When I was a little girl, my dad, an immigrant from Czechia, bought international phone cards to call my grandma. As Voice over IP technology improved, we switched from phone to Skype and, later, to FaceTime video calls to stay in touch.
Most days now, my dad washes the dishes with my grandma propped up on the kitchen counter via FaceTime. They discuss family news and the latest headlines in Czechia.
My Saturdays bear many similarities to my dad’s hours at the kitchen sink with Grandma. The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. My fiancé and I are also long-distance, and we rely on WhatsApp video calls, Uber Eats deliveries, and Spotify playlists as our digital love language.
Sebastián and I call on WhatsApp and add his mom to the video call. Laughter imported from Bogotá, Colombia, comes through instantly as his mom’s bright smile fills the screen. Salsa music from passing traffic wafts its way into my apartment from over 2,000 miles away.
After we hang up, silence hangs in my room, quiet whiplash from the laughter and new, real memories of this virtual world travel.
Fascinating research is emerging about the ways digital technology shapes long-distance romantic relationships in particular, but remote communication may be important to any long-distance relationship. Those who have family and friends abroad often rely on technology that allows them to maintain and strengthen relationships virtually.
For Christians who know the temptations of technology, what do we do when our loved ones are far away and we can’t just unplug? What is the Christian response to using digital technology when we worship a God who promises to meet us not just intellectually but also physically through bread and wine? How can we give thanks for technologies that keep us connected while also admitting their pitfalls?
As Christians everywhere wrestle with these questions, many are finding that long-distance relationships mediated through technology are not sustainable unless supplemented by meaningful time together in person.
Kate Millar, 25-year-old poet and writer from Edinburgh, Scotland, spent three years in New York City writing poetry and working for Poets House. During most of her time in the US, her core relationships were mediated through FaceTime calls and shared Spotify playlists.
While in the US, Millar didn’t have a robust social network and had to rely on her mom and best friends, who lived 3,000 miles away in Scotland. For the first few months, Millar convinced herself it was possible to live two lives—one as a Scottish friend and daughter and another as a writer and New Yorker.
Millar spent up to three hours of her day in a virtual liminal space where she wasn’t really present in her Brooklyn apartment, instead using her imagination and a phone call to transport herself home. Digital technology, Millar found, implied she could always live elsewhere, untethered by physical limitations.
“Technology makes me want to live beyond my limits,” she said. “It promises limitlessness, and in some ways it gives it to us. We shouldn’t shun it for the ways that we can be expanded by it, deepened by it, and show each other love by it. But if it swells up to be more than that, if it’s our only mediator for relationships, that’s when it gets a little bit sketchy.”
The ability to be disembodied attracted Millar.
“Long-distance relationships make you disconnected from your body,” Millar said. “I was totally down for that. When I first moved to New York, I thought, I’m not a body. I’m just vapor. But we are embodied.”
Technology and a church tradition that emphasized an intellectual understanding of God hindered Millar’s ability to delve into the messy world of embodiment as a finite being.
“I didn’t value the Eucharist because I thought what my body can faintly taste is nothing compared to what my mind can grasp,” Millar said. “But my mind can barely grasp anything. Sometimes my body knows things before my mind does.”
Millar found that the lack of “physical witness” takes a toll on relationships. To limit her technology use, she considered getting the Brick, a palm-sized physical device that works with a corresponding app to restrict access to the most addictive parts of a smartphone. The only way to regain access is to tap the phone against the device.
Another option Millar considered was the Light Phone, a small “dumbphone” designed to reduce digital distraction by eliminating features like email, social media, and web browsing. But the current iteration of the Light Phone does not enable video calling.
“I didn’t have the luxury of making those technological choices because I would have amputated myself from really important relationships,” Millar said.
Instead, Millar decided to compare her virtual world of long-distance relationships with the French concept of billet-doux, or artifacts of love exchanged between lovers, such as pressed flowers or postcards. Millar believes there are many billet-douxonline that can convey care and encouragement in relationships even beyond those of romantic partners.
Sending your friend a meme, a new song, or a photo of something funny you see on your walk are all examples of technological billet-doux.
Millar thinks it’s unfair to vilify digital technology because, in her mind, for many people who are far from home, reliance on it is a necessity, not a choice.
Many digital technologies were a blessing and provision for her in a time of great loneliness while she was away from home. She wonders how healthy or useful it is to theorize about omitting tech altogether. Many issues of conviction and discernment are not black-and-white when it comes to how we live our daily lives as Christians.
“Because this is the way it is,” Millar said, “let’s live in it and make the most of it. Be aware of the shortcomings and aware of the unexpected blessing.”
Marko Vuletic, senior international relations major at Wheaton College, uses digital technology to sustain his long-distance relationship with his Canadian fiancée.
“Technology is not inherently evil,” Vuletic said. “Like pretty much any invention or new thing, it can be wielded and used for good.”
From virtual Netflix dates to video calls to show his fiancée the beautiful fall leaves on campus, digital technology helps mediate connection when the two can’t be together.
Nevertheless, Vuletic is still wary of allowing his online interactions to permeate his physical life. During his Sunday Sabbath he strives to opt out of tech use, instead writing poetry or going on a walk. Without a doubt, he said, he infinitely prefers time in person with his fiancée. However, he feels that navigating complex arguments remotely has helped the couple mature much faster.
“I feel like now, after three and a half years, the way we talk and argue is like a married couple,” Vuletic said.
But Vuletic doesn’t want connecting with his fiancée online to be an excuse for unchecked screen time. He uses Revelation 20:12 as the trellis for his digital-technology framework. “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened.”
“I do not want to stand before God and have him say, ‘So you spent x amount of thousands of hours scrolling?’ What am I going to say? ‘Yeah, and I’m proud of that’? I’m going to be filled with regret.”
Vuletic worries for younger generations, considering his age group part of the “transitional” group when it comes to tech use.
“We can remember scraping our knees and playing outside,” he said, “not stuck inside on a screen.”
Thinking ahead, he and his fiancée have already decided they want to limit tech use as much as possible for their future kids, potentially fasting from technology on Saturdays and Sundays.
Vuletic tries not to let anxiety about the dangers of technology consume him, instead trusting in the Lord.
“God has given me life at this point of time, 2025,” he said. “How can I faithfully follow what Scripture tells me about not being of the world and being set apart, and still somehow exist in the world?”
To practice living in this tension, when Millar moved back to Scotland, she took a job at a bakery that was a 20-minute drive from her home but quickly decided to switch to a bakery that’s a 45-minute walk away. She treasures the time to be silent and fully present as she walks to work. Now she serves bread and baked goods to her neighbors.
“My offline life [requires me] to accept the reality I’m in rather than trying to strain toward some other imaginary reality I feel I could work toward,” Millar said.
She learned about the value of embodied faith and life after her season in New York City where she burned out from trying to live in two countries at the same time.
“That’s the myth technology promised me,” Millar said. “I was promised to be able to live in Scotland at the same time as living in New York.”
Millar has learned to focus on her in-person relationships and to put less pressure and fewer expectations on her long-distance friendships.
“I’ve removed myself of that burden to keep something feeling as if it’s in person,” she said. “I’ve removed technology from that burden and the other person from that burden. We don’t have to replicate an in-person relationship over the phone.”
Millar admitted it’s hard to practice what she preaches. A tangible way of living out faith communally is “showing up to church on Sundays and praying with my parents,” she said. While she’s not yet rooted in community the way she’d like to be once she’s more settled in Scotland, it’s something she’s working toward.
Daniel and Kerri Soriano, a young married couple from Aurora, the second-most-populous city in Illinois, believe living multigenerationally with Daniel’s parents, who are Mexican immigrants, helps them withstand the temptation to overly rely on technology to facilitate relationships.
“My superpower in thinking about this is I have parents [and grandparents] that grew up in poverty,” Daniel said.
Daniel remembers growing up in Aurora, a city that is over 40 percent Hispanic and Latino, and visiting his neighbors whose homes were full of the latest video game consoles and Apple products.
“They were a couple years ahead, when it came to technology, than my household,” he said.
There was an economic difference between the families, but also his parents just didn’t have digital technology as “part of their wiring,” Daniel said. He believes living multigenerationally is a great antidote to the technological rat race.
“Being connected perpetually to the generation before us is a way to say we’re not in a rush to keep up with other people or families on the block. In fact, we’re fine looking weird to other people,” he said.
While the incessant need to be like everyone else drove him to idolize digital technology when he was a teenager, Daniel is now wary of its promises. His dad communicates with extended family in Mexico and Indiana via WhatsApp, and since Daniel and his father live together, Daniel can watch him model his phone use in real time.
Kerri Soriano appreciates her father-in-law’s effortless disconnect from the addictive cycles many are prone to.
“When Daniel is going through depression, [his dad] asks if Daniel has gone outside today, touched a tree, or looked up at the clouds,” Kerri said. “There’s something so childlike and innocent and pure about him.”
When the couple discusses buying a new phone, Daniel’s dad is quick to chip in: “Why? Does it not work?”
Daniel considers his father’s naiveté about technology distinctly grounding. He believes that, for those who come from a different generation or don’t have as many privileges as many Americans do, the addiction to digital technology is puzzling.
“A lot of the questions we struggle with as a society are confusing for them,” he said.
Daniel’s dad doesn’t criticize technology altogether—he enjoys listening to music that brings him joy, his audio Bible, or recorded prayers. He appreciates digital technology’s capacity to keep him connected to loved ones who live far away.
“The way he interacts with technology is super admirable,” Kerri said.
Kerri, an expecting mother, often feels overwhelmed by the plethora of podcasts, YouTube videos, and online mom groups offering parenting advice. She enjoys asking her parents-in-law what they did as first-time parents without many of the technologies that appear so integral to raising children in 2025.
“They have really simple answers,” she said. “Sometimes really complex thoughts and questions have very simple answers.”
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