Better is a little with the fear of the LORD
than great treasure and trouble with it. | Proverbs 15:16
This weekend, we hosted a seminar and workshop on the topic of media trauma (recordings coming soon). I thought that I would write a bit about what I took away from it and how we can apply these things through a Christian worldview.
We began by talking about how media affects us. While it frustrated some that the speaker refused to narrowly define media down to a specific platform, App, or means of engagement (smartphone), this was because the slow drip of media trauma exists in all of these (along with 24 hour news, the internet, and even texting). In one sense, the reason why we are seeing the negative consequences of anxiety, depression, and suicide in our society (especially in teens) is because of the amount of media and screens we are consuming. These things are not evil, and in many sense they are very good, but they are taking over our lives and creating an imbalance that is slowly poisoning us.
One of the reasons that media is taking over more and more of our life is because it appears to have a sort of magic built into it. We can do things with the internet that were never possible before in human history and this blurs the lines of what is possible. It gives technology and media a power that is almost divine. Andy Crouch describes it this way in his book, The Tech-Wise Family:
“For almost all of human history, tools were quite limited. They weren’t everywhere; they were in specific places. Tools were in the field (agricultural tools) or in the kitchen (cooking tools) or in the toolshed (work tools). And while tools helped us do our work, they didn’t work on their own. The dream of a tool that would work by itself was strictly the stuff of magic or fantasy—the sorcerer’s apprentice’s dream of a broom that would clean up by itself.”
What we have been given is something that appears to not be limited. Technology allows us to do things that seem impossible and in this they allow us to imagine a benefit that is beyond our limitations. We give our phones and the Apps on it, a sense of hope and dedication that they cannot meet. We begin to think that because they can accomplish things that we never imagined, that they might hold the answer to everything. Our speaker for the weekend put it this way:
We have been trained to go to our phones for ALL of our problems.
If we step back from our media for a few minutes (which is a big IF), we would all acknowledge that it doesn’t answer ALL of our problems. What it can do is distract us from them. It can give us something to do that helps us to forget that our problems exist. As Crouch put is:
“Because technology is devoted primarily to making our lives easier, it discourages us from disciplines, especially ones that involve disentangling ourselves from technology itself.”
This is similar to the quote: No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. If this is true of people, it is doubly true of a technology that is programmed to keep you connected. The best way to keep people connected is to create the appearance of answers, while not ever solving your problems. Giving you just enough to help you believe that it holds the key. If your problem is ever fixed, you don’t need the media anymore. If you don’t believe that the media meets your needs, you will put it down. Media is built to to be a magic that excites our imagination to new possibilities while never actually providing our tangible needs. In this, it creates a sort of bondage.
The first step in having a healthy relationship with media is acknowledging that it is designed to ensnare us. How would you engage differently if you view it as a slow drip of trauma rather than a limitless magic?