{"id":5386,"date":"2026-04-23T08:35:59","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T12:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5386"},"modified":"2026-04-23T08:35:59","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T12:35:59","slug":"get-smart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/23\/get-smart\/","title":{"rendered":"Get Smart"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>
\u00a0
Your smartphone is not your best friend.\u00a0
\u00a0
Nor is it the key to finding personal security and happiness.

That’s the message being embraced by more and more health care professionals to those who are having a hard time turning off and turning away from their phones.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

San Diego State psychology professor Jean Twenge recently asked her students what they did with their phones while they slept.

“Their answers were a profile in obsession,” she reports.\u00a0“Nearly all slept with their phones, putting them under their pillows, on the mattress, or at the very least within arm’s reach of the bed… Their phone was the last thing they saw before they went to sleep, and the first thing they saw when they woke up.”

A number of them talked about depending on their phones the way an addict would talk about crack:\u00a0“I know I shouldn’t, but I just can’t help it,” said one student.

It’s hard to fall asleep when you’re waiting to see how many Likes you get for that selfie you posted.\u00a0And studies have demonstrated that the blue light emitted by smartphones mimics daylight, tricking our brains into thinking it’s OK\u00a0to be\u00a0awake at 3 am.\u00a0\u00a0
\u00a0
Twenge isn’t your run-of-the-mill blogger.\u00a0She is a recognized expert on generations, particularly how Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and the newest crop of young Americans compare to each other in their growing-up years. Her signature book is the audaciously titled iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood.<\/em>

Twenge\u00a0coined the term “iGen” for those born between 1995 (the year the internet was commercialized) and 2012 (the year it became clear you were well behind the social curve\u00a0in middle school, high school, or college if you didn’t own a smartphone).\u00a0\u00a0

She observes, “Sometime around 2011, we arrived at the day when we looked up, maybe from our own phones, and realized that everyone around us had a phone in his or her hands.”

The numbers are daunting.\u00a0

According to studies, high school seniors spend more than two\u00a0hours a day texting, two\u00a0hours a day on the Internet, at least 90 minutes playing\u00a0electronic games, and around\u00a030 minutes doing\u00a0video chats with friends.\u00a0That’s six hours a day on so-called “new media.”

Significantly, owning a smartphone (and being\u00a0obsessed with it)\u00a0has nothing to do with class or income bracket.\u00a0This technology\u00a0is fast becoming\u00a0the great leveler of social standing and opportunity.

That has the potential of being a wonderful thing.

Then there are those other things\u00a0that aren’t quite as wonderful.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\u00a0
Authorities in a number of countries \u2013 including Brazil, Japan, South Korea, France, and the United Arab Emirates \u2013 have concluded that smartphones may actually be making students dumb. A slew of regulations currently prohibit kids in those nations from bringing flat screens to school.

Educators and sociologists agree that if a child is experiencing six hours of daily recreational screen time, they no longer have time for other\u00a0things\u00a0people\u00a0used to do.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

More often than not, that would be\u00a0face-to-face encounters\u00a0with real, live human beings.

Twenge believes the smartphone\u00a0generation will be the first to know\u00a0the perfect emoji to represent\u00a0every emotion, but won’t be able to recognize actual emotions and discern\u00a0the body language of people\u00a0standing right in front of them. The fact that smartphones give users the power to create \u201cdigital friends\u201d or A.I.-generated \u201cdates\u201d is not regarded by most psychologists as a positive development.

Reading appears to be another casualty of the new media.\u00a0

The market for print media (books, magazines, and newspapers) continues to\u00a0decline.\u00a0Let’s face it:\u00a0books aren’t very fast.\u00a0In a recent cartoon, a librarian hands a book to a teenager with the words, “Just think of it as a long text message.”\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0

One SDSU student said, “My dad is still into the whole book thing.\u00a0He has not realized that the Internet kind took the place of that.”

The Internet is incredible.\u00a0It is revolutionizing civilization. Every night, any one of us\u00a0can crawl into bed holding\u00a0in our hands\u00a0all the knowledge humanity has ever acquired.\u00a0That’s the happy part.\u00a0The sad part is that all too many of us devote\u00a0our screen time to watching videos of kittens and epic fails at wedding receptions.

Meanwhile, underneath all the excitement\u00a0of technological upgrades and the never-ending buffet of digital distractions, we suspect that we’re missing something.

It’s the bedrock conviction that we need to be hearing from God. Our souls ache not just for words, but the Word.\u00a0We long to hear God speak<\/em>. And it seems more and more obvious that that\u2019s\u00a0not going to happen through a text.\u00a0

The Hebrew word for “word” is debar<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0

In English, there are a variety of prefixes that negate the meaning of a word \u2013 “non,” “in,” and “un,” for example.\u00a0One Hebrew way of achieving negation is to affix the letter “m” to the beginning of a word.

When “m” is added to debar<\/em>, the result is\u00a0midbar<\/em> \u2013 the Hebrew word for “wilderness.”\u00a0In the Bible, a wilderness is a “wordless place” \u2013 a place where God’s Word is no longer heard.

We can become so devoted to\u00a0our flat screens \u2013 with social media, Netflix, and the myriad\u00a0pictures we’ve posted on Instagram \u2013 that our souls take on the reality of\u00a0a spiritual wilderness.\u00a0\u00a0

What can we do?

Carve out specific times to turn off your phone.\u00a0Keep it beyond your\u00a0reach in your bedroom.\u00a0It is not your best friend.\u00a0

Choose times of quietness.\u00a0 Open God’s Word.\u00a0 Ask God directly, “Please speak to me. Help me recognize\u00a0your voice.”

Then just listen.\u00a0
\u00a0
Turning away from our phones and toward the Living God will surely turn out to be the smartest thing we\u2019ll ever do.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0Your smartphone is not your best friend.\u00a0\u00a0Nor is it the key to finding personal security and happiness. That’s the message being embraced by more and more health care professionals to those who are having a hard time turning off and turning away from their phones.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 San Diego State psychology professor Jean Twenge… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5387,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1041,649],"class_list":["post-5386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-stop","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5386"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5388,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5386\/revisions\/5388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}