(upbeat music) - Well, Pastor John and Noel are back in the Twin Cities. Thank you for your prayers as they traveled and ministered in Brazil and Argentina. It sounds like the trip was a big success. Here are just a few updates from the trip by the numbers. 25,000, that was the total number of people who heard Pastor John speak at live events, 25,000 folks.

1,300 is the number of pastors who convened at two events with Pastor John, 1,300 pastors, amazing. And 20,000 free copies of books were given away on this trip, including titles like "Expository Exaltation," "God is the Gospel," and "Dangerous Duty of Delight," 20,000 books given away. And on top of those big numbers came several personal testimonies of how God has used Pastor John's ministry over the years to bring in people's lives, saving faith, to restore broken marriages, and even to rescue one man from suicide.

It's incredible, both the big stats and especially those individual stories that you really only hear in face-to-face meetings when you're on the road like this. And on top of it all, God kept the Pipers and DG's team safe and healthy on the road. I miss all the flights and the hotels and the travel in this eight-day whirlwind of a trip to Brazil and Argentina.

Again, thank you for supporting us and for praying for us so that we can send them out on the road to do ministry like this. And the day the Pipers flew to South America, I flew to Texas to speak on campus at Texas A&M, or TAMU as it's affectionately called.

There I spoke to students about social media, digital temptations, and smartphone habits. The topics for conversation centered around my two books, "12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You" and the new one, "Competing Spectacles." The campus assembly was put on by Rachio Christi TAMU and by the Veritas Forum. It was made possible by a new friend, Micah Green, who serves as the Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the school, and by an old friend, Jared Oliphant, a PhD student in philosophy at TAMU, who moderated the event.

We had a solid turnout, really good engagement, and since there's no new Piper audio this week, you're getting some new Ranky audio, and I can hear your disappointment already. Today's episode is that hour-long gathering with students on fighting back against compulsive smartphone habits, and it opened with a robust howdy, which is how you get a whole room to quiet down immediately in Texas.

Apparently every howdy calls for an equal response. And here's the howdy, and here's the discussion. - Howdy. - Howdy. - I wanna start off, I'll introduce Tony, and then he'll talk about himself for a minute, but he is, as Zach said, involved in Desiring God Ministries. He's the Communications Director for that ministry.

He's also the author of a number of books, one of which will kind of be the focus of what we're gonna be doing tonight. Some of those books include Lit, which is kind of a theology of reading. Highly recommend that book, all the books, but I like that one in particular.

He wrote a book on Newton on the Christian life, and this is kind of gonna be the one that we focus on tonight, 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You. And it's kind of self-explanatory. It's about the ways your phone is changing you, technology, Christianity, philosophy, how all those things intersect, and how to think about that in kind of a smart, engaging way, so recommend that as well.

He has an upcoming book called Competing Spectacles, and like Zach said, there's some samples of these in the back if you wanna take a look, but this comes out in April, right? He is also the host of Ask Pastor John, so if you recognize his voice, he's on there doing his thing, too, asking Pastor John questions through Desiring God Ministries.

So let me frame tonight just very briefly. Tonight is gonna be a dialogue, and I want it to be focusing on the big questions. We're gonna be focusing on technology, we're gonna be focusing on smartphone usage, and how that's affecting us, and we're gonna be focusing on the big questions, all right?

So things like IT-related questions, like which phone to get, an iPhone versus whatever the other one is that blows up in your face. We're not gonna be addressing those kinds of questions. I went with one that doesn't blow up in my face, but that's your call. So we're not gonna be addressing IT-related questions.

It's gonna be how to think about social media, how to think about smartphones, those kinds of things. So that's gonna be the kinds of questions that I'll be asking, and hopefully you all will be asking as well. And my role really is just to kinda facilitate the dialogue, so it's gonna be a dialogue with Tony and myself, and also with you all as well.

So hopefully that kinda frames the context of what we're doing tonight. So first off, if you would just indulge me, I wanna know, there's a lot of people here, and I want it to feel a little bit more intimate, but how many people have taken out their phone and taken a picture of this room while they're in the room, something in this room?

That's it? Wow, okay. Okay, so only a few people. You're allowed to, just so you know. I was expecting much more people. But I wanted to get kind of a survey of how many people are snapping shots, posting it to various social media. That's good to know. Hopefully anybody is doing it.

We'll see how this goes. (audience laughing) So first question I wanna ask, again, I wanna get to know Tony a little bit, so you know who I'm talking to, who we're talking to. Can you talk a little bit about your role, how you see yourself on this topic of smartphone usage, social media, what's your background, career, those kinds of things?

Let us get to know you a little bit. - Happy to. Honored to be here, by the way. I'm a Nebraska boy, so I do feel like I'm in enemy territory here a little bit. But I've been well-received, and so grateful to be on campus with you guys. I did take a picture of the room, so I'm guilty.

And that's part of the story, is like, I'm not here saying, shame on you for abusing a smartphone. I'm here saying, I've abused my smartphone for at least 10 years. I mean, I'm still trying to figure out how to live online, how to work online, and how to do it in a way that doesn't have ill effects on my family and my kids.

So I've got three kids, 17, 13, and 11 year old. I'm starting to see digital technology really take over their lives, and helping them walk through things as well. And I'm coming alongside of them and saying, hey, guess what, dad is a smartphone addict too. I've had a smartphone since 2007, when it came out.

I can't remember a day without a smartphone since. I don't think there was one. So I've always had a smartphone right by my side. Until I started to charge it outside the bedroom, it was always within arm's reach, 24/7. So probably some of you can relate to that as well.

And so I'm with you, I'm trying to figure out, okay, why is it that I grab for this phone so often? What is it that I really want? What am I looking for in the phone? And so that drove me to write the book "12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You," which is really just a self-criticism project.

It was like, what am I doing wrong? What do I need to change? And my wife is the editor of the book, so everything I propose, she now knows that I wanna propose it, and so I'm now accountable to her. So it's a very personal story, it's a very personal journey for me in trying to figure these things out and then come alongside my kids and help them get ready for the generation that they're in, where they have to know how to be adept digitally, and yet also self-controlled.

And so I just wanna serve them, and I wanna be a better husband, I wanna be a better father, I wanna be a better employee, and that's gonna take self-discipline. So I needed to work through these things myself. - That's helpful. I wanna start out specifically on phone usage and those kinds of things.

Can you talk about, what are some of the psychological effects that you've seen, that you've studied? Is there data that we can look at as far as links to things like depression and those kinds of things? What are you seeing out there, either from academia or other things that you're looking at that links smartphone usage, social media usage, with how that affects our brain?

- Yeah, so there's a growing mountain of studies that are now showing the physiological impact of smartphone usage on our lives. We're talking about things like inactivity and obesity are on the rise, directly connected to smartphones. Stress and anxiety are on the rise for most of us who have smartphones.

We're feeling more and more stress, we're feeling more and more anxious in this age that we live in. But if you look at teenagers in high school, you're starting to see spikes in anxiety and depression among high school students. I'm sure some of you have seen that firsthand. I talk with superintendents of public schools, public high schools specifically, in the Minneapolis area, and they're saying they're just inundated by psychological issues that are, if not entirely related to smartphones, at least indirectly related to smartphone use.

And so I'm talking about superintendents who have been in a public school for 20, 30 years, and they had this set of things they were trying to do, and now their life is just entirely devoted to counseling. And they're overwhelmed. And so I'm starting to see that. I just had a conversation with a woman on the way over to campus, too, who had seen the same things at the high school level.

So there's just eyewitness testimony that we're seeing, there are studies that we're seeing, but it's a mountain. We're talking about sleeplessness, we're talking about poor posture, sore necks, eye strain, headaches, hypertension. We're talking about stress-induced breathing patterns. Like when you get engaged with someone online and you gotta think of something witty or snarky, like there's something happens to your body.

You know that feeling when you stop breathing. Like there's something happens to you physically, and once you step back and say, "What's going on there?" You start to realize, okay, that's a physical effect of my smartphone use. And so the stress-induced, shallow breathing patterns, when we get so engaged online, so locked in virtually, that our breathing patterns change.

So it goes on and on and on. The thing that I started to look at is, okay, we can address all of those physical aspects of smartphone use, but I wanna go after the actual impulses behind what's driving us. The cravings, the hopes, the wants, the hidden, sometimes lewd desires that we have for what we can find through our phones.

And to be quite honest, our phone represents sort of an expose of what we most want, okay? This is why we put codes on our screens to lock people out. Because if you get into someone's smartphone, if you get into someone's search history, you get in and see what someone else has been looking at, you are deep diving into their heart.

We're talking about the most central, driving heart issues in our lives emerge on what we see in our smartphone screens. That's why when it gets really personal, when we start talking about what we do with our phones, because some of the things that we do, we wouldn't want anybody else to know about.

That's what I'm after. Like, what is it that drives us to those things? And so, yes, there's a mountain of evidence on the physical aspect of these dimensions, but there's also something more secret. There's something more personal, more individually tailored to what is it that I'm looking for in my smartphone screen, and what does that say about me?

- Yeah, that's good. Let me talk a little bit specifically on the role of Christianity in this. From your perspective, let me try to kind of paint a certain narrative where there's a college student, and let's say she goes to church on a regular basis, and she's just now becoming kind of aware of smartphone usage and wants to think about it more.

The idea is that if she wants to learn about things like prayer and Jesus and worship and those kinds of things, she'll go to church. If she wants to learn about smartphone usage or the role of social media, she needs to go elsewhere. What would you say to that narrative?

Is there something true to it? How would you adjust that? Or what would you say to someone who is becoming aware of their smartphone usage in their relationship to the church at large? - Yeah. - How do you understand that? - That's a great question. I think the smartphone conversation is tied into something that's way bigger than just smartphones.

And that is that as a Christian looking to my kids and their future, I'm looking at things like nanotechnology and genetic modification and super babies are coming, and there's this super intelligence, and there's artificial intelligence. There's functional robots that'll be domesticated and brought into homes. And then there's companion robots.

Like you start looking at the technology and what the tsunami of technological changes that are about to hit us is pretty, it's daunting. So I step back and I look at like just smartphones are just the cusp of the wave of these other technological changes that are coming. And so I asked myself like, okay, who are the experts to turn to?

And honestly, I've come to the conclusion that it's like an all hands on deck kind of thing. It is parents and pastors. It is peers. It is, if you can find experts in the fields who can speak on these things, find those experts, journalists, whoever you can find that's talking about these things, pull them into the conversation and have a conversation like this.

Intentionally, this is not a lecture. This is not the expert telling you what to do. This is a conversation. 'Cause I need to hear from you. You need to hear from me. I need to hear from Jared. It's really an all hands on deck scenario where we've got to figure this out for the sake of the next generation.

I'm looking at my kids and thinking, how do I help them in all of these things? And so honestly, I mean, parents, pastors, parents and pastors typically are on the front lines of seeing shifts and changes in behaviors. And so they're gonna raise some flags even if they don't know really what to say beyond that.

But honestly, that's where I'm at. I didn't write a book to be like the conclusive thing to say on smartphones. I wanted it to open a conversation so that groups of people could read the book and then talk and hold each other accountable and think through these issues because I really do think, if I'm feeling that now with smartphones, those other technologies as they come and they're gonna come really quickly now, it's just, we've got to come together as Christians to think through these things as a community.

- Yeah, it's systemic, right? So it touches on the psychological field, the philosophical field, the theological field. - It does. - There's a lot of people that are experts in these certain facets of smartphone usage because it's so systemic in our lives and touches each one. And on that point, I wanna talk about spirituality and how that connects with this conversation.

Most people think or assume, I guess, that spirituality is important for Christianity, right? That's a big element. You wanna take care of your spiritual nature and how that affects what you do with social media and smartphone usage. But I also wanna talk about physicality and how important that is.

Is it important at all, just the role of being present, being physical? Is there a sense where physicality is important for the Christian worldview, the Christian point of view, number one? And number two, how does our smartphone usage relate to that importance, if it is important at all? Being present, being physical.

- Yeah, is the Christian faith embodied? Is embodiment an important thing for Christians? I would say absolutely it is. It is essential to spirituality to recognize that we have this body that God has given us. And what makes it, what I think raises the stakes here is when I look at the life of Christ.

Perhaps Christ could have died for sin in some virtual way, metaphorically within the Godhead. He didn't have to leave heaven. It would just be some sort of figurative kind of thing that happened within the Godhead between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. But that's not how God designed it.

God designed it so that His Son would be enfleshed. He would come to earth in bodily form. He would be begotten, not made. And you see this enfleshment of Jesus, it just plays out in so many different areas. Of course, you've got the virgin birth, which is a massive claim that Christians make, that Jesus was born to a virgin.

Then later, He would be baptized in water. He would be submerged all the way underwater. Right, Jared? - That's right. - And that's how baptism is done, right? Baptist, Presbyterian. Then you've got, in the storyline of Jesus, then you have Jesus in the desert temptations, where He goes out, and He's gonna be tempted.

He's gonna be tempted in His hunger. He has to be tempted in His hunger. His body is part of that storyline. He's going to have to feel hurt. He is going to have to feel temptation, feel rejection with His body. He is going to be filled with blood. The Son of God will be filled with blood so that that blood could be shed, embodied.

Then He would be pinned to a cross by nails, and He would shed His own body, His own blood for sinners. And then His dead body would be taken down, put in a tomb, and a few days later, it would twitch and animate and come back to life in a resurrection.

Then His body -- this story's not over yet. Then His body -- He's gonna walk around, and He's gonna show people His scars. He's gonna eat food. He really has a physical body after the resurrection. And this physical body, then, is going to be raised up into the sky in the ascension.

And that physical body of Jesus is going to be enthroned in heaven as the King. So you think of Queen Elizabeth's coronation service. I mean, I can't imagine what it was like in heaven for Jesus, physical Jesus, ascended, enthroned in heaven. And now Jesus is in heaven in a physical body right now, somewhere.

I don't know where He is, but He's somewhere in physical body with the scars still in His body, so that He can sympathize with me and the pain that I feel in this life and in this body. That's how embodied the Christian faith is. It's incredibly embodied. And not only that, but when you believe in Jesus Christ, you become part of His body.

That's the very language, then, of the New Testament. I mean, it just keeps getting more and more embodied. Then, of course, when you profess faith in Christ, after you profess faith in Christ, you're submerged fully under water in baptism, right, Jared? And then you come up out of the water, and that's a picture of the resurrection.

That's a portrayal of the resurrection our bodies will experience personally at some point in the future. And in between all of that, then we celebrate the Lord's Supper. The broken body, the shed blood of Jesus in bread and cup, we participate in that together. So not only is Jesus' life and His whole storyline embodied, but our lives as Christians, those of us who have professed faith in Jesus Christ, we're now part of Christ's body, and we're living this out in a face-to-face kind of a way.

Now I know you can go to church in a virtual way, right? You can go to church, and it's like a Broadway show. It's like a virtual experience. You're watching a spectacle. You're off in the distance. You're not going to get your hands dirty. I know you can do that.

You're not supposed to go to church that way, but you can. But what the Bible calls us to is this face-to-face relationship with people that you'll never follow in your Twitter feed. You'll never follow on Instagram. We're talking about elderly people and poor people and people who are not in your socioeconomic class and people who are not like you and people who are not your same age and people who don't look like you and think like you.

That's what the church is made up of. The church is made up of people with physical and mental disabilities that we need in our lives. The church body is built with the elderly and with children, people you're not going to follow on Instagram. And so the church is this melding pot of this diversity that really is the key then to spiritual formation.

It's coming together with that diversity that looks totally different than our social media feeds. And so is Christianity embodied? Yeah, it's embodied in every direction. I mean, you can keep pressing into each of those elements, and it's embodied all over the place. Yeah, that's good. And we're going to have a body eternally, right?

It's not something that we just strip away when we get to heaven. That's going to be our goal. So if you take that as a standard, then anything that's virtual is going to fall short of that, right? That's what smartphone usage and social media usage, you see an image that's not portraying reality.

And that's going to have an effect on how we see each other in our relationships, theologically, et cetera. In Romans 8, you know this, and this is glorious. The creation is waiting. The creation is waiting. So creation is feeling something's wrong. There's a brokenness because of sin, and everything is broken.

And then nothing works right, and the creation feels it. The animal world knows it. There's something broken. And in Romans 8 in the New Testament, Paul says the creation is waiting for the moment when the church of God is resurrected to new life. And in that moment, when all God's children are raised to new life, the creation is then raised to new life.

It's like a resurrection for the creation. And so it's like the creation is waiting, waiting for that moment when the sons of God will be revealed in the resurrection. And that's when we then participate in this creation in a new way, in a way that's totally transformed. It's been remade, and the brokenness will be gone.

And the classmate that you can't stand, if they're in Christ and you're in Christ, you will be best friends forever in ways that you could never imagine being friends right now. In a physical world, hiking the Himalayan mountains, some sort of recreated Himalayan mountains, and it's going to be gorge, but it is physical.

You're exactly right. After the resurrection, it's not just a spiritual existence. It is physical. We know that because Jesus, when he was raised, had a physical body. And so we know that the physical resurrection is not just some spiritual, ephemeral, floating in the clouds kind of a thing. It is working and tilling the ground, getting hands dirty, and enjoying this earth in a way that's mind-boggling.

Presbyterians and Baptists together. Yeah, amen. Amen. I do want to talk about social media, too. And OK, so the way I want to focus this is products like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, all those, they really are products, and they're being sold to us with kind of this promise of connection, connecting to people, connecting to family, friends, strangers even.

I want to talk about do they deliver on that promise in some way, and how do they fail to deliver on that promise? So what's the connection between social media and our connectivity to each other? What's the good, what's the bad that has come as a result of using those platforms?

That's a great question. We connect in so many different ways. So when I live about a six-hour drive away from my parents, and so especially when the kids were little, like grandma and grandpa wanted to see the grandkids, right? And so we would use Skype. We'd use some sort of a video service like that.

So that's a type of connecting where you already have a pre-existing relationship. It's a real relationship. And technology can help you extend those relationships even further. You can cross distances. So it's not just a virtual kind of connecting, but it's an extension. And I think there's really healthy, useful ways of using technology in those ways.

There's also a polarizing connectivity, too, and we feel this in the sort of politicized climate that we live in. And that is some prominent politician, who will go unnameless, will put a tweet out there, and everybody responds to it already. They're already preloaded to trigger response to whatever's said, right?

I can't believe you said this. This is horrible, or I love this. Retweet it. And so there's a sort of like, we're triggered. We're wired to respond to social media in a way that's just, it's completely polarized. That's another way that we connect. It's not necessarily healthy. And then of course, there's a sort of a reflexive connection, too, in the sense that when you see something on Instagram or Snapchat, you're called to make an immediate decision about what you're looking at.

Do you like it? Not like it. Here's an article. Do you like it? Not like it. Here's another image. Do you like it? Not like it. How much do you love it on Facebook? What kind of emoji are you gonna give it? There's an escalation of emojis. And so there's less time for reflection, and now it's just reflexive.

Make an immediate judgment call on this piece of media. That is shaping how we view every piece of media that comes into our phones. Do we rejoice in it? Do we reject it? You're getting conditioned to make that immediate snap judgment. And that's pretty significant. That's really significant. So that's another way that we connect.

Very often times online, we're seeing each other in that reflexive moment. We're watching each of us pass by each other, and there's sparks flying. Rejoice, reject. That's where we're meeting each other, in this tumultuous area of public discourse, and it's not really a discourse. And so that's a lot of where we're at, is that just reflexive response.

And then there's, obviously, there's an engaged connectivity, too, where you can go into, even in Facebook, but you can go into group discussions, long, meaningful text relationships. You can send out significant texts to people that you love, and people you want to invest in. There is a way to self-give online, too.

But you have to be intentional about that. If you're going online to get something quick out of it, you're not gonna serve people in the way that you could. And so there is a way of being engaged, and that's, you can use all sorts of platforms to do that, but it requires self-giving.

You have to say, "I'm going online "in order to invest in someone's life." And that, for a Christian, is where we want to ultimately be. I'm going online, not so I can accumulate as many Instagram likes as I can. I'm going online because I want to invest in other people's lives.

And that's a strategy decision you're gonna have to make in your life. How much of this is really about me trying to generate self-glory, and how much of this is me going online and feeling as though I'm giving of myself to invest in someone else? So those are some of the ways that we connect.

There is the black mirror effect. I mean, have you ever held your phone and your screen goes black, and you get a glimpse of yourself? And you're just like, you're startled. You're like, look at yourself. There's that black mirror kind of thing. And a lot of what we do on social media is that sort of black mirror.

It's narcissistic. It's just me trying to feed my own ego. It's me trying to get approval. It's me trying to get other people to like me. It's sick, but it's that black mirror kind of like, really what I'm trying to see online is myself. And so that again is why, you know, the local church is irreplaceable because you get into these relationships with people in a local church, and it's just, it's gonna change you because it's gonna call you out of yourself.

You can't hide behind some edited picture of yourself. You can't scrub certain parts of your life away. As you meet face-to-face with people, you are who you are face-to-face. It's very exposing, but it's important. It's really important for us to experience that. And so it's this weird thing, social media is so weird.

Like we wanna be known, and we also wanna hide. We wanna be known and we wanna hide at the same time. This reminds me of David Foster Wallace's novel, "Infinite Jest." I don't recommend reading that book unless you wanna punish yourself. It's a hard book to read, but he's got some really insightful things in that book.

One of the things that he talks about is the transition in his society that he's created from the traditional phone that you pick up, you know, from the wall with the little squiggly, you know, and transitioning from that to the video phone. So everybody was going towards these video phones.

And what all the characters in the book were finding out is that answering a video phone is not like answering the phone. You can answer the phone and just be sort of like half there, you know, half attentive, doing something else, fiddling over here, and they wouldn't even know.

With the video phone, what the characters realize is you've gotta like make eye contact with the video. You've gotta show that you're completely engaged. And so what David Foster Wallace, he looked to the future and he said, I could foresee in an age of video calls like this that people would buy little filters that they would put over the video camera that would make them look all, you know, trim and healthy and whatever.

And you could just see the mouth moving, you know, or something like, and so like the person would get a very glamorous vision of what you look like, but it was just a filter. Because what he said was answering the video phone was like answering the door. Like you're like fixing your hair and throwing on more clothes and putting on lipstick and prosthetics and whatever.

You know, like you have to, it's not like answering the phone. It's, and he says it in a way only David Foster Wallace could say. So there's all these paradoxes of what it means to live in this digital age. We wanna be seen and we wanna hide at the same time.

Even when it comes to, we've talked a little bit about video and Skype and one of the realities is when it comes to eye to eye contact, you know, looking someone in the eye, you can't do that on Skype. You can't do that on FaceTime. You can look at the presentation of yourself on the screen, which is typically where our eyes go, right?

Let's be honest. It's like a mirror. We're like making sure we look presentable. That David Foster Wallace saw that coming a long time ago. Or we look at the person's face on the screen, right? That we're talking to. Or we look directly into the camera, right? But if two people look directly into the camera at the same time, where are they looking?

Above and over the other person. So there's no way to make eye contact in Skype. You know, it's just one of those little subtle things that we've gotta think about and be like, okay, there's no replacement. There's no digital replacement for eye contact. You can't replicate that in Skype.

So all that to say, I think David Foster Wallace was a prophet of the emoji. Specifically the bitmoji of speaking through a moving avatar. I think David Foster Wallace saw that in 1986. - Let's stay on social media and self-worth and talk about that a little bit. Social media can be quantified really easily.

You can see how many Instagram followers you have, how many Twitter followers, and you can compare that to other people really well. It's public, it's there for everybody to see. And the only other comparison that I thought of was like financial wealth. You can't see, usually, people's bank accounts, but you can kinda see indicators of how well off they are.

Or at least you can sometimes. So I was thinking, what are some of the ways that we can compare like social media wealth with financial wealth and how those things relate to our own sense of self-worth, our value as it relates to how many likes we get, how many followers we get.

What are some of the connections there? What's the right way to think about self-worth and social media and those kinds of things? - We're living in what's called now the attention market. The attention market. The commodity that you have, yes, you have money, you have money to spend, but increasingly, the valuable commodity that you offer is your attention.

You have attention to give. Attention is what translates into YouTube views. Attention is what translates into likes, snap streaks. Like your attention is what generates all of those things in social media. So that is a precious commodity that huge, massive corporations are after. They want more of that commodity of your attention.

And when they win more of your attention, they gain valuations in the billions. This is why Instagram is worth 20 billion. This is why Facebook is worth 500 billion. They have found a way to capture that valuable commodity, which is your time, my time. So I think it's helpful that using money as an introduction to this question, I think is really insightful because it really is a commodity.

Attention is a commodity like money is a commodity. Now, does having more Instagram followers make you more socially powerful? It does, in a sense. It does. The more attention you can command means the more powerful you are as a person. That's just the way it is in this economy.

If you can get 100,000 people subscribed to your YouTube channel, you can probably make a full-time living just off that YouTube channel because you can convert so much of that commodity of attention toward yourself, and that's power that you can use to sell to advertisers. So we just have to be real about the nature of what it means to live inside of this attention economy.

And that's a realization that sort of came out of the 12 Ways book, and that's what generated the newer book on competing spectacles is this. The reality is that commodity market is having a tremendous impact on you and where you spend your own time and how you view yourself.

So in some sense, you can compare yourself on Instagram, you can say, oh, I've got more followers than my friend or my enemy or my frenemy, whoever it is, you can compare. Like, this is right for comparison, isn't it? And it's so vain when you think about it. Like, us comparing ourselves to other people and how many followers they have and how many likes they got on that image, and I should've gotten more likes on this and my image was better than, the comparison game just gets fed by this tabulation of approval that we all latch onto as if it means something significant, and it doesn't.

It really doesn't in a lot of ways, unless you're being mindful about those relationships. Now, we love using ratings. Ratings are important, like five-star ratings are important, right? I don't wanna drive with an Uber driver who's got a one-star rating. No, that's a death trap, right? You're not gonna buy a product on Amazon that has two out of five stars.

No way, that's a clunker. You wouldn't buy that. So, even college professors are getting ranked now, like websites, like you guys know that. Be kind, be kind to your professors, please. That cannot be easy. Now, here's what's crazy. When I was researching my book, I realized there was an app in 2014 that was launched called Peeple, P-E-E-P-L-E, Peeple, like peephole, peephole, okay?

This app was designed to offer users the chance to offer one to five-star ratings of the people that they know, okay? Friends, coworkers, and former romantic partners, okay? We're not talking about Uber drivers, we're not talking about Amazon products, we're not even talking about professors. We're talking about private individuals being given a one to five rating in public.

What could go wrong, right? (audience laughing) What could go wrong? Well, here's what the Washington Post called Peeple. They called it inherently invasive, objectifying, reductive, and a source of stress and anxiety for even a slightly self-conscious person. Even more, Peeple generated a platform that would encourage invasion of privacy and even harassment.

At the very least, it produced the feeling of being watched and judged at all times by an objectifying gaze to which you did not consent. Okay? Now, they revamped the app after 2014, and that debacle, and Washington Post grilled them rightfully, and now it's like, I don't know, you can rate your workplaces and stuff.

It's not what it was designed to be. But could you imagine that? Your friend's giving you a public rating, one to five, on how good of a friend you are. We render things down into a number of desirability. Tinder, Tinder, the app Tinder has been doing this for years.

They have a desirability ranking for every profile. So based upon whether people swipe left, swipe right, there's this tabulation, there's an algorithm that gives you a desirability rating in your Tinder profile, which is kept private. Okay? Now, a few journalists have been given their number, and they all regret that they got it.

All of them regret it, okay? 'Cause it was not flattering. (audience laughs) So, like, tabulations of approval, it's just the nature of this world. What's really scary is China is now playing around with a, it's called the social credit system. I don't know if any of you have heard of this.

It's a reputation rating, a reliability rating, and a credit score wrapped into one. Okay? Now, if you watch a certain TV show, you've seen that episode, and what that leads to, okay? My Christian conscience, I can't promote the television show, but, like, there's an episode of television that, like, explores what this would look like when your desirability rating, your reliability rating, and your credit score were all wrapped up into one number, and it's frightening.

It is frightening. It creates an oppressive caste system of popularity. So, whenever you have a numbers game, you have a game that can be gamed. Justin Timberlake can go out and buy a million extra Instagram followers if he wants to. Several celebrities have been caught, right, boosting their numbers.

If you have a numbers game, that game can be gamed, okay? So, don't put a whole lot of stock into it. - When you see someone who is a self-proclaimed influencer, that always kind of cracks me up, because I think, what are you influencing people to actually do? Follow other people that you know, dress a certain way?

What's the influence for? And I think just that vague influencer title doesn't tell me a whole, I'm a PhD in philosophy, so I think of big questions, and I think, you haven't influenced me to think about one single solitary thing ever. But, am I thinking about that in the wrong way, or, when you see someone as a social media influencer, what does that mean to you?

What do you think that means to most people, and how should we think about that whole status? - Yeah, so it means that they're wealthy in the commodity of attention, so people have given them lots of coins of attention, and they've turned that, if they're smart, they've turned that into advertising revenue and money.

If you can game the system, if you can play video games all day and livestream it and make a million dollars in a month, go for it. I mean, that's, Ninja is brilliant. (audience laughs) At some point, you have to just admire what he's done. But yeah, you have to ask the question, as a Christian, ultimately, the question comes down to, how am I influencing others, and why?

Why, why, why? Is it for me, is it for someone else? So, this is why, can you hand me the book? This is why, okay, so, I'm gonna go geeky for a minute. If you have the sampler for 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, I think you should have a table of contents.

So I have 12 ways, which are 12 chapters. This is all structured chiastically. Anybody know what a chiastic structure is yet? Okay, this is what geeky writers do in their basement when they're writing books, they're like, ah, let's write a chiastic structure, and then we'll talk to college students at Texas A&M, and they'll be impressed one day.

So chapter one, we're addicted to distraction. That's half of chapter 12. So we're addicted to distraction, and we lose our place in time. Those two chapters are tied together in a chiastic structure. So chapter one and 12 develop each other, although they are distinct, okay? Then chapter two and 11 develop one another.

We ignore flesh and blood, and we become harsh to one another, those two tie together, they develop one another. Then chapters three and 10, we crave immediate approval, and we fear missing out. That develops, those two chapters develop together. Chapters four and nine, we lose our literacy, we lose meaning, those two are tied together.

Chapters five and eight, we feed on the produced, and we get comfortable and seek revices. Those are tied together, which means, at the very middle of a chiastic structure, what do you have, class? What do you have? You have the main point, right? This is what I'm getting at.

So the main point of the chiastic structure in my book is six and seven, we become like what we like, which is a chapter about idolatry. We have false gods that we become like in our thinking. And then chapter seven is we get lonely because we're not self-giving. We're not loving other people, so we grow lonely in our social media use.

Even if we have thousands of followers, we get lonely because we're not actually serving anyone, we're not loving anyone. So loving God and loving neighbor are chapters six and seven. Love God, love neighbor. That's essentially the essence of chapter six and seven, which is the summation, Jesus says, of basically the Bible.

Love God, love neighbor. It's what it boils down to. So chapter six is treasure God above all things, and then chapter seven is out of that love, out of that overflow of delight in who God is, you serve. And that, I think, is so key. That's why I put it in the middle of the book, because this is what Christians have to offer this discussion.

Social media offers a false god. It offers approval that will not fill the hole in your life that is designed to be filled by God. It's not going to. We call it idolatry, to try and stuff that huge hole in your life to find satisfaction in something in this world that will make me happy.

Maybe I got 75 likes on that Instagram post yesterday. What if I post a better image? Maybe I'll get 125 today. And maybe if I get close to a celebrity at the concert, maybe I'll get 400. How can I get more and more likes on Instagram? That kind of desire is never going to fill your heart.

Ever. Ever. And so what is it, then, that is there to fill that hole? And it is, quite simply, the gospel comes in and says, here is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is so beautiful, so glorious, that the Father, in that baptism that we were talking about, when Jesus was baptized, by going all the way under the water and coming out, Jesus...

The Father is proclaiming, this is my beloved Son. This is my precious Son. This is the most glorious thing you will ever see. You will never see anything on Instagram that comes close to this. I'm going to rip the heavens apart and speak audibly. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

That's God talking. Right? So we take our cue from that and say, Jesus is the most satisfying thing in the universe. What is that hole for? That hole there is for us to taste and see how good Jesus is. And we draw towards Him, and we believe in Him, and we rejoice in Him.

And then it's out of that overflow of loving Christ that we then pour our lives out in self-sacrifice. And that may mean you don't need a smartphone. That may mean you don't need Instagram. That may be that you can find ways to serve other people online. I don't know what it will be, but there will be an overflow that will fill up all those ticks of approval that you were chasing before.

There's something greater that will explode those things out of your life in such a way that you'll think, "That was so vain, chasing those things." And you'll be given a new joy. And out of that joy, you then live in self-sacrifice. That's the Christian gospel. And that's why those chapters are the center of the book, because I think that really is the key.

The key to being wise with a smartphone comes down to understanding what is your purpose on this earth. That's how small of a question it is. It really is. You have to answer that question to find purpose when it comes to your media, your friendships, whatever it is. What's your life for?

That's good. I think that's a perfect point to transition for your questions. There is a microphone right there. If you do have questions, feel free to get up and just get in line there. Thank you for coming out today. We really appreciate hearing from you. My question is, you mentioned earlier about the emergence of the new technologies, the new economies, and all that stuff.

What do you think has the greatest potential for good amongst what we're looking forward to? What do you think has the greatest potential for destruction? Wow. That's a big question. I think genetic modification-- you're talking about those big categories that I threw out earlier. Yeah, when I think of-- I think genetic modification is the one that scares me.

How CRISPR is becoming so mainstream and easier and cheaper to do, and the boldness of pseudoscientists to create superhumans, designer babies, that frightens me probably more than anything else. I think the other things we can handle-- but I don't know what you do with a genetically modified human being that has a super intelligence.

Like, I don't know. Like, once the genie is out of that bottle, that's a unique kind of thing. So that probably, for me, is the thing that is most frightening. Yeah, the greatest potential for good is the tremendous power of digital communication to reach around the world. I sit in my office in Minneapolis, and I have the joy of writing books, and then those books go out, and then those books get translated into languages, and then I start getting emails from people across the world who speak a different language.

I get emails, and I have to copy and paste them into Google Translate to read them. That blows my mind. I mean, that blows my mind, the fact that I can say things and write things that are not only read across the English-speaking world, but then get translated. And I'm not some unique voice.

That's happening all over the place. So the power of digital communication and digital media is-- I mean, it is such a powerful force for good. So whether you're a poet, a painter, a spoken word artist, a hip-hop artist, whatever it is God has called you to do, find ways to use digital means to get your message out.

And that's part of the story of 12 Ways is realizing there's a lot of really powerful tools available now. I mean, you can make a documentary with basically an iMac. I mean, you can create a music album. You have some decent kind of a recording studio. You can make your own album.

Those kind of tools are incredible in what God can do through Christians in the world. I'm just seeing-- I'm just in awe of the power of digital technology because it seems limitless. Thank you very much. Thank you. Tony, thanks so much for coming out tonight. I really enjoyed getting to hear from you.

I enjoyed reading your book as well. Thank you. It's excellent. Thanks for writing. I just wanted to ask if you wouldn't mind sharing some of your personal habits, things that you have found in effort to lead a more disconnected, but still-- I realize you have a smartphone and an iPad.

So what are some of the habits you've found helpful? Yeah, a bunch of things I've learned over the years. Number one is get your hands dirty. No, like literally get your hands dirty. One of the things that smartphone addicts are doing now is taking up pottery. So you get locked into pottery for a couple of hours working on something.

And what do you do with your hands? Your hands are a cupboard, right? You can't do anything with your phone, right? So that's a helpful way to do it. Do woodworking. Find activities that will get your hands dirty. One of the things I do with my smartphone is I gray the screen out so there's no color.

Any of you tried that before? OK, if you have an iPhone-- I don't know how this works on other-- pull out your iPhone real quick. This is not a trick. This is not a trick, I promise. It's not a trick. I'm not going to lambaste you for doing this, I promise.

So go to Settings. Go to Settings. Go to Settings. Go to General. Settings, General. Accessibility. See Accessibility. And then click on Display Accommodations. Color Filters. You see Color Filters? Turn that on. And then click Grayscale. OK, you see that? Now your phone is black and white. Now there's a rumor-- and I can't confirm this-- but there's a rumor that that will enhance your battery life, too.

But here's what it does, primarily. When you lose color on your home screen, do you notice what happens to those number bubbles, those app badges with the numbers on them? They just get muted. Instead of being blue and punching at you, like, you got to do this, you're behind, you're behind, it just mutes.

And so it does that with all the colors. I find that to be a really helpful little trick, that the smartphone does not grab my attention. Now, Instagram pictures are going to be black and white, right? So you're used to a certain kind of image. But I find that really helpful.

So I do that. I use the Screen Time app. So all my kids and my wife, we all have a Screen Time app, and we're comparing. It's a goofy app right now. It doesn't do all the things you would want it to do, but it's going to get better, I think.

And so just having accountability with, here's how much time I spent on social media and letting other people see it, that's helpful. Deleting apps, like getting rid of apps regularly is helpful. Like apps that are not useful to your life, just get rid of them. If they're distracting, get rid of them.

That's really helpful. And then I, twice a year for 10 days each, I do a digital fast. And so now I have an online job, so there's a certain amount of email that I have to do, certain amount of things that I just have to do online. But otherwise, all of my social media, my smartphone, those things are off for 10 days, twice a year.

Usually they coordinate with a retreat that my wife and I take, just to read and plan things. But twice a year, 10 days offline. Those first two days are really hard. They're really excruciating. And then you get to day three, and it's like, OK, I can do this. And then by day four and five, your life is-- it gives you a new perspective on your life.

And so I talk about some other strategies in the book of how to do that. But those detox fasts are so critical for me and for my wife. I just have to do them. And part of what I have to do is get back to long books and maintain my linear concentration, because that's the muscle that gets weaker and weaker with my use of digital media.

So I hope what you hear from me is that I continue to use those fasting periods of 10 days twice a year, because I still see it as a problem in my own life that I've got to combat. And I've got to take time away and say, God, you are greater than the approval that I'm seeking online.

You are more satisfying than that affirmation that I'm looking for online. So those are a few things. Thanks. Just a quick answer, are there no women who have questions at all? I find that hard to believe. I appreciate your questions, just trying to get a little bit of a mix here.

I can try to get in touch with my tone and accent. Well, howdy, Tony, and thank you for coming. Thanks. I'm Robodistan Christian, and in my three-and-a-half-year career here at A&M, I've reached maybe a dozen points where I've said, OK, social media, primarily YouTube, I've said, I'm investing so much into this.

I'm watching it all the time. I'm wasting my time. I'm not doing the homework I should be doing, all this kind of stuff. I'm avoiding my friends. And I've said, OK, you know, scripture says, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. And I've tried fasting for about a month away from YouTube, whatever.

There are so many bad things to watch on YouTube, so many avenues. And I wanted to get rid of them. I hate them. And I've tried to cut them out of my life. But every time I'm faced with the decision to cut YouTube out, there are ways to block it and all this kind of stuff.

I'm faced with dropping both those and things like, before I found the app, Ask Pastor John, and several pastors I've listened to through YouTube. And I've been deterred from dropping it because I think, well, I need this stuff, this good stuff. But it does keep the negative avenues open.

My question is, I have read about, do you think it's safe for the church, individual churches and Christian organizations to dabble in this social media, YouTube area, in such a way that keeps it relevant and vital to people like me? - That's a legitimate question. That is a legitimate question.

Thank you. So if we personalize the question for a second, anytime I text someone, I'm obligating them in a certain way, right? So the whole system runs on the least controlled user, right? Really? The least controlled social media or smartphone user, the most addicted smartphone user who's texting, who's direct messaging, all these people who now are obligated to respond, there's a sense in which we're projecting our misuse of the smartphone onto other people.

Whereas if you restrain yourself, that also has an impact on others, right? So like, I have this...basically, I have a rule. I don't text anyone between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. It's just, I cut it off at 9 p.m., on at 8 a.m. And everybody in my world just realizes that's the reality of it.

And what I've noticed is friends and coworkers who traditionally would text after 9 p.m., they start doing that less and less, right? Because I'm not going to respond. And so it could be, even in a group context where those conversations aren't going to happen because they know Tony's not going to reply.

So my decision to not tweet or use any social media between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. has a rippling effect on the people around me, okay? Now, if I was texting them at 11 p.m., that would also have a negative impact. I think that's kind of what you're getting at, but more at the larger level of, like, if we're putting out so much content that's so compelling, that's driving people to YouTube, do we bear some responsibility for the dumb videos that show up in the stream on the right bar?

Right? Because you're watching something that's, like, so edifying. It's like Tim Keller is, like, explaining the meaning of life in five minutes, right? And then it's, like, "Seinfeld's Funniest Five Bloopers" is, like, right there. And, like, now it's competing. Like, you can't compete with that. Like, "Seinfeld's Bloopers" is, like, I want to click on that as soon as possible.

It's not fair. So the question is then, does feeding that main box of edifying content, isn't that just driving and feeding the whole system? And that, I mean, that's a significant question that I don't have an answer to. But you're right. There is some level of accountability when we're driving, as Christian ministries are driving people into YouTube for edification, are we responsible for then what they see following?

I don't have a simple answer for that. I really don't. I do foresee in the not-too-distant future that Christian content could very likely be banned from certain platforms. We've had a prominent video on YouTube that I thought was very tactfully done that was banned by YouTube. We fought to reinstate it, and we got it reinstated.

But I foresee YouTube as a platform making calls about what Christians can and can't say online. And so Christians then retreating into third-party hosting services that won't be using a Vimeo or a YouTube, I foresee that in the future. You may not have to worry about that. Might not.

I think Christian ministries that are smart right now are already developing some sort of self-hosting site for their video and audio content. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for coming, by the way. So in Scripture, in the parallel of the sower, we see how the sower goes around and spreads the seeds everywhere.

So what do you say is the role of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and all that in evangelism? And how do you say we should go about that in a way that seeks the glory of God rather than our own self-fulfillment? That's awesome. I mean, that's the right question to ask.

You've got to ask that question first. And really, that's the driving part of my whole book and what I'm here to do is to encourage you to think about that. What is it that God has called you to do? If you're an evangelist, you have so many opportunities online to share the gospel.

At least to maybe sow seeds in people's lives. You can't do all evangelism online. You're going to have to meet people face to face, but there is some extension of evangelism that you can do in social media. And see, this is the beauty of it. Once you see, like, okay, God has called me to be an evangelist and to love other people by sharing the gospel with them, and it's going to hurt and it's self-sacrifice.

This is not about my glory. It's about his glory. Once you realize that, then God starts opening up doors of like, okay, use Instagram for this purpose and use Facebook for this purpose and use YouTube for this purpose. If he calls you into those fields, it's just, you know, the fields are white and the workers are few.

The number of people who are going to use social media in a self-sacrificing way, in a way that they come offline and they're like, they feel spent because they gave themselves. They poured themselves out for others. They didn't go to social media and get puffed up in this vain way, but they go there and self-give.

And you're in a great place. Just keep praying. God, open up doors, use Facebook and then see who comments and then engage in those people privately. Like you can use it in so many different ways, so many different ways, but you're asking the exact right question and you just keep pressing into that and God will start opening up doors for you.

Yeah. Hi, thank you so much for coming all the way down to Texas. So I recognize in my life some of my peers and siblings that are of direct effect of social media and their YouTube habit and I can tell it's affecting their self-worth and it's affecting how they're able to interact face-to-face.

Is there a proper way that I should go about like helping them recognize that or are there any do's or don'ts that you've experienced in like helping other people recognize that their addictions are to social media and to YouTube are a detriment to their lives? It's really something that they have to come to terms with on their own.

How old are the individuals? My sister is 16. Oh, 16. Okay, so she's older. Boy, I mean, honest conversations are really important. You have to say like, "Hey, I've noticed these trends in your life. I don't think this is helpful. I don't think this is beneficial." The smartphone book that I wrote is really me coming to terms with all of the facets of what drives me to my phone personally.

And so once I became more clear about what desires were inside of me driving me to my phone, now I can parent my kids and say, "Hey, you know what? I know that desire to be liked and to be popular and to be loved online is so powerful. It's so potent." It's even got, I mean, it's sparking the dopamine in their brain, right?

So this dopamine molecule in the brain, it says, "Yes, do more of that." So it's related to sugar, right? You eat sugar and your dopamine is like, "Yes, do that more. Eat more sugar," right? So it's pleasurable to have sugar. The same exact response happens with sex, with cocaine, with heroin, with tobacco, alcohol, those kinds of things.

Your brain is telling you, "Oh, more, more, more." And you shouldn't have more, more, more, but your brain is telling you more, more, more. The same thing happens with social approval. If you do something and you make someone laugh or you make someone smile, that same response happens in your brain, that dopamine, "Do that more, more, more, more," right?

I've got a son who's a class joker. He's a practical joker, and I can't explain to him how his brain works in those moments, but he knows when people laugh at me, his brain is telling him, "Do that more, more, more." And mom and dad are saying, "Stop, stop, stop," right?

And teachers are saying, "Stop, stop, stop," because it's not right. But the brain is telling him, "Do that more," because social approval is one of those tricks. You do something and someone likes dopamine, boom, pop, do that again. Your brain tells you to do it over and over again.

And so that's part of the thing. Just like sugar, you've got to separate yourself from that social approval that's going to spark that in your brain. I think you have to get real with your own heart and what drives you to social media, then go to your sister and say, "Hey, here's what I've learned.

Does this sound like something you struggle with?" That to me is the only approach that I know how to take, is just honesty with myself. And that quite frankly is why I get so fed up with these Christian books and even non-Christian books that are like, "Your teenager is addicted to smartphones, here's how to fix them." No, no, no, no, no, because grandma's addicted to Facebook memes, right?

I mean, let's be honest, like 60 plus year olds have some serious problems on Facebook, right? And so it's more about, "Okay, well, how is dad addicted to social media?" And then I go to my kids and say, "Here's what I feel in my own life going on and what drives me to do those things.

Can you relate?" So there's no shortcut to you getting honest with your own desires and then going to your sister and saying, "Hey, does this sound similar?" Is that helpful? Yes, thank you. Thank you. Thank you all for coming. I appreciate the questions and your attention. We could just thank Tony one more time for coming.

Really grateful for the students and leaders at Texas A&M, a pretty incredible school just by sheer size. Very impressive. What a trip. Special thanks to the host of the event, Rachio Christy Temu, and the Veritas Forum for that event. And thank you to Micah Green and to the moderator, Jared Oliphant, for leading so well that evening.

Of course, listening to a recording like this one is a special form of torture for me. I kick myself for all the things that I left unsaid. For students hearing all of this, and even non-students who are listening to this and who feel the weight of guilt from years of sinful patterns of smartphone abuse, I should have explicitly invited them to come to Christ for forgiveness and in Him to be freed from that weight.

I didn't. I regret it, although I was able to do this in a few of the personal conversations that resulted after the meeting was adjourned. And to that student on YouTube who finds himself too easily distracted, I should have suggested that he also use audio-only podcasting apps. Eliminating the visual element helps to tamp down distractions.

Alas, that's the end of retractions and additions. The Pipers are back in the Twin Cities after a fruitful trip to South America. Pastor John is scheduled to return to the studio next week, and I'll get you new episodes with him just as soon as I have them. I'm Tony Reinke.

We'll see you soon.