☀️gracious summertime strategies: mud pies + social media

the good + the grace

Phone-free students at the sea

Dear grace-girl,

I spent four days last week at our church's annual Student Staff Retreat with 48 teenagers who didn't have their phones. No distractions. No posting on Instagram or checking likes. No interrupted conversations. All presence. All board games. All face-to-face conversations.

As lovely as that sounds, it was hard for many of them. They felt disconnected from mom and dad and disoriented, because What do I do when I don't have a phone? Do I look like a loser if no one is talking to me, and I don't have a phone to distract me or make me feel important?

And teenagers aren't the only ones who feel this way. We feel the vice-like hold our phones have on us, and we don't like it. We long to get a grip on our phone usage, specifically the kind that involves distracted scrolling.

In a completely unscientific poll I did on Instagram, 63% of you spend 4+ hours a day on your phone while 5% spent less than two hours a day. If our phones were taken away for four days, I imagine many of us would feel just as untethered and disoriented as the teens I spent time with last week.

So how can we graciously get a grip on our screen time? (And by “screen time” I mean time spent scrolling, shopping, skim-reading, not the ways we use our phone for work or health.) You asked for Gracious Summertime Strategies with how to handle your screen time as the #1 vote-getter, so what healthy strategies can we use to interact with our devices? Because…

We want to handle our phones well because

we know we are meant for more.

C.S. Lewis said we prefer mud pies to a holiday at the sea, and social media scrolling is our modern-day mud pie. The Lord offers us a holiday of oceanic connection, belonging, love, and service. We are women who don't want to settle. Having said that, there's no need to shame ourselves for our mud-pie making, AND there's also no sense in staying there.

Here are five big-picture ways to get a grip on your screen time:

1. Name beliefs or attitudes you might hold abound your phone use. For example, you might say that you believe you're on your phone “too much” or that a better mom would engage more with her kids and less with her phone. Maybe you'd say all your screen time is valid and there are no issues. Whatever you believe about your phone and how you use it, write that down.

2. Get your GPS. How much time do you truly spend on your phone (or the apps that cause you the most shame or guilt)? You might be surprised by how much or how little time you spend, because we humans aren't always the best at gauging time (I often think I've spent 5 minutes on Insta, when it's been 20, while also believing it will take me 14 hours to clean out my closet when it actually takes only 90 minutes.) Use your Screen Time app to help you figure out actual time vs. perceived time.

3. Paint a picture of where you want to go. At the end of the day, how would you have liked to…

For more big-picture ways to get a grip on your screen time, go here

If you'd like some ultra-practical ways to cut down on your screen time, try these:

1. Set a limit using Screen Time or use the timer on your phone to limit your usage. Then don't ignore them!

2. If you're scrolling seven days a week, pick…

For more ultra-practical ways to cut down on screen time, go here

Friend, I'm guessing your heart is to love your people well in this season, and perhaps you feel like your screen time is getting in the way of that. Pay attention to that nudging. Then investigate whether it's true by looking at the numbers and asking the Lord what He thinks.

Grace-girls are honest about where they struggle and where they excel. Let's wield our phones wisely, so we can swim in the seaside holiday of love, joy, hope, and peace the Lord gives to us.

Go in grace + peace + do good things,

jill

Gracious Summertime Strategies:

Handling our phones

Go in grace + peace + do good things

Jill

Find grace with me on Instagram

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South, Texas 77379, United States