If Technology Saves Time, What Are We Saving It For?
Technology is supposed to make life easier. That is not necessarily a criticism; it is one of the reasons human beings make tools in the first place. A washing machine gives us back time we would have spent washing clothes by hand. A calculator handles a computation quickly. A search engine can find information that once required an afternoon at the library. In our latest conversation, I brought up an example from Dr. Glenn Sunshine about earlier technologies that freed people from some kinds of labor and created more room for other pursuits. The interesting question wasn't merely whether the tool worked, but what people did with the time it returned. That question feels increasingly important as social media and artificial intelligence promise to make almost every part of life faster. If a tool saves me twenty minutes, does that twenty minutes become prayer, reading, conversation, service, rest, or another twenty minutes staring at a different tool?
That is where technology can quietly reverse its purpose. Instead of serving human life, it begins creating the conditions for more technology use. We answer emails faster so we can answer more. Or we use AI to finish one task efficiently and somehow end the day feeling like we had less time than before. The podcast referenced recent concerns about social media exposure and student performance in areas such as reading and vocabulary, but the larger parenting issue does not depend on one study. We already know attention is finite. Every hour spent on one thing is an hour not spent on another, and children form habits around those trade offs while their understanding of life, relationships, learning, and purpose is still developing.
A Tool Should Help Us Return to Life
Dr. Kathy kept returning to the word tool because a tool should accomplish something and then get out of the way. She contrasted that with the way children often experience a phone as a toy, something designed to absorb attention for its own sake. That distinction changes the kinds of questions families can ask. Instead of “How much technology is too much?” we might ask, “What did this technology help us accomplish, and what are we doing now that the task is finished?”
Maybe the family uses a device together to research a state park for Saturday. A teenager looks up trails, a younger sibling checks which park has waterfalls, Dad looks over their shoulders, and the technology helps the family get somewhere together. Maybe a child uses a computer to research something that sparks curiosity, then turns to a book, a person, a museum, or an actual experience to learn more. Technology has now become a bridge into life rather than a room the child never leaves. That is a very different orientation from picking up a device simply because there is a spare minute.
Digital Sabbath Can Remind Us That We Are Still Human Without the Device
Dr. Kathy suggested taking intentional breaks from digital technology, a kind of digital Sabbath. Her example was deliberately strong: turn off what can be turned off for a period of time and rediscover that life continues. The point is not to create an impressive family challenge or prove that screens are evil. It is to loosen the assumption that every moment needs electronic assistance.
A Sabbath reveals dependencies. What feels strangely uncomfortable when the screens disappear? Does silence feel unbearable? Do the kids know what to do with an unscheduled hour? Can the family cook, talk, read, build, walk, pray, play a game, or simply be together without a device filling every gap?
Those questions tell us something useful. The goal is not deprivation for deprivation's sake. We are creating enough distance from technology to determine whether it still serves us or whether we have begun serving it. For Christian families, that pause can also recover a much older meaning of rest. Rest is not merely stopping productivity so we can consume entertainment. It creates space to remember God, receive creation, attend to people, and notice things we were moving too quickly to see.
Relationships Become Weaker When Efficiency Becomes the Highest Good
The conversation naturally moved from tools to relationships because human beings are incredibly inefficient. Friends need things at inconvenient times. Someone misunderstands what we meant. A marriage requires repeated conversations about the same issue. Children ask questions when we are trying to leave the house. People get offended, disappoint us, change plans, forget things, and occasionally need us to sit through a miserable baseball game.
Technology offers alternatives to much of that friction. We can send the text instead of making the call. FaceTime instead of showing up. Delete the friend instead of repairing the relationship. Move on instead of forgiving. Dr. Kathy warned that technology's ease can feed a “cut and run” mentality because real relationships require forgiveness, humility, patience, and the willingness to stay when another person becomes inconvenient. If children increasingly expect relationships to work like interfaces, responsive, personalized, comfortable, and easy to exit, they may struggle with the very experiences that make belonging deep. Belonging isn't proven because someone always agrees with me. Sometimes it becomes strongest after disagreement when both people decide the relationship is worth repairing.
Our Kids Need to Know That People Are Worth the Trouble
There is a phrase Dr. Kathy has been using lately that fits this well: people are messy, and the culture is chaotic. Yet we are still called to love in the middle of the mess. Technology becomes dangerous relationally when it trains us to believe messiness itself is a defect.
Maybe your friend thinks differently. Maybe your brother is irritating. Maybe the person at church likes different music or takes fifteen minutes to tell a story that could have taken three. Maybe your child is not giving you the answer efficiently. Human beings are not optimized experiences. That is part of their glory. Another person can challenge us, surprise us, require something from us, teach us patience, and expose selfishness we would never have noticed on our own. Friendship that is too easy may not form much character. Children need enough experiences with people who are different from them to learn that disagreement isn't danger or rejection.
One of Technology’s Biggest Costs May Be What It Replaces
When I asked Dr. Kathy about the connection between technology and learning, she came back to something wonderfully ordinary: children are reading less. Whatever conclusions researchers eventually draw about specific platforms and specific cognitive outcomes, displacement itself matters. Time spent scrolling is not spent reading. It is not spent having a long conversation. It is not spent looking at maps. It is not spent practicing math, making something, asking Mom a question, or sitting with a thought long enough for curiosity to deepen.
Dr. Kathy emphasized vocabulary because children build language largely through being read to, reading themselves, and talking with people who use words richly. Those practices require sustained attention. A child has to stay with the paragraph long enough to understand what the author is doing. They have to remember a character introduced thirty pages earlier. They encounter words they would never hear in a short video or casual text.
This is why the technology question shouldn't be only, “Is this app educational?” Something can contain educational information and still replace deeper learning. The better question may be, “What would my child be doing if this screen were not here?” Sometimes the answer is nothing particularly valuable. Sometimes the answer is reading the book we keep saying they do not have time to read.
Attention Is One of the Things We Offer in Worship
Luke 10 came to mind as we closed the conversation. Martha is busy preparing and serving, and what she is doing is not inherently wrong. Hospitality is good. Her problem is that she has become distracted by many things while Mary sits at Jesus' feet and listens. Jesus does not celebrate laziness. He identifies what deserves attention in that particular moment.
That story helps me think differently about technology because distraction often wears the clothing of usefulness. We are answering messages. Checking information. Organizing schedules. Reading something important. Keeping up. And still, we may miss the person in front of us. Attention is one way we communicate worth. When I look up from my phone while my child is talking, I am telling them something. When I keep scrolling, I am telling them something too. When a family sits quietly with Scripture, reads together, notices creation, prays, or spends twenty minutes talking about something with no measurable outcome, we practice the discipline of deciding what deserves our minds.
Technology Can Create Time for Purpose Instead of More Consumption
Dr. Kathy offered what I think is the central question of the whole episode: what if the best use of our tools is to create more time for purpose? For Christians, purpose ultimately pulls us toward loving God and loving people made in His image.
That gives technology a much clearer job description. Can this tool save time that we can invest in our family? Can it help us serve someone? Can it eliminate a tedious task so we can spend more time thinking, creating, reading, praying, working with our hands, or being present? Can it help us organize the church event and then get out of the way so actual people can gather? Can AI handle a repetitive process so we have more energy to do something only a human being can do? Those are worthwhile efficiencies. The problem is not that something became easier. The problem is when easier becomes the purpose.
Give Your Family Some Mary Moments
Families probably do not need a complicated program for this. We may just need deliberate moments when nothing demands our attention except what is right in front of us.
Sit and read. Ask your child what they noticed outside. Talk about the book they are reading. Take a walk without earbuds. Pray together. Play something that makes everyone look at each other. Call someone instead of sending the easy text. Go watch the game. Repair the friendship. Turn something off.
These are small choices, but they add up into attention habits. Attention habits eventually become character habits because what we repeatedly notice starts influencing what we love.
Luke 10 reminds us that we can be busy with good things and still miss what is better. Technology can help us accomplish a remarkable amount. Wisdom helps us know when we've done enough, and it is time to sit down.
Using Technology Wisely Through the 8 Great Smarts
Word Smart: Use tools to research or organize, then return to books, writing, conversation, Scripture, and the deeper language that grows through sustained attention.
Logic Smart: Ask what each device actually saves and whether the saved time is being invested intentionally or simply redirected into more consumption.
Picture Smart: Use technology to create, design, photograph, or explore visual ideas, then practice making something away from the screen.
Music Smart: Let technology provide access to music without making the device itself the center; sing, play, listen together, and experience music relationally.
Body Smart: Protect physical work, exercise, play, cooking, building, and face-to-face activity from being displaced by convenience.
Nature Smart: Use technology to help find the trail, identify the bird, or plan the trip—and then put it away long enough to experience the actual place.
People Smart: Prefer technology that supports real relationships rather than replacing the work of showing up, listening, forgiving, and knowing others.
Self Smart: Ask children to notice what happens inside them after extended technology use: Are they calmer, wiser, restless, jealous, distracted, energized, or empty?
Remember: However your child is smart, technology should ultimately help them participate more fully in life rather than retreat from it. The most important question may not be how efficiently a tool performs its task, but what kind of person your child becomes with the time, attention, and freedom the tool was supposed to give back.