell-phone-addiction/.
[24] Roberts, “Redeeming Attention.”
[25] Hurst, Kiley, Nick Zanetti, John Carlo Mandapat, and Reem Nadeem. 2026. “How Do U.S. Men and Women Spend Their Time?” Pew Research Center, March 17. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/feature/how-do-u-s-men-and-women-spend-their-time/.
[26] Beale, G. K. 2008. We Become What We Worship : A Biblical Theology of Idolatry. InterVarsity Press.
[27] Reinke, Tony. 2012. “We Become What We Worship.” Desiring God, August 22. https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/we-become-what-we-worship.
[28] Postman, Neil. 2005. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Penguin Books.
[29] Houghton, Theresa Sam. 2026. “The Rise of the Pocket Gods.” Samwrites.online, Sam. Writes., April 24. https://samwrites.online/p/the-rise-of-the-pocket-gods.
[30] American Bible Society. 2026. “America’s Relationship With the Bible: It’s Complicated.” State of the Bible, State of the Bible USA, April 8. https://sotb.americanbible.org/the-bible-in-america-today/.
[31] Reinke, “We Become What We Worship.”
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