Smartphone Cautions

As debates continue to rage regarding the effects of smartphones on the physical, spiritual, emotional, relational, and cognitive health of our kids, we need to exercise caution. One caution is this: Don’t put a smartphone in the hands of a young child. In fact, we need to be cautious about doing the same with our older kids, with many experts saying that we should wait to do so until the age of sixteen at the earliest. Listen to this first-person testimony from Matthew Gasda that was published in a Brooklyn-based underground magazine: “I’m aware that my flip phone is holding the line for me. That if I bought a new iPhone, I would spiral into levels of depravity and stupidity, hitherto unknown, in that over time, I would lose even the ability to be aware of this, and that is really the danger of the smartphone. You stop being aware of what you could have been. You lose the mythic hope of being a fully-fledged human being, and you start to crave submission to the digital Oversoul.”