Okay, I've told you this a couple times, but I don't think you've ever heard me, something that really bugs me when we get in the car. Oh, no. Yes, I know. You know what it is, don't you?
And you always defend yourself and deny it. What is it? What is it? Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.
And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. When I get in the car and you're driving, I get on my phone to catch up with all the things that I have not caught up on that day. With texts, with emails, and you hate it. And I'm all excited that we're in a car together.
I've been, you know, working on my phone probably in the house because it's work. And then we get in the car, I'm like, oh, good, we get to talk. And I look over and almost every time she's like deleting emails and you've responded to texts. And then I'm like, you always complain about me and this is my time.
And it doesn't seem to work. So finally, I get to say something. I know, I know. Are you going to repent or just confess? I will repent. I will make a precious effort and talk to Jesus about it. It's okay. We just need to get some help with this.
And we've got help sitting across the table from us in the studio. David Murrow is back with us. David's the author of Why Men Hate Church, which was a blockbuster book 15 years ago, something like that.
Yeah, 2005. Yeah, it was a great book. I loved it. Changed me, changed our church. I'm sure it changed many churches and many men. And, you know, really brought some insight into church world and really the world with men and spirituality is just thank you. It was such a great read and got it for Father's Day for me.
And this book, too, is something that's really helpful and it will have a great impact on our churches, on our homes, on our families and on our society. This one's called Drowning in Screen Time. And you're looking at me like I'm drowning in screen time. I wanted you to read the subtitle. Oh, the subtitle is really interesting because I think it's exactly what we're hoping to help people with, a lifeline. So this book can be a lifeline for adults, parents, teachers and ministers who want to reclaim their real lives. And obviously in that subtitle, you're getting at what's going on. And we've been talking about it this week.
Have we sort of lost our real lives often because we live in not a fantasy, but we live in a screen world that isn't real. So it's been really interesting. One of the things you do in there is you talk about five parables that you sort of use to teach different things. And one of them, we were talking earlier about the four brothers.
Yeah. Help us understand the four brothers and how that can help us. OK, so I tell the story of four brothers who lived on a farm and they ate what their hands and fields produced.
Well, then the farm fell on hard times and had to be sold. And so the four brothers moved to the city where they found exotic new foods. And so this is what the first brother, who we call Moderate Mike, continued to eat the same foods in the same amounts. The second brother, called Excessive Eddie, ate healthy foods, but in larger quantities because they were more available. The third brother, named Dishonorable Dan, adopted the city dwellers unhealthy diet. And then the fourth brother, who I call Addicted Albert, ate all foods in excess. Now, over time, Addicted Albert became ill, while Excessive Eddie and Dishonorable Dan saw their health diminished. But Moderate Mike remained fit and vigorous.
So I tell this story as a diagnostic tool. Screen time is not the same for everyone. Some people are Moderate Mike. They can watch a few TV shows. They can check their email. They're still heavily invested in real life, and it's a healthy activity for them. Now, some people are like Excessive Eddie. They're not watching bad content, but they watch too much. As I mentioned in one of our earlier segments, the average American watches nine hours of screen content for entertainment every day.
Most of us are Excessive Eddies. We're not necessarily watching pornography or Game of Thrones or any of these really nasty television shows. There's too much, and it's making us spiritually fat, as it were.
We're gaining excess calories that we don't need. But there is a lot of us who would be like Dishonorable Dan, the third brother, who eats unhealthy foods. And those would be the pornography and the degrading and cruel content that's so available.
And then Addicted Albert would be our fourth brother. He's a guy who just went hog wild on everything, and that would be the complete screen addict. And we're seeing this a lot with young men who are addicted to video game playing or pornography.
Young women who are experiencing social media addictions or high levels of anxiety. Which brother are you? Are you Moderate Mike? Are you managing your screen time well? Are you Excessive Eddie? You're not watching the bad stuff, but you're watching too much.
You're on your screen too much. Are you like the third brother, Dishonorable Dan? Are you dabbling in things that are dragging you down spiritually? Are you flaming people on social media and getting angry and cruel on social media? Or are you Addicted Albert?
Is it completely overwhelming your life? Can we assess that ourselves, or does someone else have to assess it? Like an alcoholic, he has a really hard time admitting, for a long time maybe, that he even has a drinking problem. So can we see it in ourselves?
Well, I think it's a combination of both. Step one in Alcoholics Anonymous is admitting you're powerless. And so I think there is a role for self and examination and admission that has to come first. But the key is, if you hear that from someone else, you've got to have the courage to acknowledge it and examine your own heart.
And take it to the Lord in prayer and say, is this really true? And I would imagine most of the times it would be. Have you ever been, Dave, in an accountability group that you guys, like, this is something you're accountable with? Screen time? No, I mean, we have with, you know, pornography, but not, you know, it's interesting to think, not really screen time.
Like that wouldn't be a bad question to ask somebody you trust, like, what's your screen time? Yeah, if you're on your screens five and a half hours a day, what are you not doing that you would have been doing in 1980 or 1990? You know, what would those five hours have been devoted to? I think for many of us who follow Jesus, there certainly would have been more prayer.
Absolutely. There would have been more awareness of people around us who need to know the Lord or who have needs that we can meet. I think a lot of the weakness in our churches today is being brought on by screen time. It's the fact that people are simply not aware of the needs around them. They're not praying in the Spirit.
They're not seeing what God is doing in the world because their eyes are on certain websites. Yeah, and you know, when I hear you go through the four brothers, I'm immediately like, I'm excessive Eddie. Yep, I am too. And I'm like, that's not a problem. That's no big deal, you know, and yet I've had, like we said earlier, I've had a six year old granddaughter tell me I spent too much time on my screen.
I've had my wife say that. And yet I just sort of smirk and go, yeah, I'm excessive Eddie, it's no big deal. But it is a problem. Is excessive Eddie a gateway drug? In some cases it is because, you know, the two brothers who ate foods in excess or ate unhealthy foods, why wouldn't it be a good thing to have more?
I mean, if I enjoy video gaming for two hours, why shouldn't I game for four hours? Right. Yeah, I know I was walking somewhere yesterday and my phone wasn't in my pocket. And I literally was like, I just felt like there's an appendage of my body that is not with me right now. It's that prevalent in my life that it's always my left pocket. There's actually a clinical term, nomophobia. What's that? That's the fear of being disconnected from your phone, nomophobia.
And then there's another one like it called textafrenia. That's when you're, when you feel phantom buzzes in your pocket. Oh, I must've got, no, I didn't get a text. You know, you actually imagine yourself getting texts and getting notifications and stuff.
That is just scary. Have you guys ever left the house and you didn't have your phone? Let me ask you, if that's happened, did you go back for your phone? On the way to the studio today, I did exactly that. You did?
I repent. Because I've done that before and I've analyzed like, do I need my phone for something specific like maps? That's a big one in our cars. Right. Yeah.
Completely. But I also think back in the day, what did we do without our phones? Like imagine, like we actually had a map that we held in our hands. Or, you know, landing in an airport.
I'll meet you at such and such a place and then they're not there and you have to page them. Right. I mean, it's a wonderful invention on one hand, but it's easy to become enslaved by it. One of the things I tell people, you know, we were talking about the buzzes and everything. If you really want to eliminate a lot of the mindless screen time in your life, turn the notifications off on your phone. Because they come from the factory, buzzing, chirping, all the notifications. Whenever you download an app, it's going to buzz you to death, you know, because it wants your attention. So, you know, one of the practical ways you can do that is just go through and I have an Apple device, but I'm sure it's the same on Android, is you just go through your notification settings and turn off everything you don't want to be instantly notified for. I've done that. Yeah, obviously, you know, turn off your email. I mean, even email. I'll get text notifications, I get maps, my travel apps, like airlines that I fly on.
I definitely want to know if the plane's going to fly. But other than that, I've got everything pretty much turned off. Let's talk about some of the downsides. Let's talk about... I love your one chapter title, Sleepier, Fatter, and Sicker. What screens are doing to our bodies?
What are they doing to our bodies? Okay, so in 1960, at the advent, really when television, 85% of homes had televisions for the first times. The average woman weighed, I think, 140 pounds. The average man was about 162.
Today, the average woman is 162 and the average man is like 180 or 190. Wow. Now, you're not saying that's screens. Absolutely. Yes, because we're sitting. In 1940, when we came home, we turned on the radio and we listened to Jack Benny. While you're listening to the radio, you can move around, right? Well, then with television, it immobilized your body and then things got worse in the 1970s.
We got these things called VCRs. Do you remember those? Oh, yeah.
Well, now even the commercial breaks are gone. Then the devil created something even worse, which is called the wireless remote. Oh, yes. Yeah, straight from the pit of hell, this thing. Because now you can sit there and channel surf, change the volume, change the input on your TV, and never move anything except one finger.
Wow. So all this immobility after work, and it's other things too. It's calorie-dense processed foods.
It's labor-saving devices like washing machines and garage door openers. But probably the number one reason we are so fat these days is because we come home from work, we're exhausted, we sit down on the couch, and we don't move. It could be a new way to have a diet, just get rid of all your devices. Right.
You probably trim down, probably lose 10 pounds immediately. And it's funny. I mean, all of what you said is true, and yet you play this game in your mind. It's like, oh, I have a fitness app on my phone. Well. And I count my calories.
If you use it. But the stats are saying it's not working for most of us. No, and we're also sleepier because we now have these devices that are keeping us up at night back to the 1940s. In 1940, the average American slept like 7.9 hours, and now that's down to like 6.8. Really? Because we're on our various devices into the night. And not only that, but our devices emit blue light. Until the 1950s with television, we never saw bluish light at night.
Really? We only saw it during the day. Sunlight is actually bluish.
We don't realize it. People who work in the TV business do because we do professional lighting. But then as evening comes, you have sunset, which is more of an orange light, and that sends your brain a signal to produce melatonin, which is the hormone that causes you to be sleepy. Firelight's the same way.
It's very orange, right? But in the 1950s, these devices entered our homes with the bluish light. That tells our brain it's noon.
Wow. So people, like my dad, we talked about my dad in the first segment. He would watch TV into the night until the sign-off came on, and that blue light kept him awake. People don't know what a sign-off is.
Think about that, though. At what, midnight, I think it was? Well, that's the thing. TV used to sign off at midnight, come on at 6 a.m. Radio stations, the same way. Now TV never signs off. All the screen things that we're addicted to never end.
Facebook and social media scrolls indefinitely. There are no stopping cues that tell us that it's time to stop using our screens, and that's by design. So we've talked about being fatter, sleepier.
Let's talk about sicker, because you mentioned that as well. Yeah, we're seeing lots of effects from everything from carpal tunnel to neck injuries, from people looking down on their screens. Your head is heavy, and it's meant to ride upright on your neck. But if you're constantly looking at your phone, you're tilted at about 60 degrees.
So we're seeing actually a lot of injuries. We're seeing eye strain injuries from people looking at their screens eight, nine hours a day. We're meant to look at a world that is around us in three dimensions.
We're not meant to look at a glowing panel in two dimensions. So you have a chapter called Swipe Left, How Screens Are Weakening Relationships. We're a family and marriage program. So it's all about relationships, so help us.
How is this weakening our relationships? So if you think about a typical young man or young woman in times past, a lot of their marriages were arranged, or it was just the people in the village. That was their dating pool, as it were. Even when the modern dating started in the Roaring Twenties, you still met people at church.
You met them in the office. You might know a few dozen singles that were available for dating or mating. Well, now with online dating, you have literally thousands of potential mates and dates available to you.
And so you see these people on your screen, and if you use an app like Tinder, I hope you don't, but you can swipe left if you don't like them and swipe right if you do, and you try to make contact with them. What it does is it gives our brains the impression that there are zillions of people out there that we can meet. And so it makes us less likely to commit.
And so we're seeing this. A lot of young adults are postponing marriage. They're postponing commitment because they have this impression that, hey, there are so many fish in the sea.
Why would I want to catch one? It's also leading to a lot of promiscuity. Tinder is the hookup app, and that's one of the reasons why we're seeing the marriage age, the average age of first marriage going way, way up. In 1960, the average woman married at age 20 and the average man married at 22. Today it's 27 and 29.
And it may even be higher than that post-pandemic. So all this perceived surplus of mates is suppressing the marriage rate, causing men not to commit, and making it actually harder for women to find a long-term, or men, who are interested in long-term relationships, it's making it harder for them to find long-term partners. I also wonder if, as they're in their marriage and they're struggling, as every marriage does, but they could always have back in their mind maybe somebody that they swiped a certain way and think, hmm, maybe that was the one. And people do this in dating all the time. I mean, I know people who have been ghosted mid-date. If it's not going well, the man gets up, excuses himself, and he swipes for another hookup. What?
Oh. This sort of stuff goes on all the time. Screens are really distorting the dating market.
That was really meant to be rather small. It's now just so enormous that people are not committing. So what do you suggest about that? I know some people that have married, and they've met online, and it's been a great relationship, great marriage. Should we avoid those at all costs, these dating apps? Well, again, it's how you use it and which platforms you use. I mean, Tinder is built for short-term hookups. But there are other dating platforms, eHarmony, Christian Mingle, that are really more marriage-focused. So if that's what you're interested in, the platforms are more in-depth.
There's less emphasis on physical beauty and more on personal compatibility. So again, there are good tools online, and there are really wretched tools online. And the key is never to use the wretched ones, because once you go to them, in a moment of frustration, you'll go back. How important is it for us as parents to model good use of screens?
I mean, are we modeling for our kids good and bad? The things that sound very similar are the key to this, monitoring and modeling. That's interesting. I was going to ask you about monitoring, too.
So let's talk about both of those. And I would say modeling is primary. If you are on your screen six hours a day, if the first thing you do when you get home is plop down and play video games or spend an inordinate amount of time in front of your kids on your iPad, then you've got to get your house in order. Just like you were saying with your granddaughter, get your own house in order first, because your kids are going to do what they see and not what you tell them to do. Once you do that, you need to put monitoring tools in place. Now, there are technological tools that monitor your kids' screen use that are very helpful. There are whole house internet monitoring tools.
There are things you can put on the phone. But you need to know what your kids are consuming. It used to be that predators hung out in the bushes. Today, they hang out on social media. The real danger to your kids is not an unlocked door.
It's an unmonitored digital device. So many of us as parents think of the unlocked door. You know what I mean? It's crazy. You can't let your 10-year-old go down to the park and play alone.
We did that all as kids. But no, they're going to be snatched. The predators are online. They're not at the park, because online you can stalk hundreds of kids at once. Wow. I mean, I tell a horrifying story in the book that was written up in a magazine about a woman who goes online posing as a 13- or 14-year-old girl. She uses software to change her appearance to look like this girl. And she posts a brand new Instagram profile. Literally within three minutes, 15 adult men.
Come on. Fifteen adult men have asked her for her phone number. I mean, if these things happened in the analog world, it would be stop the presses. We'd call the police. There would be nonstop coverage on the news.
But these abuses are largely unreported in the screen world. I'm thinking of moms with daughters. I'm thinking of my granddaughters.
That is staggering. Right. And yet, we would never go to bed at night with all of our doors unlocked, our windows open.
We would be vigilant to protect our children. And yet, they have these devices that, when parents know that, help us know, like, what do we do? Yeah.
Well, there are monitoring software. Bark is one of them that's really good that I recommend at my website, davidville.com. Bark? Like a dog barking?
Bark like a dog. Yeah. It barks when somebody tries to come after your kid. Really? That's why they named it that way. Well, it doesn't literally bark. I know.
But you don't have to clean up after it either. That's good. Yeah. There are a number of these. Disney has one. I don't know if I can recommend that, but I know they have one.
There are software packages out there that will help you. But the best thing is, you know, your 13-year-old should not be on Instagram. Yeah. Yes. And, boy, they should never be on something like Snapchat or something where the pictures disappear, because that's where sexting starts.
Yeah. Well, you know, and I'm thinking, as we talk to parents about this, it's on you. You are in control.
This is your—you have the power to control this. And you write in your book—I love how you said it—it's very important that your kids know every screen belongs to the parents. Access screen content is with parental permission and remains under their control. Parents will keep all passwords through their apps. Let their kids know you will be checking their phones regularly to keep them safe and have unlimited access any time of the day or night. Right. I mean, that's just a word of advice.
Parents, this is your job. We aren't out of control. We can control and monitor these devices in our homes.
And we not only can, we need to. Yeah. And it's like if you get two mice in your house, pretty soon you're going to have an infestation.
Yeah. You don't want to let this mouse into your house. You need to get control of this early, and the kids need to have this expectation from the beginning. Every digital device, every screen, every television, every iPad, every phone, all of these things belong to me as long as you're under my roof. And they need to know this is because I am protecting you. There are people out there who want to harm you and who can reach out to you through these devices, and I am not going to allow you to be harmed. I am going to protect you.
This is out of love. And I think you're right, David. Like, these conversations should be happening when our kids are younger, that they should be ongoing, that we're talking about them at the dinner table, that it's no surprise and we're educating on our kids what is happening in the digital world. But also that we're praying about this. Like, we go before God, we ask Him, Lord, protect our kids, protect our hearts, protect our minds, and protect our bodies, and be in God's Word, because that's where true life comes from. Yeah, and I think the Lord will also say to us, and I put you to be their protector.
Yeah. I will protect, but you have been given that job. And I would say to a parent, I know you probably know this, but if you have not been doing this, and as a result of these programs, you decide, I'm taking back my home, there's going to be a revolt. It's not going to go easy.
Your kids are going to just freak out, but you have to win that battle, because you are protecting them. And you have to replace it with something better. Yes. With something better, you know, Cold Stone, bribe them, whatever it takes. That's good.
Bribing works in this case. Get the mouse out of the house. Yeah. One of the things I advise parents to do is to do a formal screen use plan while baby is in the womb. Start it as soon as possible. This is how we're going to implement screens. Good. The American Academy of Pediatrics has one that's actually very good.
I'm going to be putting one up on my website very soon at daveamuro.com. Parents can go through, they can print this thing out, they can say, this is how many hours we're going to have the television on, this is when we're going to turn the thing off, this is how we're going to be using the Internet in our house. And from the time the kid is very little, they just know these are the policies.
They'll see it as normal. I know a lot of kids who are starting to see the advantages to coming unplugged from the Internet. You know what's really cool right now? Flip phones. Kids in junior high and even high school are carrying around flip phones. I think there's even a growing realization among the young that we are using our screens too much. We're becoming excessive at ease and addicted Alberts. And they don't want to be that. You know, young people want health, just like we do, that we adults do. Proverbs 4 23 says, guard your heart.
And I think that we need to guard our hearts and our children's hearts. And David, thank you. This has been super helpful. Well, it's been my pleasure.
Thank you for having me on the show. The verse that comes to mind for me as I listen to David and Wilson talk today with David Murrow about our screens is a verse in First Corinthians six, where the apostle Paul says, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. And I think we all have to ask the question, have we become dominated by our screens?
They are lawful, but are they profitable? That's what's at the heart of this conversation. And it's not just for those of us who are raising the next generation, it's for any of us who have access to screens. We all need to be asking ourselves this question about our devices. In fact, what David Murrow has written in his book called Drowning in Screen Time is so helpful. We want to make it available to you this week as a way of saying thank you when you join with us to help advance the ministry of family life today. Family life today is listener supported. This radio program, our website, our resources, our events, none of that would happen if it weren't for listeners like you who say this is important.
This matters. I want to see this ministry continue and to grow. So when you invest in the ministry of family life today by making a donation online at familylifetoday.com or by calling 1-800-FL-TODAY, you are joining with us to help effectively develop godly marriages and families. That's our mission. And when you do that, we want to say thank you by sending you a copy of David Murrow's book, Drowning in Screen Time.
You can request it when you donate again online at familylifetoday.com or when you donate by calling 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. You know, as we've said today, technology is not bad. It's a tool. We just want to make sure we're using it wisely and that it's not dominating our lives. David Robbins, who's the president of family life, is here with me. And David, as a ministry, we're trying to utilize screens and technology as effectively as we can to help promote and advance the ministry of the gospel.
Absolutely. It allows us to get the gospel and the biblical principles of marriage and family to more people and to more homes. And that's why we've spent a lot of time and energy on improving our family life app. If you have not checked it out recently, Bob, I've learned that the ideal time for me to listen to a Family Life Today show is at 1.4 speed.
That's available on our app. You can adjust it to whatever speed you want to listen to. It allows me to take my drive times that I have and instead of tuning into sports radio, which especially at this time of year, I'm tempted to do. It allows me to use 20 minutes that I have and to really feed my soul and to lift my eyes upward as I head home and invest in my kids. It's been a great resource to really redeem technology through this family life app that we keep improving.
And you think Dave and Ann sound OK at 1.4 speed? It's my preference, Bob. That's all I'm saying. Well, I do hope our listeners, if they've not already downloaded the family life app, go to your app store, search for family life as one word. The app is free and it gives you access not only to this daily program, but to lots of helpful content.
So, again, download the app and start using it. Now, tomorrow we're going to hear from Dave and Ann Wilson about the difference between kind of the idealized family. This image we have in our head of what perfect family life is supposed to be like and the real family life that all of us are dealing with.
How do we strive for the ideal without being crushed by the fact that we never get there? We'll hear more about that tomorrow from Dave and Ann Wilson. Hope you can join us for that. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of family life today. Family life today is a production of family life accrue ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
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