Book Review: 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You (2017)

12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You (2017) by Tony Reinke

“Do You Control Your Phone — Or Does Your Phone Control You?” Within a few years of its unveiling, the smartphone had become part of us, fully integrated into the daily patterns of our lives. Never offline, always within reach, we now wield in our hands a magic wand of technological power we have only begun to grasp. But it raises new enigmas, too. Never more connected, we seem to be growing more distant. Never more efficient, we have never been more distracted. Tony Reinke observed: “The smartphone is causing a social reversal: the desire to be alone in public and never alone in seclusion.”

Drawing on the insights of numerous thinkers, published studies, and his own research, writer Tony Reinke identifies twelve potent ways our smartphones have changed our lives—for good and ill. Reinke calls us to cultivate healthy habits for smartphone use in the digital age, encouraging us to be grateful for technological advance, develop skills aimed at maximizing the blessing that we (and others) can receive through our phones, and grow in the wisdom we need to avoid the many pitfalls that exist with such a powerful tool.

In summary, the 12 ways are:

1) We Are Addicted to Distraction

2) We Ignore Our Flesh and Blood

3) We Crave Immediate Approval

4) We Lose Our Literacy

5) We Feed on the Produced

6) We Become Like What We “Like”

7) We Get Lonely

8) We Get Comfortable in Secret Vices

9) We Lose Meaning

10) We Fear Missing Out

11) We Become Harsh to One Another

12) 12 We Lose Our Place in Time

And let me add no.13, by thinking and wanted to be smart, “We sometime posting/saying something stupid.” Like the old and wise Apostle Paul once wrote: “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… All things are lawful, but not all things build up.”

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THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.