Entertainment

In a relatively short period of time, smartphones have grown to a near-ubiquitous status. With each passing new release, smartphones are becoming more powerful and all-encompassing. Understandably, this is leading to increased user adoption and a surge in daily screen time.

Here are some highlights (2024 Statistics):

• On average, Americans spend 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phones each day.
• People check their phones an average of 58 times each day. And almost 52% of phone checks occur during work hours.
• Worldwide statistics show that the top 5 nations in cell phone use were the Philippines, Brazil, South Africa, Thailand, and Ghana, averaging just over 5 hours a day on their smartphones.
• Around 1 in 3 (36%) Americans believe they spend too much time on their smartphones each day.

There is a correlation between generations and phone screen time per day:

Gen Z - 6 hours and 5 minutes, with 56% feeling addicted Millennials - 4 hours and 36 minutes, with 48% feeling addicted Gen X - 4 hours and 9 minutes, with 44% feeling addicted Baby Boomers - 3 hours and 31 minutes, with 29% feeling addicted

One study found that, on average, children get their first phone at age 12. That means that the average American is expected to spend approximately 12 years of their life looking at their phone.

More than half of Americans believe they are too dependent on their phones (52%). As many as 3 in 5 (59%) use their phones in the bathroom, while 27% will text when at stoplights.

By 2027, there are expected to be 7.69 billion smartphone subscriptions.

If two of the 20th century’s iconic technologies, the automobile and the television, initiated the rise of American aloneness, then screens continue to fuel and even accelerated, our national anti-social streak. Countless books, articles, and cable-news segments have warned Americans that smartphones can negatively affect mental health and may be especially harmful to adolescents. But the fretful coverage is, if anything, restrained given how greatly these devices have changed our conscious experience.

The typical person is awake for about 900 minutes a day. American kids and teenagers spend, on average, about 270 minutes on weekdays and 380 minutes on weekends gazing into their screens, according to the Digital Parenthood Initiative. By this account, screens occupy more than 30 percent of their waking life.

Internal documents from Tik Tok executives and employees reveal that the social media platform is driven to capture the attention of users. Here were some of their own internal statements:

• An internal presentation on the 2021 strategy for TikTok describes the company as being in an “arms race for attention.”
• “It’s better to have young people as an early adopter, especially the teenagers in the U.S. Why? They’ve got a lot of time.”
• “Teenagers in the U.S. are a golden audience.
• “The product in itself has baked into it compulsive use.”
• “The reason kids watch TikTok is because the algorithm is really good... But I think we need to be cognizant of what it might mean for other opportunities. And when I say other opportunities, I literally mean sleep, and eating, and moving around the room, and looking at somebody in the eyes.”
• As an internal guide on push notifications explained, a key goal of TikTok’s push notifications is to “Activate & Engage users with the right content at the right time, to encourage users to open the App more and stay longer.”
• In a chat message a TikTok employee confirmed that the company’s “goal is not to reduce the time spent” on the TikTok app, but rather to ultimately “contribute to DAU [daily active users] and retention” of users.

Boredom is a universally dreaded feeling. Being bored means wanting to be engaged when you can’t. Boredom is a different experience from the idleness of downtime or relaxation. Being bored means wanting to be engaged when you can’t, which is an uncomfortable feeling.

In one famous experiment, people were asked to sit quietly for 15 minutes in a room with nothing but their own thoughts. They also had the option to hit a button and give themselves an electric shock.

Getting physically shocked is unpleasant, but many people preferred it to the emotional discomfort of boredom. Out of 42 participants, nearly half opted to press the button at least once, even though they had experienced the shock earlier in the study and reported they would pay money to avoid experiencing it again.

Social psychologist Erin Westgate said, “Boredom is sort of an emotional dashboard light that goes off saying, like, ‘Hey, you’re not on track. It is this signal that whatever it is we’re doing either isn’t meaningful to us, or we’re not able to successfully engage with this.”

Boredom plays a valuable role in how people set and achieve goals. It acts as a catalyst by bringing together different parts of our brain — social, cognitive, emotional, or experiential memory. So, when we’re firing on all neurons, we’re at our most imaginative and making connections we otherwise never would have.

So go be bored, and encourage your kids to be bored too. Maybe you’ll find a new and creative “Eureka!” moment in your life, or imagine a great big new future for yourself or the world. Boredom is a worthwhile adventure.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Boredom can play a valuable role in how you set and achieve goals. Use it to motive you to action! 1) Meditation; Prayer - Don’t reach for your smartphone or the streaming device the next time you are forced to wait. Instead, use this time to set your mind on God: Read the Word, pray, meditate on God as revealed in nature. Destress yourself by centering your thoughts on God. 2) Help; Loving others; Service - You can also shift your focus toward others and their needs. Who can you help today?

In a New York Times piece “Gen Z Has Regrets,” Jonathan Haidt and co-writer Will Johnson ask if young people wish social media had never existed. Between a third and a half say they do!

Nearly all American teenagers use social media regularly, and they spend an average of nearly five hours a day just on these platforms. 52 percent say social media has benefited their lives, and 29 percent say it has hurt them personally. We have found this pattern…in a wide array of surveys.

We’re not just talking about sad feelings from FOMO or social comparison. We’re talking about a range of documented risks that affect heavy users, including sleep deprivation, body image distortion, depression, anxiety, exposure to content promoting suicide and eating disorders, sexual predation and sextortion, and “problematic use,” which is the term used to describe compulsive overuse that interferes with success in other areas of life.

If any other consumer product was causing serious harm to more than one out of every 10 of its young users, there would be a tidal wave of state and federal legislation to ban or regulate it. In 2020 Sarah Condon said, “We are in the 1920s of cigarettes when it comes to social media.” In 2024, the prognosis seems clear!

Gen Z does not heavily regret the basic communication, storytelling, and information-seeking functions of the internet. If smartphones merely let people text each other, watch movies and search for helpful information, or interesting videos (without algorithms intended to hook users), there would be far less regret and resentment.

Respondents wished these products had never been invented:

Instagram (34 percent)

Facebook (37 percent)

Snapchat (43 percent)

TikTok (47 percent)

X/Twitter (50 percent)

Pollution. When you hear that word what do you think of? Perhaps dangerous gases are being emitted into our atmosphere. Garbage floating around the ocean. Sick animals due to toxic food. But there's another pollutant lurking in our society. An invisible one that we encounter every single day. Information. It's in our phones, televisions, text chains, and email threads. It's packed into devices we wear on our wrists and in the checkout lines at the grocery store.

In our modern society, escaping the barrage of information is impossible. But are we equipped to handle it? In a 2024 letter published in Nature Human Behavior, scientists argued that we should treat this information overload like environmental pollution. It may not affect our drinking water, but it affects our brains at every turn.

The brain is the most complex organ in the body. But the brain can only process a certain amount of information. When we exceed that peak level, it can almost feel like our brain is filled to the brink and totally frozen, incapable of performing its most basic duties that help us get through our days.

When we reach that point of paralysis, we can't process and act on the information we consume. If this is feeling familiar, you're not alone. According to the Real Time Statistics Project, as of January 2023, there were nearly 2 billion websites on the internet. 175 million tweets were sent every day, and 30 billion pieces of content were shared monthly on Facebook. How was it possible to not get distracted by all that information?

Of course, technology is useful. We can look up healthy recipes or determine if a headache is just a headache or something more problematic. But because of modern technology, we're all slaves to the amount of information we can consume. The American Psychological Association defines information overload as the state when the intensity of information exceeds an individual's processing capacity, leading to anxiety, poor decision-making, and other undesirable consequences.

In today’s digital age, entertainment is always at our fingertips. Whether it’s the endless scroll on TikTok or jumping from one YouTube video to another, the way we consume media has drastically changed in recent years. But is this content stream of entertainment really entertaining us? A new study finds that scrolling through videos online to cure your boredom can actually make you even more bored!

Researchers from the University of Toronto delved into the curious phenomenon where our attempts to avoid boredom by rapidly swiping through digital content might actually be making things worse. The findings reveal a counterintuitive outcome: the very behavior meant to stave off boredom — quickly moving through entertaining videos — ends up intensifying it.

Digital platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Netflix have revolutionized how we consume media. With just a swipe or a click, we can skip over content that doesn’t immediately capture our interest. This behavior, known as “digital switching,” is when users switch between different videos or fast-forward through parts of a video in search of something more stimulating. At first glance, this seems like an efficient way to maximize enjoyment and avoid dull moments. However, research suggests that this behavior might be doing the opposite of what we intend.

You might wonder why switching between content would make you more bored. After all, if you’re skipping the “boring” parts, shouldn’t that make the overall experience better?

When you engage deeply with a video, your attention is focused, and you’re more likely to find the content meaningful. However, when you constantly switch, your attention is fragmented. This fragmented attention doesn’t allow you to become fully absorbed in what you’re watching, leading to a feedback loop where you’re constantly seeking something better but never fully satisfied and therefore more bored.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Not only does endlessly swiping from one video to another lead to wasting time and boredom, it can also open the door to the temptation to view inappropriate content for an emotional high.

Googly eyes have been appearing on sculptures around the central Oregon city of Bend, delighting many residents and sparking a viral sensation covered widely by news outlets. On social media, the city shared photos of googly eyes on installations in the middle of roundabouts that make up its so-called “Roundabout Art Route.” One photo shows googly eyes placed on a sculpture of two deer, while another shows them attached to a sphere.

A Facebook post received hundreds of comments, with many users saying, “We love the googly eyes. This town is getting to be so stuffy. Let’s have fun!”

Now, after months of speculation, the mystery of the googly eyes has finally been solved. Jeff Keith is the founder of the nonprofit Guardian Group that combats human trafficking. But in his free time Keith apparently also battles boredom, because he claimed responsibility for placing googly eyes on public art sculptures around the city of Bend, Oregon.

Keith, who used duct tape to attach the googly eyes, admitted, “It’s a (way) for me to cope with some pretty heavy stuff," Keith said to an AP reporter. He noted the "unimaginable trauma" that many of the trafficking victims he's worked with have experienced.

The city of Bend shared photos of the googly-eye-decorated art, noting that adhesives can damage the art. According to city officials, eight sculptures were affected, and it cost $1,500 to remove all the googly eyes.

Keith said he didn’t anticipate the attention and offered to pay for any damages. After he came forward, a spokesperson for the city said its post had been misunderstood, and that the intention was to raise awareness about the damage adhesives can do to public art.

Keith hopes his pranks bring humor to people's lives. “I think the biggest thing is, for me, just to get a laugh,” he said. “When I come up on these roundabouts and I see families laughing, like hysterically laughing at these, it makes for a good time.”

Editor’s Note: You can see an example of the googly eyes here

Possible Preaching Angle:

While it is never a good idea to deface public art or buildings, we can appreciate the attempt to bring humor into people’s lives. As Proverbs says, “a cheerful heart is good medicine” (Prov. 17:22).

A man from Scotland noticed positive changes in his lifestyle after he decided to stop watching television in the evening. 41-year-old Stephen Clarke said, “Now I spend my time creating the reality I want rather than numbing myself from the one I have.”

Mr. Clarke grew up watching television at home as it seemed like a normal thing for him to do. After completing work, he would watch movies or DVDs. Since he already followed a healthy lifestyle, he didn’t experience any glaring negative effects from watching television, but it was the “not-so-obvious side effects” that he eventually became aware of.

Mr. Clarke noticed, “I could feel the energy I was taking on board from the movies and shows I was watching. The drama, the violence, the stress, not to mention the blue light from screens late at night activating and heightening my nervous system and exaggerating all of this.”

Describing television as a “hypnosis machine,” Mr. Clarke said the blue light along with the flashing images that constantly change at a fast pace makes the narrative a part of your subconscious. “The news is constantly giving us reason to be scared, why we’re different from one another, and why we all need to shield and protect ourselves.”

He also felt that while watching television, he wasn’t processing his own thoughts, but rather numbing them, his emotions, and his energy. Instead of working through them, he began blurring his clarity and vision for life. “I experienced big transitions in my life, and I was numbing the feelings of that with screens in the evening, rather than doing what I should have been doing.”

Knowing this, he was keen on making a change.

The father of three began to learn new things such as wood carving, playing a musical instrument, and more. Additionally, he was able to spend more time reading books, cooking, and going on adventures.

He said, “Every month that passes without constant TV exposure gives me more clarity on what I’m doing and how I choose to live my life. My relationships are transforming as well as my working life.”

Mr. Clarke hasn’t cut television out of his life completely, but when he does watch it, he tries to bring value to what he is watching.

Parents are bombarded with a dizzying list of orders when it comes to screen time and young children: No screens for babies under 18 months. Limit screens to one hour for children under 5. Only “high-quality” programming. No fast-paced apps. Don’t use screens to calm a fussy child. “Co-view” with your kid to interact while watching.

The stakes are high. Every few months it seems, a distressing study comes out linking screen time with a growing list of concerns for young children: Obesity. Behavioral problems. Sleep issues. Speech and developmental delays.

Maya Valree, the mother of a three-year-old girl in Los Angeles, understands the risks and constantly worries about them. But limiting her daughter’s screen time to one hour feels impossible as she juggles life as a working parent, she said.

Over the last few years, her child’s screen time has ranged up to two to three hours a day, more than double the limit recommended by pediatricians. Valree puts on educational programming whenever possible, but it doesn’t capture her child’s attention as well as her favorites, Meekah and The Powerpuff Girls.

“Screen time is in the top three or five things to feel guilty about as a mom,” she said. “I’ve used it to pacify my daughter while cooking or working or catching up on anything personal or professional.”

Too much screen time harms children, experts agree. So why do parents ignore them? Parents need to have some type of distraction for their kids, and “screens tend to be the easiest option, the lowest hanging fruit,” said pediatrician Whitney Casares. “I hear more people saying, ‘I know screen time is bad, I wish we had less of it in our family, but I feel helpless to change it.’”

The most recent data available comes from a national survey of nearly 1,500 families with children ages eight and younger conducted in 2020. The survey found that few families were not coming anywhere close to pediatricians’ recommended limits.

• Children under two watch an average of 49 minutes of digital media a day, while the guidelines recommend avoiding screens for children under two.

• Children ages two to four watch an average of two-and-a-half hours a day, more than twice the limit recommended.

• Children five to eight watch just over three hours a day. The American Academy of Pediatricians does not provide strict time limits for school-age children but advises parents to make sure screen time does not displace other activities.

Here's the conclusion from a study published in the journal Aggressive Behavior: Watching TV programs about mean people can make you a mean person. The study focused on 250 college women who viewed clips depicting different forms of aggression, from violent fighting to gossiping and excluding others.

But here's the scary part to the study:

Aggressive reactions are more automatic and less conscious than most people assume. ... That means nobody deliberately decides to imitate a Real Housewife; the connection is more subtle and unintentional. … One of the authors points out that even TV shows depicting friends putting each other down in the name of a joke has its effects, too.

Watching a clip of two girls fighting over a boyfriend causes the same kind of reaction that watching a murderous scene would. This leads to a higher chance of engaging in aggressive behavior because the stimuli “primes” your brain for aggression.

So, anyone know of a show where everyone treats each other respectfully, don’t make jokes at someone’s expense, and no one secretly sabotages anyone?

A study of YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook revealed that American Teens—by a large margin—use YouTube (71%) more than TikTok (58%). But they're more likely to scroll through the TikTok app "almost constantly," according to Pew Research Center polling.

The stat points to how addictive and unhealthy TikTok's endless feed of videos can be for teens.

A study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that new TikTok accounts were shown self-harm and eating disorder content within minutes of scrolling.

• Suicide-related videos popped up within 2.6 minutes.
• Eating disorder content popped up in 8 minutes.

Because of this, there's suddenly a roaring national debate over fears about teens' privacy, their data security—and all the misinformation going straight to their phones. Citing national security concerns, Congress is pushing to force the platform's Chinese parent company to sell TikTok or face a ban.

Psychologist Jean Twenge says. "It's of course possible that people will replace TikTok time with YouTube time or Instagram time. However, TikTok's algorithm is particularly effective at getting you to spend more time on it."

How's your fantasy team shaping up? A recent Statista article takes stock of the United States' growing fantasy sports phenomenon. ESPN, DraftKings, and Yahoo, have spearheaded the growth of the online market, with the overall number of fantasy sports platforms increasing to 651 in 2023.

Between 2015 and 2022, the number of fantasy sports players in the US grew steadily. As of 2022, the total number of US fantasy sports players reached 50.4 million who spent $9.48 billion US dollars.

All that money goes to a booming fantasy industry—filled with scouting reports, insider magazines, draft conventions, and even entire cable channels dedicated to the pastime. Think for a moment of the sheer magnitude of this collected time, energy, research, and money. Cumulatively, there are entire human lifetimes—incalculable hours and moments—and vast fortunes going toward a particularly abstract form of entertainment.

Stats like these are a powerful reminder that our lives are supposed to be about more than dreaming about imaginary draft picks. What could we do if we directed all that energy in a more productive direction? What does it say about our sense of collective stewardship? What does our entertainment say about our hearts?

(Editor’s Note: Stats are the most current available as of 10/24)

New York Times Columnist Ezra Klein notes his theory why the Internet feels “so crummy” these days. It puts us into “shame closets.” He explains:

A shame closet is that spot in your home where you cram the stuff that has nowhere else to go… It can be a garage or a room or a chest of drawers… as the shame closet grows, the task of excavation or organization becomes too daunting to contemplate.

The shame closet era of the internet had a beginning. It was 20 years ago that Google unveiled Gmail… Everyone wanted in. But you had to be invited. I remember jockeying for one of those early invites...I felt lucky. I felt chosen.

A few months ago, I euthanized that Gmail account. I have more than a million unread messages in my inbox. Most of what’s there is junk. But not all of it… According to iCloud, I have more than 23,000 photos and almost 2,000 videos resting somewhere on Apple’s servers. I have tens of thousands of songs liked somewhere on Spotify. How many conversations do I have stored in Messages, in WhatsApp, in Signal, in Twitter and Instagram and Facebook DMs? There is so much I loved in those archives... But I can’t find what matters in the morass. I’ve given up on trying.

The social networks made it easy for anyone we’ve ever met, and plenty of people we never met, to friend and follow us. We could communicate with them all at once without communing with them individually at all. Or so we were told. The idea that we could have so much community with so little effort was an illusion. We are digitally connected to more people than ever and terribly lonely nevertheless. Closeness requires time, and time has not fallen in cost or risen in quantity.

A report released by the New York City public school district alleges that school employees misused funds intended for homeless students' enrichment activities, including trips to Disney World, New Orleans, and other destinations. Six employees took their children or grandchildren on these trips, which were funded by grants specifically designated for homeless students.

Linda Wilson was identified as the key figure in this scheme. Wilson served the regional manager responsible for assisting students in temporary housing in Queens. The report alleges that Wilson not only took her own children on trips sponsored by grants for homeless students but also encouraged her subordinates to do the same. She allegedly told staff, “What happens here stays with us.”

To cover up the misuse of funds, Wilson forged permission slips using students' names and worked with an outside contractor to book the trips, flying under the radar of the less stringent oversight of community-based organizations. Had she booked directly through the city's Department of Education (DOE), she would’ve likely been caught sooner.

The investigation into this misconduct was initiated in May 2019 following a whistleblower complaint and concluded in January 2023. The report recommends the termination of Wilson and the five employees involved, and that the DOE seek reimbursement for all misappropriated funds. Both the DOE and the NYC Conflicts of Interest Board have accepted the report's findings and initiated actions accordingly.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God is deeply concerned with the welfare of the poor and oppressed. When those in positions of power misuse funds intended for the vulnerable, it is a grave injustice that God sees and will hold them accountable.

As the village speeches dragged on, eyes drifted to screens. Teenagers scrolled Instagram. One man texted his girlfriend. And men crowded around a phone streaming a soccer match. Just about anywhere, a scene like this would be mundane. But this was happening in a remote Indigenous village in one of the most isolated places of the planet.

The Marubo people have long lived in communal huts scattered hundreds of miles along the Ituí River deep in the Amazon rainforest. They speak their own language, hunt, fish, and trap spider monkeys to make soup or keep as pets.

They have preserved this way of life for hundreds of years through isolation—some villages can take a week to reach. But since September (of 2023), the Marubo have had high-speed internet thanks to Elon Musk.

The 2,000-member tribe is one of hundreds across Brazil that are suddenly logging on with Starlink, the satellite-internet service from Space X. Since its entry into Brazil in 2022, Starlink has swept across the world’s largest rainforest, bringing the web to one of the last offline places on Earth. The results have been less than utopian:

“When it arrived, everyone was happy,” said 73-year-old Tsainama Marubo sitting on the dirt floor of her village’s maloca, a 50-foot-tall hut where they sleep, cook, and eat together. The internet brought clear benefits, like video chats with faraway loved ones and calls for help in emergencies. “But now, things have gotten worse,” she said. […] “Young people have gotten lazy because of the internet.”

After only nine months with Starlink, the Marubo are already grappling with the same challenges that have racked American households for years: teenagers glued to phones; group chats full of gossip; addictive social networks; online strangers; violent video games; scams; misinformation; and minors watching pornography.

Leaders realized they needed limits. The internet would be switched on for only two hours in the morning, five hours in the evening, and all day Sunday.

Decades ago, the most respected Marubo shaman had visions of a hand-held device that could connect with the entire world. “It would be for the good of the people,” he said. “But in the end, it wouldn’t be.” “In the end,” he added, “there would be war.”

His son sat on the log across from him, listening. “I think the internet will bring us much more benefit than harm,” he said, “at least for now.” Regardless, he added, going back was no longer an option. “The leaders have been clear,” he said. “We can’t live without the internet.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Two things here stand out: The first, that exposing a remote tribe to this modern tool created many of the same problems experienced within modernity: Use of the internet changes the user. Secondly, the categorization of the internet as simultaneously harmful and essential is perhaps unsurprising, but it’s fascinating that putting limitations on use of the internet seems to be the best way to deal with this ambiguity.

An article on Vice starts with an intriguing question:

You know the feeling. A sort of internal itch … Wouldn't it be nice to see what my friends are up to? But, no, you're working. You need to finish your article or file a report or get to your appointment on time. But you can just check Facebook quickly, can't you? And then you're five minutes late to your appointment, again.

Is Facebook really addictive? Well, that all depends, but based on this study from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, it's sure hard to resist that urge to go and look at Facebook. "Surprisingly" the article concluded, "the data suggests that the checking of social media accounts ranks higher than having a smoke or a drink as a 'self-controlled failure.'"

While this conclusion may seem surprising, it really isn't. Part of why people give in to compulsions is because they determine that the consequences aren't great enough for them to resist. Behaviors like smoking and drinking have a much higher "cost" than quickly checking a social media account.

Yet, spending excessive time on Facebook does cost something. It costs time, and when people check Facebook twenty times per day, that time adds up. Maybe it’s time to start studying the real costs associated with social media addiction.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Since Facebook use is beginning to decline among young people, for this illustration you could include or substitute other popular social media sites such as: Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, WeChat, Messenger, or Telegram. You can find a list of the top 35 social media platforms for 2024 here.

In his book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing An Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt tells the story of what happened to Gen Z (born 1995). They became “the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable and . . . unsuitable for children and adolescents.”

In 2011, 23% of teens had a smartphone. By 2016, 79% of teens owned a smartphone, as did 28% of children eight to 12. Soon teens were reporting they spent an average of almost seven hours a day on screens. “One out of every four teens said that they were online ‘almost constantly,’” Mr. Haidt writes.

Girls moved their social lives onto social media. Boys burrowed into immersive video games, Reddit, YouTube, and pornography.

Suddenly children “spent far less time playing with, talking to, touching, or even making eye contact with their friends and families.” They withdrew from “embodied social behaviors” essential for successful human development. It left them not noticing the world.

Signs of a mental-health crisis quickly emerged. Rates of mental illness among the young went up dramatically in many Western countries between 2010 and 2015. Between 2010 and 2024 major depression among teens went up 145% among girls, 161% among boys. There was a rise in disorders related to anxiety as well. Mr. Haidt looked at changes that weren’t self-reported—studies charting emergency psychiatric care and admissions. They too were up. “The rate of self-harm for . . . young adolescent girls nearly tripled from 2010 to 2020.”

“It’s hijacking my brain.” Say young people addicted to social media and who are desperate for help. Many people have compared the addictive nature of social media to cigarettes. Checking your likes, they say, is the new smoke break. More than 75% of teens check their phone hourly, and half say they feel like they’re addicted to their devices.

Here are some of the things they’ve said:

“TikTok has me in a chokehold.”

“I would 1,000% say I am addicted.”

“I feel completely aware that it is hijacking my brain, but I can’t put it down. This leaves me feeling ashamed.”

Maybe you’ve had similar feelings yourself, no matter your age. Although it’s true social technologies offer some benefits, many people feel uncomfortable with how much time they spend online and often wonder if they’re addicted.

One approach is to view your media consumption as a diet. Just as there are many ways to have a healthy diet, there are also a variety of ways to develop healthy and personalized social media habits.

The researchers offered practical steps that you can take right now to reduce your dependence on social media. This includes turning off notifications, removing apps that you find harmful, curating your social media feed by unfollowing certain accounts, setting your phone to grayscale to reduce the appeal, and reserving phone-free time.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In addition to the practical steps listed above, the believer should add prayer (Heb. 4:14-16; Jam. 1:5), time in the Word (especially memorizing God’s promises for overcoming destructive habits, Ps. 119:11), and finding an accountability partner (Prov. 27:17).

It had cluttered up Jack Harris's dining table for almost eight years. Nevertheless, the 86-year-old was determined to finish his five-foot long, 5,000-piece jigsaw. And when he thought the painstaking process was complete, he stood back to admire his work, only to find one piece was missing. Mr. Harris has searched his home for the missing piece but his family fears one of their two dogs has swallowed it.

They have even asked the puzzle's manufacturer if they could provide a spare, but Mr. Harris has taken so long to complete the jigsaw that Falcon Games has stopped making it.

His daughter-in-law, Eve Harris, who gave him the jigsaw as a Christmas present, said she thought it would be a challenge for the retired businessman. Mr. Harris is given a new jigsaw every year, and usually finishes them by spring. But this puzzle was to prove different.

He said he started the jigsaw, which shows the 19th century oil painting The Return of The Prodigal Son by James Tissot, as usual. But eight years later he was still struggling to finish it.

Eve said,

We got him this one as a bit of a joke really, because he always boasted he could get them done so quickly, he's a bit of a whiz with them. It was marvelous to see it finally completed. But when we saw there was a piece missing from the middle, we just couldn't believe it. He was just so disappointed when he found one bit was missing. It's sad really because now it will never be completed.

Possible Preaching Angles:

There are at least three possible ways to use this illustration: 1) Maybe as a wince-inducing look at disappointment in life. 2) Maybe the whole "building a life yet there's a God-shaped hole" sort of thing. 3) Maybe even as a metaphor for Body life (every part is important).