{"id":5125,"date":"2014-05-07T08:42:51","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T14:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/?p=5125"},"modified":"2014-05-07T08:43:26","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T14:43:26","slug":"20-diagnostic-questions-to-ask-about-technology-devices-and-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/20-diagnostic-questions-to-ask-about-technology-devices-and-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"20 Diagnostic Questions to Ask About Technology, Devices, and Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past Sunday, Sandy Beauchamp, Tim Bradley, Ryan Kelly, and Nathan Sherman\u00c2\u00a0hosted a panel discussion with parents of youth on the topic of our engagement with technology, devices, and social media. In proportion to how much we engage with\u00c2\u00a0tech, our thinking about that engagement is actually quite small. For Christians, this is an important context in which\u00c2\u00a0to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind.<\/p>\n

To that end, after Sunday’s panel, Ryan drafted the following 20 questions\u00c2\u00a0to help us evaluate our use of technology.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Is this device\/app a tool or an idol? Is it serving me or am I serving it? Am I exercising dominion over it, or does it have dominion over me?<\/li>\n
  2. What happens when I give up _________ (device\/app) for a day? Do I even know?<\/li>\n
  3. Does it serve\/promote God or self? What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the %?<\/li>\n
  4. Does it serve others or me? What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the %?<\/li>\n
  5. Am I mindlessly following the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trends or am I thoughtfully analyzing, monitoring, evaluating, and adjusting my usage? Simply put, am I asking enough questions?<\/li>\n
  6. Am I often living life through a device or an app (live-tweeting, Instagraming, Facebooking) rather than enjoying life through human eyes?<\/li>\n
  7. Have my relationships becoming more shallow (even if I have more of them because of social media)?<\/li>\n
  8. Am I growing less comfortable and\/or less capable with face-to-face communication?<\/li>\n
  9. Is my phone a crutch in more socially challenging environments?<\/li>\n
  10. Am I doing confrontation or otherwise hard conversations through email or another electronic medium?<\/li>\n
  11. Am I growing in true knowledge, wisdom, and discernment more than just bits of information, headlines, factoids? In other words, is my concentration, interest, and pursuit of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153substance\u00e2\u20ac\u009d growing or waning?<\/li>\n
  12. Has picking up my phone, opening it, checking apps, etc, become thoughtless or merely instinctual?<\/li>\n
  13. Am I setting purposeful limitations and boundaries on my tech use, or am I approaching tech-use with sheer pragmatism and\/or hedonism?<\/li>\n
  14. Does the fear of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153missing out\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going on socially significantly drive my use of tech? What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s behind that fear emotionally and spiritually?<\/li>\n
  15. Am I confusing my true identity with the public identity I portray through social media?\u00c2\u00a0(Note: Our real lives are often uglier than the idyllic life we portray, but our identity in Christ is far greater than anything we could capture with social media.)<\/li>\n
  16. Am I making public things that should be kept private? What parameters have I determined for what not to share?<\/li>\n
  17. What does the biblical virtue of modesty look like on ___________ (app)?\u00c2\u00a0(Note: modesty relates to skin and clothes, but also to speech and attitude.)<\/li>\n
  18. How might 1 Thes. 4:11-12\u00c2\u00a0(\u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6so that you may walk properly before outsiders\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d)\u00c2\u00a0apply to my use of social media?<\/li>\n
  19. Am I evaluating my \u00e2\u20ac\u0153need\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for and time on social media in relation to my need for and time in Bible and prayer?<\/li>\n
  20. Will this next tweet, photo, text, or post demonstrate love for my God and love for my neighbor (Matt. 22:37-40)?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This past Sunday, Sandy Beauchamp, Tim Bradley, Ryan Kelly, and Nathan Sherman\u00c2\u00a0hosted a panel discussion with parents of… Continue Reading ›<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5125"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5125"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5128,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5125\/revisions\/5128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}