Family Friday: Media, Sloth, and Selfishness

We know that media addiction is real, but do we know the root sin problems that cause the addiction and the sin problems that the addiction creates?

The main sin problem that causes media addiction is sloth, and the sin problem that media addiction causes is selfishness.

Sloth may be better explained with its medieval word, acedia, which is spiritual or mental laziness and apathy. We may find it easier to work out at the gym than focus on the work at hand. Acedia takes away our drive to more forward; acedia is happy just to maintain the status quo. After our required work is done for the day, we find it easier to crash in front of the screen than mentally focus on spiritual things or even other people. Connecting to the internet, whether it be a film, social media, or blogs (even good ones!), makes is easy to expend no spiritual and mental effort, but, at the same time, not be bored. Because it fills an emptiness (created by acedia) and gives short-term rewards, it becomes an addiction.

Media addiction breeds selfishness in three different ways. The first is narcissism. You may notice someone else becoming more selfish when they are using media, especially if they live with you, but you may not have noticed yourself becoming self-centered. Media is the perfect place to set up a perfect self-centered world. You can turn off everyone around you and create your own interesting world with all the things you like to read and watch. You don’t have do any physical, mental, or spiritual work, and you don’t have to interact with real people. The problem is of course, that narcissism leads to loneliness, which leads to depression. As Kathy Koch says in her talk about media, we shouldn’t wonder why no one is paying attention to us when we’re not paying any attention to them.

The second way media breeds selfishness is distraction. Besides killing our attention spans, media is constantly distracting us from the real things in life. To turn our hearts fully toward God and our neighbor, we must be able to focus our attention on others, which is really hard to do since we naturally focus on ourselves. The constant distraction shuts out the spiritual realm from our lives and our ability to recognize and care for the needs of others.

Lastly, a media addiction makes us shallow. Think about the media you have consumed in the last 24 hours. How much of it was important? How much of it did you need to know? How much of it made you more like Christ? How much of what you read in the last 24 hours was written in the last 24 hours? Media that is produced without much thought is shallow, and we may even be contributing to the shallowness.

Nothing on our internet-connected devices is neutral. Either we use it wisely, committing it to God with knowledge and disciplines, or we use unwisely, letting it change us, gradually making us more self-centered, distracted, and shallow.

In this informative interview, Kathy Koch gives wise and practical advice on controlling the media in your home. She says that parents have a hard time setting boundaries because parents themselves have not set boundaries.

We may need to do some serious adjustments of our daily media habits, but we also need to think of the root problem that’s driving us toward the addiction. Are our souls empty because we are not warm and energetic for the things of God? Are we not consumed and propelled with thoughts of how we can grow God’s kingdom through making disciples? Is there no thought of how we can apply God’s principles to today’s problems?

Christian, we have a mission, and we haven’t a moment to waste. There is no need to fill up a void with mindless distraction.