A Pastor’s Reflections: Reversing the Effects

The Internet has brought a technological revolution to many different aspects of life. In the pre-internet days if you were watching a TV show and recognized an actor but could not remember what other shows she appeared in, you were simply left in your ignorance. Now, you can whip out your smart phone, Google it, and in a matter of moments know every single TV show the actress ever made. The same goes for something we old timers used to call, The Yellow Pages. I know this sounds strange to some, but in days gone by if you wanted to find out where a business was located, you dragged out a massive yellow book that had listings for businesses, you looked up your category, say Sporting Goods Stores, and then found the address and phone number. You probably had to break out a street map if you didn’t know where the store was located. The Internet brings many conveniences and improvements to life, but there are also a number of drawbacks.

Various things in our lives leave impressions upon us. If you regularly use a shovel, for example, you will undoubtedly get callouses on your hands. The same is true of the mind. If you regularly train your mind to do something, then your mind will quickly adjust. There have been a number of studies that have proven that the Internet is re-wiring the brain (see, e.g., Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains). In a nutshell, if you regularly skim text on the Internet, then you quickly train your brain to skim any and all text that shows up in front of your eyes. If you only scroll down the page, read a few sentences here and there, and then click to the next window, you are teaching your brain that this is the way it should process written texts. You are leaving “calluses” on your brain, if you will—the imprint of using the Internet. If your goal is to surf the Internet, then training your brain in this manner is probably ok. The reality is, if you want to retain the ability to follow long, detailed, complex arguments, then this is a disastrous practice. 

Some quoted statistics I’ve heard say that some adult readers have shortened their attention spans to a few hundred words. Think about the old Twitter limit of 140 characters—you train your brain to think and process 140 characters at a time. But what if you want to read something that is longer? Some might not care—Twitter and Facebook are the few things that they actually read. But what if you’re part of the church, a community that has dedicated itself to a book, namely, the Bible? Can you read long passages of Scripture, follow the narrative, or teaching, and retain the information? If you’re a pastor or seminary student, the situation is more pressing. How can you follow long complex exegetical arguments that roll on for pages, comprehend, retain, digest, and use them in ministry if you’ve chopped your attention span to a few hundred characters? As you can see, if used uncritically, Internet usage can be detrimental to the church’s collective use of Scripture—one of the key means of grace in the life and doctrine of the church. So what’s a person to do?

I can’t tell you the best course of action, but here are a few things that I’ve been doing to reverse the effects of Internet usage:

1. When I surf the Internet, I reject the tendency to click, scan, and click. If I start reading something, I remind myself to read the whole article before I click to the next page.
2. I try to be conscientious about my screen time. If I find myself meandering on the Internet, I get up and walk away to find a more constructive use of my time. I try to treat the Internet like a tool—I use it for a purpose, identify my goal, and once accomplished, walk away.
3. I regularly feed my brain a diet of good reading—not digital reading, but book-in-hand reading. I’ve read of a number of studies that say that old fashioned physical book reading is superior to screen reading. Students that have used physical textbooks tend to perform better on examinations than those who use e-books.
4. I’ve taken up a regimen of deep reading to counteract the impact of Internet usage. If you want to increase muscle strength in your arms, you have to pick up heavy weights and start pounding out the reps. The same principle applies to serious reading. I’ve taken Francis Turretin’s Institutes, and I’ll read one question at a time. I read and highlight the text and also make marginal notes. I also have a journal where I make detailed notes about what I’ve read—I also will look up the biblical texts referenced as well as double-check Turretin’s Latin original. I don’t type these notes—I write them out by hand. Again, there have been studies that prove that students who take hand written notes perform better on exams than those who type their notes. This deep-reading exercise usually takes me 15-20 minutes a day.

As Christians, we’re a people committed to the book of books, the Bible. Ensure that you don’t unintentionally endanger your ability to soak in God’s word. Use the world around you critically. Ask questions. And don’t ever assume that technology only has benefits—there are always pros and cons. Be aware of both.