Felicia Wu Song | Restless Devices: How Technology Shapes Us & What We Can Do About It

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Dr. Felicia Song. She is a sociologist, an author, and a speaker. And she's written a book with IVP Press, or InterVarsity Press, I guess, called Restless Devices. And so we're going to be having a conversation around technology and what it means to be a person and how digital technology really influences us today. And so just welcome, Dr. Song. I really appreciate you being here. And yeah, just thanks for writing the book. I found it fascinating. This is an area and a topic that we've addressed on the podcast a number of different times. And so I was excited to hear from somebody with your academic background talk about these issues. So yeah, just thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks for the invite. I'm really glad to be here. Tell a little bit about, you know, I was reading on your website that you were in Boston, and you ran across Marshall McLuhan. So can you tell a little bit about how you got started on this journey toward thinking about media studies and sociology and those kind of things? Yeah, sure. So yeah, I was right out of college, and I was floating around in the used bookstores of Boston. And I came across a small book by Marshall McLuhan that was called The Medium is the Massage, which is a little different from what anyone who usually knows anything about McLuhan is familiar with. Most people who have familiarity with this literary theorist know his phrase, the medium is the message, right? This idea that with any communication technology, its formative powers is not so much the programming, the content, you know, the news that you're hearing or the TV show that you're watching, right? But it's actually the medium, the form of the technology, the audio, the visual, the way that there are fast cuts, sound bites, and so forth. That's what's really forming us, right? And so anyway, I came across this book and I was just amazed that anyone, I mean, these were some thoughts I was starting to have on my own, just thinking about the effect of media on our lives. And so this was even like pre-internet, you know? I was in sort of like mid-90s. You know, I had my email account for maybe all of one year, right? First year, you're still on dial-up and yeah. Yeah, right? Totally, totally. Yeah. And so I was kind of more fascinated in this idea that there's something about the form, the design of a technology that shapes us in ways that it's more powerful even than the content. Because I was familiar with the kind of critiques and concerns of what media does to us, right? But it was the form of it that kind of got me thinking and I was super excited that there's this theorist that was, you know, once I actually started reading McLuhan, I was like, oh man, he's like impenetrable. It's really hard to read if anyone that's read it would know what I'm talking about. It's kind of a mind job just like following his argument. But I then came across Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, which is very readable, very accessible. And again, making the same kind of argument, framing, getting us to think about how the way that our media actually trains us to emphasize or prioritize certain kinds of information, right? Visual information or audio information. Or, you know, when you go back through history, the different kinds of technologies you think about, the innovation of the printing press, the innovation of writing, right? How each of these innovations shifted, right, how we communicated, how we moved information around, right? And so this whole idea that these technologies develop, become dominant in a culture, and then completely shift how we perceive reality was so, so very interesting to me. There's sort of side stories on how I watched the, you know, this was, if any of your audience remembers back in the day, this was back when U2 was doing a concert series that involved Bono with a camera holding, he would hold it to himself, right? Yeah, yeah. The onset of the big screens at the big stadium concerts. And he was singing Better Than the Real Thing. And he has the camera on himself and he's spinning around and he's singing it. And it's just this whole ironic critique, right? Of how nobody's actually watching Bono when they're at the concert. They're not watching Bono himself with the camera. They're looking at the screen now, right? And this whole idea that we're enthralled by the thing on the screen over and above this incredible celebrity superstar, who's right in front of you, right? You're not even watching him anymore because you just can't stop watching the screen. Yeah, it's sort of fascinating to think through. I remember that. I would have been in high school in the mid-90s. And so I remember Bono doing that. And, you know, sort of, I think the cultural critique was sort of lost on me at that point. But I will say now, you know, when we go to, my wife and I have gone to concerts or we'll go to, you know, a hockey game or something like that. And it's not without effort that you ignore those Jumbotrons or the big screens. And I mean, at the concerts, it's in some ways even worse because they've constructed this whole thing so that people in the back can actually see the singer. Right. But they've got so much going on behind him. Then you're just like, what am I supposed to look at? This feels like more than just a backdrop. And it does just underscore that point of that. These forms really do pull our attention in certain ways that they actually do have some level of influence over how we perceive what's going on and what we look at. It's fascinating. Yeah. Well, and I love your point about modern day concerts is the ways that the performers have evolved. They've created concerts for the Jumbotron. Right. And so that gets at the ways in which it doesn't only, the technology shifting doesn't only affect us as the consumers, but it affects the producer, right? The creator, the content creator. They are thinking in terms of the medium, right? And thinking wholly about how it's going to be expressed, right? Through the screen, through the Jumbotron, whatever it is. And that changes up, right? What they're going to do, how they're going to perform, right? Yeah. And again, there's reams and reams of incredible scholarship about, especially political communication, right? How politicians have changed, right? Not only their look because of television, but also what they say, right? In debates and so forth because of the medium. Yeah, which is, you sort of have to wonder, some of that's got to be for the good and for the bad, you know? But I guess what I, I've read McLuhan. I understand, I think, sort of what he's saying. Right, you're right. Neil Postman, far more accessible. Even when I read, you know, Jacques Ellul is for me, like sort of the theological McLuhan. And you're just going, I don't understand half of what he's saying, but I think I agree. Right, yes, yes. And so, but Neil Postman is so much more accessible. But I guess I'm wondering with McLuhan, what does he attribute the power of the medium to? Like, are there aspects of this where he would say, like, let's say, you know, certain medium are given to different sort of selection biases than others? You know, is that a component or does he attribute it to anything or does he just sort of assert it and argue it? Yeah, I mean, I think he just, I think his focus is mainly on how particular media, what he calls extends the senses, right? And so as human beings, we have these different sensory capacities to access our reality. And what the technology does is it extends, right, the visual or the audio or the.

cognitive over the tactile, right, and so I think he has a much more, I would, it's kind of a phenomenological approach or a kind of existential understanding of the human being as just kind of like perceiving, right, the world in particular ways and how these technologies then then are, they mediate us, right, that they're the the go-between between us and what's actually happening. So I think he was always fascinated by what he saw as fundamentally fundamental shifts in how we are human, right? Like, so we can't with all the evolutions of the various communication technologies, like, we can't sit down and recite the Iliad, right? Right. Right. Like, we don't have bards showing up and just like reciting 60-page poems, right, that explain the history of our civilization. Like, we don't have the memory, right? Like, we don't have that facility to hold all that information because we don't need to. We haven't trained in that. And we also don't have the capacity as receivers of that to hold all of it, right? Like, we need something else. We can't just like listen to someone, even though I guess we listen to podcasts and audiobooks now. So that, that might be an interesting connection. We're starting to shift back a little bit more to that, that, that sort of auditory or audible learning, I guess we call it. When you, when you look at some of this, and I guess, you know, sort of shifting away from Klune, but when you think about the bards, like you mentioned, you know, coming into town and they're sort of the center of attention, and you have really this, it's almost like you just have the one input, right? Or, or maybe have, let's say you have five inputs, right? I mean, I think back to, you know, studying the Puritans and Jonathan Edwards could give a, you know, an hour and a half long sermon because he's the only game in town. This is the only thing people are listening to most of the week. And so it's like, yeah, we'll do it for an hour and a half. That's no problem. That's, this is great. Right. It's like watching an action movie except it's not, it's a sermon. And so, you know, there's, there's a sense in which you've got this sort of the different inputs, the frequency of those inputs, the depth of those inputs, and the way that those inputs then are, are conveyed versus today where we have what is practically infinite number of inputs for information. And we can get that at all times in the simplest way possible. How does that factor into something like a media ecology approach where the intensity of it, the ubiquity of it is so amped up at this point. And how do you counsel people to sort of, I guess this is like eight questions in a row, but, but how do you counsel people to say, look, it's an all you can eat buffet, so just don't go up there with three plates and try to, you know what I'm saying? Let me ask you a serious question. 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Yeah, no, that that's the a gazillion dollar question of our age, right? And I mean, I think that's what makes, I think, living in this time uniquely challenging. Like you said, in the ages of the bard, there there was no choice. You didn't have to decide. It was just one game in town. Right. I'm just gonna go. This is my entertainment for the week. Right. And I'm gonna go bring my dinner and listen or whatever. And and now we don't have those institutional societal boundaries. I'm thinking about, right, so sociologists think about society, not just as groups of people, but as structures and institutions. Right. And so prior to all of that we have today, in terms of technology, it's just, you got information, like you said, through particular institutions and they were limited and they were bounded in particular through particular in their own industry. You know, there was there was the premiere, you know, news up here and then there's the local and then there was the, you know, the rags, right, the, the kind of gossipy stuff, right? Yeah, yeah. So there's this hierarchy and then you had to go to the store to get it or it had to be delivered, you know, all this stuff. And now, right, those are all like institutional structural boundaries that existed that we don't have anymore. Right. As you said, we can just access it all times through a trillion different means and portals. So I think for us, you know, the, the hard recommendation is just this like willpower of discipline, right? Like you said, like I'm just going to show up to the buffet and I'm going to bring up this size plate, right? And I'm only going to fill it with this, even though it says all you can eat, all you can eat and everyone around me is loading it up with their snow, you know, snow crabs or whatever. Right. And I'm just going to get my one little, little salad, you know, and like little roll or something like that. And so, you know, a lot of the advice is like that, you know, and, and there's truth to that, right? There's, there's an element of truth about, well, now we live in a time when, because we don't have these societal institutional boundaries, we will need intention, right? We'll need to actually decide, make a choice, right? Because as the scholars put it, there are these technological affordances that have opened up, right? The technology has created opportunity that we just didn't have before. And now we have to choose, right? It's so much easier to just go to the buffet and just keep loading up because everyone else is doing it and it's there, it's incredible. And we just are like greedy, right? And there's questions about why are we greedy, you know, for information and entertainment, that conversation. But I think part of what we need to do is not just the individual discipline, like I'm going to show up with my plate. But I think it's really important for us to, in many ways, begin building new institutions, actually. And that can look like something as small as my group of friends, my household, my community, right? Whatever it is, where we all talk to each other about, what do we think is a healthy way to approach this buffet? And let's go together, you know? Let's go together and sit at the table and eat together with our decided amount, right? And we're still going to have a good time. We're still going to get our fill, but let's, let's just eat this because we know this is actually healthier than just going to the dessert station and eating pounds and pounds of tiramisu, right? And so let's do that together. So again, there's the informal institutions, so to speak, that are communal and that help us. So it's not just like my willpower, right? But then there are other kinds of institutions where it might be the workplace, schools, right? Others actually existing institutions that will help us and be like, hey, you know, like now it's like there's states that are starting to tell their public schools, hey, you know, that was, let's not, let's have the teachers ask their students to put their phones away, right? Like, like that's a good idea, right? And that this is a recommended practice that we'd like our public schools to do. That's an example, right? Of an institutional constraint that's saying.

Let's limit the size of the plate, right? Because this isn't healthy for what we're trying to do here, right? And that can happen in the workplace and other spaces as well. Well, I think in addition to that, I really like the idea of building new institutions because I do think part of what we've lost, and the way I've thought about this is, you know, we talk a lot about algorithms and how the algorithms are now feeding us content and they're deciding what we like based on the content that we've had before. And I'm like, but that's just a faster way of doing it than like we've had with the publishing industry this whole time. You know, publishers were that sort and filter for us at one level. You know, they're deciding what the public is going to be interested in reading and they're deciding what the best content is. They're vetting the information to some degree there. They were functionally a very rudimentary algorithm for us because we're trusting that institution to do this and we're trusting them to sort through all of the proposals that are being made and decide what new information to present to us and how to do that and who's best to do that and all those kinds of questions. And without those institutions, we are sort of now in a place where you can go online and search through 50 different websites and still have no particular idea which one is or isn't helpful, right? And so, you know, we've got that. And so I think there's a sense in which if we build back some of those institutions so that there is a more of a trust level and authority that we can look to and say, This person's done the workforce or this institution's done the workforce and we can trust it. It's not that they'll always be right. It's not that they won't, you know, mess it up sometimes, but we can trust it. But then there's also this other side right now where I think to your point about the willpower, we all sort of understand how not to overeat at a buffet, right? But I think there's a skill that's required in today's world that that's sort of a new information literacy that most of us just don't have and probably don't even have the time to develop when we're sorting and filtering all of this different information we're getting. Like, does that ring true? Yeah, you know, I think so. So the sorting and the filtering, I think, is an interesting, slightly different question, I guess, than the one I was thinking about. I was thinking about merely amount of of information that we're taking in. I think the sorting and the filtering is interesting because, back to your example about algorithms. So algorithms, I agree, there is definitely a similarity to prior institutions that were curating, perhaps not merely curating for the good, but curating for the sale, right? And I think what's what's maybe slightly different about today's algorithms is that it does that, right? Its point is to try to keep us on whatever platform, right? But what it's doing is, it's not only responding to our clicks in real time, right? It's like taking our data and like you said, kind of hyper speed responsiveness, right? But what's interesting is how it's also nudging us. It's nudging us in the direction of its advertisers, right? And its sponsors. And so that's where I think it's interesting to think about the difference between today's algorithms and the kind of prior curating. In terms of how we go about filtering our information, I mean, I think you're right. It's almost impossible for most of us to kind of take a course on information literacy or media literacy, right? And even the courses that they teach in high school, you know, I have a high schooler right now. They're just like rolling their eyes. They're like, Oh, geez. Right. But I think this is where to me, there's there's skill set that I think, you know, like and there's lots of really great, I think folks that are doing, you know, you could go and listen to a 15 minute TED talk on media literacy and come away with like, fascinating, right? But I am actually going to be a little old school here and say, what we really need is, this is gonna sound so old school for so many people, is like, we really need the humanities back, right? Like, I wholeheartedly agree. Yeah. We need to know history, right? Like, actually and learn history from different sources. So that you have some, the developing of some kind of measure standard, right? From which you could be like, you could hear something or read something and be like, Really? Like, I don't know if that actually connects with what I remember hearing about the history of X, right? Or having read some other seminal text, you know, whether it's philosophical or theological or something. Um, and, and you don't, I don't think you have to be a nerd to have exposure to this, right? Like you can get kind of like simplified, you know, much more accessible, you know, sources that anchor you in some kind of reality where you're like, Oh, you know, people through the ages have thought this. And again, I think it's important to get a variety of sources, right? And so this is where, like, moving beyond, say, like, a Western civ canon, you know, um, sort of syllabus list is important because I think there's a lot of needs for whether it's like female writers or people of color writing about the same history, about the same experience, right? It's really important to kind of round out, right, some of these key ideas. But I just think, you know, if it's just like, um, It's like any child who is going to watch the news, you know, like my parents watch the world news every night during dinner, you know, and I would just sit there and watch and I had no idea what any was about, you know, like, I grew up in the eighties. There was the hostage crisis. There was, yeah, I mean, there's all this stuff and I just was like, I had no idea. I had no context. Right. Right. And I just took away whatever I took away when I was a young kid. Right. But it's like, aren't we like that so much with what we see online now? Like, Oh yeah. Context for putting that information into some existing kind of grid of like, I, I understand the world to kind of function this way. Right. Um, so how, how does this measure up or compare? How does this help my understanding grow or evolve? Right. If it's countering it, well, maybe I can go and try to figure out what that's about. You know, like, is the thing I'm reading, like actually, um, legit or is it sus as the young people say, right? And I need to, I need to go and maybe rely on a different source. Right. But I think it also, to me, I mean, apart from that, I know that's a high call, right? To like send people to read, you know, uh, philosophical texts and start watching the history channel or whatever. Um, I think it actually requires, um, like good or healthy self filtering and, and knowing how to measure requires a degree of like self-awareness, self-awareness of the kind of person you are. Am I someone that is prone to fear? Am I someone that is prone to wanting to pick a fight? Um, am I, you know, like we're different. We're all different people. We have different experiences, right? But we need to know our vulnerabilities, right? When we read information, right? So for me, you know, like if I have some slight, like weird thing happening in my body or my health, right? I know enough about myself now to not go on Google and type in whatever the thing is, right? Because I know I'm going to read, get on the website that tells me I'm going to die in 48 hours unless I go to the ER now, right? Right. I have some like inexplicable disease that only 0.5% of the world has ever seen. I know that about myself. Yeah. I choose not to go onto Google or any website to look it up because I'm just.

I know that about myself, right? Like I just get wound up. And so to me, I think what all of this media ecology is doing is not only making it very difficult for us to know what to choose or to be more moderated in our appetites, but it's also making it very difficult for us to be still enough to know ourselves, right? So like, be self-aware and use that self-awareness as a modality to guide us to be like, I know I am prone this way, so I need to be cautious, right? I know I am prone to conspiracies, right? So I need to be, right? I know I'm prone to like going down, drilling into statistic after statistic, study after study, whatever, right? Like, so I need to, I need to be careful, you know, about this. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. It's, So when you, when you were writing in Restless Devices, because I think this is really a unique emphasis in your book, is that you talk about that idea that you just expressed of not having the self-reflective time to sort of own ourselves. And I think your comments about the difference between what publishers used to do and what the algorithm does, it nudges us. It, it, in some ways, it's sort of shaping us into products. I can't remember who wrote it. It's the gentleman, I think he wrote 10 Reasons to Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, and I just can't remember his name. Yeah, there you go. And he talks about, you know, if it's free, you're the product. Yeah. Like, you know, these companies aren't doing this out of benevolence necessarily. It's, they also are making money and they're making money off your attention. And so I think that that idea of the restless devices are constantly, and maybe you wouldn't put it this way, but just sort of the way I'm trying to think my way through it. They're constantly nudging us to become something we're not and distracting us from really thinking through not only who we are individually at this moment in this present time, but also who we are as a society, as a culture, what our history is, all of those kind of things. And I think if we sort of look at the way you've articulated that, the humanities gives us that sense of what are the, what does it mean to be human across the ages? What have people really been thinking about in the moment, if all I'm doing is looking at my glowing rectangle all the time, I don't have a lot of self-reflective moments in that. I'm just constantly taking in content from other people and maybe wishing I was them, wishing my life was different, wishing it, you know, whatever that is. And so you have this sort of ubiquitous, ever-present device that is now shoving content at you, potentially 24-7, you know, unless you sleep in there somewhere, that really is disrupting our thought process in some pretty significant ways. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, and I think that, you know, even the simplest things like getting a good night's sleep and going outside if you're in a place that's warm enough to go outside right now. Going outside, being in nature in some way without taking pictures of it. That those simple things are becoming challenges to us now. But they're so important in rooting us, the beginning of the rooting, right? That helps us to have kind of steady thoughts enough of a sense of what's going on inside, you know, am I feeling anxious? Am I feeling restless about something? Am I bored in a deep existential way, whatever, you know? But it's like we, I mean, that's where I think, back to the, you know, we could call it discipline or boundaries or rhythms or practices, right? That's where setting up some practices and, you know, in other, if we spin it through different other kinds of conversations, you know, this is called self-care, right? Like getting a good night's sleep, actually. Exercising, right? Being outside, right? Whatever, you know, orbit of conversation makes sense to you. I think these are all God-given ways of grounding us, right? Like sleep. You know, I was thinking about how sleep is truly an incredible thing. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of a, it feels superfluous, right? It's sort of like, you know, why were we created to sleep? What an interesting thing, right? And yet, so like, in one sense, it feels incredibly vulnerable, right? Because you're like, you don't know what's happening while you're sleeping, right? But in another sense, it's so tender and sweet, you know, when you see a child or baby sleeping, it's, it's just, you know, and in the context of someone who may be operating with a faith, right, there's this sense of, oh, you can sleep in peace because there is a God who is doing the work in the world, who is taking care of you, who is providing. That is why you don't have to stay up working or fretting or tending the fire or guarding your house, right? And so I think these very basic elements of being human that we just kind of like pass over, you know, like, Oh, yes, you know, like, yeah, or we resist like, ah, why do I, you know, like, like, if only I can only, if I could just operate with four hours of sleep, that would be so much better, right? Right. I'd be so much more productive, right? Yeah, right. No, no, no, no, no. Like, that's actually like really wonderful part of life, right? Like being able to sleep a full night and being able to go outside with not listening to anything, not taking pictures or anything and just like looking at the trees, looking at the grass, right? There's something that is feeding us through God's creation. And I think we underestimate very often the power of those very essential parts of our daily lives. You and I seem like we probably grew up around in the same era, right? So we, we bridged between the analog we could call it, right? World and the digital world. And increasingly, as I think about this, I see that as a real advantage because I understand how to do things without my phone. And, and I'm actually kind of comfortable doing things without my phone. I mean, there's something especially unique about what, you know, pulling up a streaming service on your television and feeling nostalgic about, you know, the four stations that you used to have. And, you know, um, uh, you know, I, I can still remember that sort of, uh, the smell of the first VCR. Like when we took it out of the box, it had a certain scent to it. And you're like, oh wow, this is awesome, right? Now I get to, I get to tape stuff on this, you know, manipulated videotape. But I, I think it's an advantage. And so one of the things that I worry about is, you know, for folks like us who have had that experience and, and can sort of understand how to recalibrate to a world where the technology just was never an option for us anyway. We could set it aside, right? And sometimes I do find the technology just gets in my way. It's annoying. Um, safety features on cars drive me crazy. It's like, I could have sworn I knew how to drive until this car decided that it knows better than me. Right. But neither here nor there. Um, but my, my concern, I guess, is for the generation that's grown up wholly digital, where this stuff has just been sort of part of their warp and woof their entire life. How do you think?

do they understand how to rest? How do they even understand how to be in nature without taking a selfie stick with them, without, you know, filming a video to put it on Instagram? Like, do they understand that, or is that something that we're starting to lose as a society? Yeah. Yeah, no, that's a great question. I think, you know, having taught college students for almost 20 years and having this conversation about the internet for over 20 years, it's been really interesting seeing students change. You know, so I'm getting, I was getting the same bracket, you know, the 18 to 21, you know, year after year. And it was interesting, I would say in the last five years, I started seeing a shift, right? Up until then, it was always the young people were much more excited, much more defensive about the wonders of technology and it's good. And I'd say over the last five years, there's been this shift to students being much more curious and interested about possibly learning something that explains this dissatisfaction and frenzy that they feel inside of their own experience, right? Yeah. And their willingness to try a fast or to try some other practice that I might suggest or assign to them and not groan, but be like, oh, that sounds terrible, but I'll try it. It might be helpful. And so I'm really curious about actually the Gen Z and the net, you know, like I'm wondering if they're starting to, because they're growing up with it so young, that they're feeling the wear of it. And it's a conversation. Right. And the conversation culturally is already, you know, Jonathan Haidt's anxious generation, right? There's the cultural conversation is shifting. But, you know, like in terms of like, how do how do young people and new generations learn that being in nature is an incredible thing? I think, you know, the example I always have or I think about is the overnight camps that still exist for kids and how these overnight camps, for the most part, take their phones away, right? They're like, no phones. And the kids groan and they ache, belly ache for it for the first 24 hours and then they start having fun. They love it. Right. And then, of course, they get back in the minivan at the end of the camp and then they get their phones back and they're back on, you know, that's the reality for now. But they remember how cool it was when they were six days just with these other kids doing something, you know, without their technology. And I'm really of the mind. I think this is where, you know, I'm generally a pessimistic person, but this is where I hold on to a string of hope, which is that when we taste something good, we recognize it. We just do, you know, and we hold on to that. And, you know, it might take us a while to get through all the distraction and all the kind of things that that we might even put in our own way, but we will seek it out eventually. And so I think the key here is if the kind of natural experiences that you and I grew up with, the analog world, right, won't come easily for the newer generations, we have to find ways to give it to them. Like we need intention, right? If they're not just running out the door after school and playing in the woods until mom calls and says it's dinner time, then we need to create times for them. And I think my main concern thinking about, you know, from a sociological perspective is that those opportunities usually are easier for upper middle class kids, right? It's a class thing, right? So like the more you move down the economic scale, you actually find that lower poor populations are going to be the ones that are stuck within the digital cage. Let me ask you a serious question. 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There is no restful sleep for them to have. And they're the ones that are going to be trapped in what technology has to offer. And I think that's something that as a society, as the church, that we need to be really keeping an eye on and thinking about how do we contribute, be a helpful presence in making sure that all kids growing up have these moments, these opportunities to breathe fresh air, run wild, you know, in the woods, be at a stream and realize like this is incredible, right? This is so cool. Just doing this with other kids. That's an interesting insight. I mean, I, again, sort of going back to my childhood, I show my daughter sometimes these PSAs that we would have seen growing up. And one of them is, yeah, I think it's like, it's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your children are? And they're looking at me like, they're like, what is this? This is a joke. And I'm like, no, it's not a joke. Like it was a literal problem. Like we didn't have any way, like parents didn't have any way to know where their kids were. So you assume they're safe, I guess, you know, you go over to the neighbor's house and you ask, but they're not, like what recourse do you really have? You're not going to call the cops, you know, every night, you know? So yeah, if it gets around 10 o'clock and your kid's not home, you should start worrying. But that had to be sort of messaged. And I think back on that and I realize I'm not naive about the dangers that would have been around in our, you know, when I was a kid, like not naive about those. But at the same time, I look out at what we're facing now and you sit back and you go, is it to the, are we at a place societally where, you know, Jonathan, you brought up Jonathan Haidt's reference, Jonathan Haidt's book, the sort of free range parenting that he advocates for is actually more dangerous than it was back in our day. Because going back to something you mentioned, the institutional changes are such that it's just easier nowadays to coordinate, to travel, to, you know, all of these different things that you think about. Like, you know, in any given scenario, it's not only easier for us to do things, it's easier for bad actors to do things. And so I, you know, I think that it's really important. I agree with you a hundred percent. We've got to find ways to get kids out into their environment. But I also think to one of your earlier points, there have to be these institutional changes where it's okay now to let my kid go out and do X, Y, or Z because they're going to be relatively safe and, you know, them putting their phone aside is not going to put them at a massive disadvantage to a bad actor who could use that digital technology to do something horrible to them. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And, and that's where I think, again, You know, schools and churches, you know, if, if, if we live in a society that has so fundamentally shifted in the makeup of our neighborhoods and the makeup of, of like, who is around and do we even know our neighbors? Right. Right. These are fundamentally shifted. Then what are, what are the alternatives, right? There's, there's, you know, I mentioned the camp earlier, you know, there are, there are camps that, that help kids that are growing up in, in urban settings that have never seen a patch of grass, right? You have, you have camps that actually bring those kids out to a forest, to a farm, right? And it's fully scholarshiped. It's fully, right. And it's like, Hey, let's, let's, let's do something for a week or three days. Or you have.

That are the urban farmers, right, that are reclaiming abandoned parking lots and saying, let's build something beautiful here, and let's make it ours, right? Not just someone else coming in to do it, but I'm going to teach you how to plant this, and this is going to be yours, right, that you can raise up and be proud of, right? And so I think there are these creative, right, options that we can kind of sprout up amidst the kind of harder long-range shifts in these institutions, as you've said, right? Like, we need to be much more innovative about bringing the nature in, right, or finding ways to be the one who initiates the block party, right, in the HOA or the neighborhood, right? To actually find out who's living five doors down from me, right? Like, these are things that used to just happen, right? Like, you just knew, but now we, again, need intention, right? You need intention, whether it's programming or being the one who initiates something. But again, I think what we'll find is that people actually really appreciate it, right? Like, I just read somewhere, I forget where I was reading this, about the person who did the chili cook-off block party in their neighborhood because they didn't know their neighbors, and they were really anxious, you know, they put out flyers and RSVP, and like no one RSVPed, like one person RSVPed, and they're like, oh, geez, now, like, we're just like the weird people on the street. But then when it, but they still set it up and everything, but people came. They came, you know? And that's why I just, I go back to this kind of hope and conviction that, like, God created us in a certain way that longs for relation, longs for presence with each other, right, in the same place, and that we just have to keep knocking on that door, right? Yeah. And people want to come in the end of the day, and so we just have to be sprouting those opportunities and thinking about innovative ways to build within the structures that we have, right? That create these opportunities of engaging each other, engaging nature, and also creating some equity, right, and access to these opportunities. I think that's great. I love the idea of it because it just suggests that we've been really innovative technologically, and what we need to do now is be as aggressively innovative about recovering, as your subtitle of your book is, recovering person to presence and place. You know, we've got to be equally as aggressively innovative about doing those kind of things. We can't just let these things go as if, you know, and just lament that they're gone. We have to kind of fight to keep them around because otherwise the digital age, it does have a tendency to squeeze these things out. And, you know, we assume that we can get along without it until we realize that we just can't. And I love your insight about the undergraduate students. The idea that they're feeling this in a different way than maybe we would, you know, and recognizing the wear and the tear because they've just been so inundated with it, the emptiness of it all, that this isn't the sort of diet you can sustain, right? Sort of like just eating candy, right? You know, eventually. That's not going to feel great. And so you start to discover, oh, I need something else. And so it's not that you're, and I don't hear you saying this, let's not get rid of it all, but let's carve out these spaces. Let's make sure that we don't lose what was good about something that was pre-digital just because we're in the digital. Yeah. And I mean, the whole key for me is that we have to be grounded or dialed in, right, to know, back to your kind of earlier question, how to filter, right? Like how to choose. And if we're not grounded and dialed in, calibrated in a way that feels like we are living in a way that is aligned with our priorities, our commitments, right? That dialing in is, or that choosing, right? From that humongous buffet is just constantly going to be misguided or just confused, right? Constantly. So we have to work on figuring out this first, right? Like ourselves. We have to have a sense of our own self, do the things that ground us, right? If you're a person of faith, then maybe that looks like committing yourself to seeking out God's light and vision of oneself, right? Because we are limited in our own capacity to know ourselves, right? Or finding people that are trustworthy, that can speak into our lives in ways that are generative and helpful to us. And so then we can start making some hopefully good choices. Yeah. Well, Felicia, we're sort of at the end of time. I actually went a little over time because I was just, sorry, I was interested in the topic, but I really appreciate you being here. And this has been a fantastic conversation. I'd really recommend folks, if you're listening, Restless Devices, Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age. Great book, great insights. And I just really thank you, Felicia, for your emphasis on that sociological emphasis just draws so much out of this conversation, I think. And I just so appreciate it. Even just the idea of, you know, that idea of giving people access to these places, thinking through that some people just won't have access unless we give it to them. I think is really one of the big things that I'm taking away that I hadn't really thought about. And so very much appreciate that emphasis and just thank you very much for being here. Yes, so great to be with you, James. This has been fabulous. And folks, we'll put the link to the book. We'll put the link to Felicia's website in the show notes. And don't forget, this is an IVP book, and they've given me a 20% discount code. So order off their website with that code, and you'll get 20% off. So thanks, everybody, for listening. Thanks, everybody, for being here. And we will see you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care. Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Hey, I'm Dr. Sean McDowell, professor, author, and host of The Sean McDowell Show. I tackle the hardest questions about God, truth, and culture, combining solid research with practical insight and engaging stories so you can build a confident, informed faith. Now available on the Life Audio Network to reach more listeners like you. Follow The Sean McDowell Show on your favorite podcast app or visit lifeaudio.com to start listening.