Has anyone here misplaced a phone today?

If so, you must be familiar with the state of mild panic you
must have felt until your phone was found. 73% of people claim to experience this unique type of
anxiety. This makes sense when you consider the fact that adults in the US spend an average of 2-4
hours a day tapping, swiping, typing on their devices. We are so intimately intertwined with our devices
that sometimes we feel our phones vibrating even when they aren’t there.

There is nothing inherently addictive about smartphones per se, however, our attachments to these
devices is driven by the hyper-social environments they provide. (Facebook, snapchat, Instagram, etc)

And humans are designed to be social.

It’s undeniable that these devices provide immense benefit to society, but the cost is now becoming
more apparent. (Duterte visit Bacolod mobile service interruption)

Studies are showing links between smartphone usage and increased levels of anxiety and depression,
poor sleep quality, and increased risk of car injury or death.

Why are these little things so difficult to ignore?

(Show picture of Chamath Palihapitiya)

Former Vice President of User Growth at Facebook from 2007 to 2011, where he helped the company
add 650 million users.

He said he felt tremendous guilt about the company he helped make.

“I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works” at a talk at
Stanford school of business.

He was responding to a question questioning his involvement in exploiting consumer behavior.

“The short term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society
works”.

This addiction now plagues Facebook’s entire user base of two billion people, he said. All by design. “You
don’t realize it but you are being programmed,” Palihapitiya warned, disavowing the students of the
idea that high intelligence and education will immunize from the plague. They don’t.

So what’s the answer?

“You must decide how much of your intellectual independence you’re willing to give,” he said. “I don’t
have a good solution.

He says he uses facebook as little as possible, and his children are not allowed to use it at all.

(Show Sean Parker) American entrepreneur and philanthropist, first president of Facebook

Parker says the social networking site exploits human psychological vulnerabilities through a validation
feedback loop that gets people to constantly post to get even more likes and comments. “It's exactly the
kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in
human psychology,” he said. “The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin
Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway." In
other words, using Facebook is like junk food: you get instant gratification when you post for likes and
comments. It’s quick and easy but has little substance.

Repeatedly in Scripture, silence is a demonstration of our steadied faith, a resolved trust in the
Redeemer to move and act and deliver. When the temptations and dangers increase, the godly can hush
the noisy alarmists around them and reclaim silence.

“In quietness and confidence shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15).

“Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him; Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way,
Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.” (Psalm 37:7).

“Truly my soul silently waits for God; From Him comes my salvation.” (Psalm 62:1–2).

“My soul, wait silently for God alone, For my expectation is from Him.” (Psalm 62:5).

Silence is confidence in God.

Silence is also a divine invitation. And that’s the deeper modern fear.

“Not only are we afraid of ourselves, of discovering and unmasking ourselves,” Bonhoeffer writes, “but
even more we are afraid of God, that he might disturb our aloneness and discover and unmask us, that
God might draw us into partnership and do with us whatever he wants. Because we fear such unnerving,
lonely encounters with God, we avoid them, avoid even the thought of God lest he suddenly get too
close to us. Suddenly having to look into God’s eyes, having to be accountable before him, is too
dreadful a notion