A gentle call to reclaim our attention from digital distractions, restore presence in our homes, and make room for deeper relationships.

Fasting from devices to make room in our hearts and homes

Halfway through a supermarket dash last week, Francine’s watch alarm began buzzing insistently – the pavlova in the oven was done. Reaching for her phone, realisation hit – her digital lifeline was still at home!  

Juggling the imminent arrival of family for a dual birthday celebration, there wasn’t time to abandon the cart, dash home and return.  

As luck would have it, she found a forgotten plastic credit card in her purse (remember those?) and discovered she could dictate a text message on her watch, rescuing the pav from the cinders of death!  

It was a good illustration of how dependent we have become on our mobile devices and how readily we surrender our freedom to technology.  

Yet, as we see it, the problem is not the dependency on smartphones for daily tasks. Rather, it is the way our devices have captured our attention at the cost of our relationships. 

When Screens Steal Our Loved Ones 

We all know the scene: we’re sitting at dinner, and someone’s phone lights up. Within seconds, the conversation dies, eyes drop, and the person opposite us disappears into the digital abyss.  

There’s something off – actually, something deeply wrong – when a device takes priority over the flesh-and-blood human God has given us across the table or curled up next to us on the couch.  

We’ve all been on the receiving end of that ‘attention hijack’, and it hurts. Yet, rather than discuss it, we often end up soothing those hurt feelings by withdrawing into our own digital escape.  

How many of our marriages and families are surviving on the leftovers of our attention while the best of us is given over to algorithms? 

And it’s not just our spouse and children who lose out. We say we don’t have time for God – for daily prayer, for lingering over Scripture, for church – yet how many minutes (or hours) disappear each day in a doom-scroll episode that leaves us emptier than before?  

We say we want more time for family and for God. The problem is, it’s become more a wish than a priority without us realising how it happened.  

Fasting from Distraction 

Advent is traditionally a penitential season, a time of watchful preparation and joyful anticipation of the coming of the Lord. Christmas is, above all, a family feast: God himself becomes a child and places himself in the arms of a mother and father.  

If we want to welcome him more fully this year, perhaps the most fruitful penance we can offer is the one that buys back that which rightly belongs to God and to family – our attention.  

Our attention is a valuable commodity – and big tech knows it – yet we squander it on digital distractions. Imagine arriving at Christmas Day having weaned ourselves off compulsive scrolling to be more present to the people we love most.  

Three Ways to Detox 

Here are three concrete practices to limit the device impact. None require heroic virtue – just the decision to love the person in front of us more than the device in our hand. 

1. Sanctify your waiting. Next time you’re in a queue, or waiting for your coffee, resist the reflex to reach for the phone. Instead, look around. Notice the people, the signs of life in nature, the small beauties. Tune into your Creator and offer a prayer of thanks. 

1. Schedule a device-free date with your spouse. Phones go on ‘do-not-disturb’, out of sight and out of reach. Give each other the gift of 100% attention. 

1. Fast from selfies. Stop curating your image and start noticing the faces around you. Let the camera stay in the pocket and create memories of connection instead of pixels. 

Smart devices are wonderful tools, and they’re here to stay. That doesn’t mean that we can’t put some boundaries in place and prioritise the real world over a simulated one. 

This Advent, let’s make room – real, spacious, human room – for the Word-Made-Flesh to be born anew in our hearts. The Christ Child is coming, and He still prefers to be held in undistracted arms. 

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Republished with thanks to SmartLoving. Image courtesy of Adobe.