〝Distraction has real consequences and is a major problem today. More than 30 countries have been compelled to enact distracted driving laws to curb dangerous behaviors such as using cell phones while driving. Not all distractions have consequences that are immediate as when driving a car (where we could be killed), but distraction still has a cost, especially when it takes our attention away from God and His coming Kingdom. Distraction can be external in our environment as well as internal in our mind. Through experience we know that it is easier to pay attention in a peaceful setting versus one with chaos, and it is easier to focus in a relaxed mental state than in one of stress or anxiousness. When we are distracted, studies say we experience degraded comprehension and memory retention while struggling to think deeply. When we try to read a book, at the end of a paragraph, we may not remember what we have just read and must read it again to try to absorb the words. This experience can be frustrating and may discourage us from attempting more complex books or perhaps to read at all.
What is Stealing your Attention?
If you often struggle to focus, as many of us do, what is the problem? There could be several causes, but since 2010, for many people, an Internet connected phone is a common cause. In Canada some schools have decided to ban phones in classrooms and take legal action against social media platforms: “Five school boards have also joined, alleging the platforms are negligently designed for compulsive use and have rewired how children think” (National Post, 2024-05-29). This alarming accusation is supported by the recently published book, The Anxious Generation, written by Jonathan Haidt. Haidt presents compelling evidence to show that the destruction of our attention is one of the consequences of the use of smartphones with social media apps which are largely responsible for a “Great Rewiring” of our brains, especially of those who have been going through adolescence since the 2010s. This is in conflict with God’s purpose, to transform our minds with the Word of truth.
Is the Splintering of our Attention a Problem?
Snippets of information delivered to us as if drinking from a fire hose at the speed of your social feed is exhausting to the brain and leaves no time for depth—which requires reflection and critical thinking. More speed means less comprehension:
“The brain’s capacity is not unlimited. The passageway from perception to understanding is narrow. It takes patience and concentration to evaluate new information—to gauge its accuracy, to weigh its relevance and worth, to put it into context—and the Internet, by design, subverts patience and concentration. When the brain is overloaded by stimuli, as it usually is when we’re peering into a network connected computer screen, attention splinters, thinking becomes superficial, and memory suffers. We become less reflective and more impulsive.” 1
If the secular world is so concerned about the hacking of our attention, how much more should we be as the servants of God striving to overcome our natural impulses? Our God wants to have our undivided attention. There is a contest for our attention. Consider the words of Paul:
“Be an example to the believers… give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.
Meditate on these things; give yourself entirely to them… in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you” (1Timothy 4:12-13,15-16).
Missing Precious Opportunities
Our connection with each other, and especially our children, is made up of many special moments which may be short and, when we are not fully present, easily missed. How many of these moments have been lost in response to the lure of a text message, a social media notification, or a video game? “A 2014 survey of children ages 6-12, conducted by Highlights magazine, found that 62% of children reported that their parents were ‘often distracted’ when the child tried to talk with them.” If our kids are part of this 62% there is a high probability (68%) that phones are the problem. The consequence is missing a vital and precious opportunity to strengthen the bond with our children (or with others) and we become more socially distant from each other. Those who are younger look up to those who are older. What example are we setting with how we deal with this problem? We need to get it right.
God commanded His people to meditate on His words, to take them to heart, and to speak about Him wherever they were with their children—this is the work of the New Covenant:
“These words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deut. 6:6-7).
“But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts” (Jer. 31:33).
This was the foundation of Israel’s courage and is equally as vital to us and our children today. God wants us to meditate on His book day and night so that we might live by faith according to what He has written. Are we making space to achieve this goal, one that requires we devote our full attention to Him?
“Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law (Heb. torah, i.e. Pentateuch or instruction). This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success” (Joshua 1:7-8).
The one who chooses a different path to the world and takes delight in what God wants us to do is a person who will be blessed by God. Such a person thinks deeply about what God has said!
“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly… But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:1-2).
“I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse (reflect NET) on the work of thy hands” (Psalm 143:5).
The Switch Cost Effect
On average, both teens and adults look at their screens once every 6 minutes during waking hours. In one study students who received messages during their exam performed, on average, 20% worse. The truth is, we are not designed to multi-task (the context of the following example has been changed to Bible study):
“Imagine you are doing [Bible study] and you receive a text, and you look at it—it’s only a glance, taking five seconds—and then you go back to your [Bible study]. In that moment, your brain has to reconfigure, when it goes from one task to another… You have to remember what you were doing before, and you have to remember what you thought about it, and that takes a little bit of time. When this happens, the evidence shows that your performance drops. You’re slower. All as a result of switching…” 2
According to Professor Posner (University of Oregon), “if you are focusing on something and you get interrupted, on average it will take twenty-three minutes for you to get back to the same state of focus.” 3 In another study it was “found that ‘technological distraction’—just getting emails and calls—caused a drop in the workers’ IQ by an average of ten points” (twice the IQ impact of smoking cannabis). 4
Picture David as a shepherd on the quiet hills of Israel, free of distraction other than watching his sheep. He could say, “O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97). Today peace like this might only be found in a remote location off grid. This kind of environment provides for quiet reflection and contemplation and enables us to give God our full attention. This seems unattainable today, where we are surrounded by chaos and almost constantly interrupted by technology. But, we can break away from this cacophony.
It has been found a great help to begin Bible study or reading technology free (or at least fully disconnected with an offline Bible app). If we sit down without a device, we find peace of mind and are not tempted to take an easy offramp to check email or other messages which can quickly take us down a rabbit hole interrupting our focus. In this way we can more easily stay concentrated on listening to our God. So, we can make changes to create the mental space necessary to develop a spiritual mind (see box page 7), thinking carefully before we answer, not responding impulsively with the fleshly mind, pouring out evil without forethought:
“The heart of the righteous studieth (i.e. meditates as in Joshua 1:8) to answer: but the mouth of the wicked poureth out evil things” (Prov. 15:28).
“If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think (meditate NKJV) on these things” (Phil. 4:8).
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus…” (Phil. 2:5).
Tech Engineered to Hack our Attention
Ex-Google engineer, Tristan Harris, who began his career as a magician learning the art of distraction, worked in Google’s “Persuasive Technology Lab” figuring out how to control (hack) our attention. He describes how a few tech companies, primarily Google and Meta—i.e. YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, whose business model is driven by the ‘attention economy,’ are controlling the attention of billions of minds every day:
“‘…inside of Facebook’s servers, inside of Google’s servers, there is a little voodoo doll, [and it is] a model of you. It starts by not looking much like you. It’s sort of a generic model of a human. But then they’re collecting your click trails [i.e., everything you click on], and your toenail clippings, and your hair droppings [i.e. everything you search for, every little detail of your life online]. They’re reassembling all that meta data you don’t really think is meaningful, so that doll looks more and more like you. Then when you show up on [for example] YouTube, they’re waking up that doll, and they’re testing out hundreds of thousands of videos against this doll, seeing what makes its arm twitch and move, so they know it’s effective, and then they serve that to you…
We’ve all had one kind of experience of searching online for something… It’s not that they are listening and then they can do targeted ad serving. It’s that their model of you is so accurate that it’s making predictions about you that you think are magic.’”
“These companies are building up a profile of you, to sell to advertisers who want to target you.”
“This is why these sites [apps] are designed to be maximally distracting. They need to distract us, to make more money.” 5
What you see in your feed is not selected randomly. It is selected specifically for you according to an algorithm based on your history and psychological profile that has been built up in order to hold your attention for as long as possible:
“The algorithm is always weighted toward figuring out what will keep you looking, and pumping more and more of that onto your screen to keep you from putting down your phone. It is designed to distract.” 6
Your doll is a profile of flesh and what you are shown is weighted toward what best excites your carnal fleshly mind:
“But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members” (Romans 7:23).
There are several distinct ways that these apps are designed which operate to harm your attention by exploiting your natural psychological vulnerabilities and weaknesses:
Train your mind, through the release of dopamine, to crave frequent rewards through hearts and likes which are not as frequent or immediate in the physical world.
Push you to switch tasks more frequently—evidence shows this is as bad for the quality of your thinking as being intoxicated.
Learn your personal triggers from your past behaviour and exploit them, i.e. by distracting you and keeping you scrolling/watching.
Use rage driven algorithms that trigger a state of vigilance in your brain to watch for danger impeding your ability to pay attention—you think shallower and less attentively.
There is a battle for our attention, a resource which is finite, limited by time. We must protect it. This distraction challenges our ability to develop and maintain a Godly mind.
Set your mind on things above
What is your personal commitment to improve your attention, to be more Kingdom focused? Consider working on giving your attention to reading and thinking about God. Start your day reading a Psalm and offering a prayer. Spend more time being present with people who will help you stay Kingdom focused.
Above all else, the daily reading of the Scriptures is indispensable to our assimilation of the Divine mind and attaining to eternal life, therefore guard against any distraction from this objective and “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:2).
Endnotes:
1. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (2020 edition), Nicholas Carr.
2-6. Stolen Focus, Johann Hari (2022) – This book contains offensive content and is not recommended for general reading.