Redeeming Your Time in a World of Endless Scrolling
“Don’t waste your life!” was the convicting quote by John Piper that I scribbled down on scrap paper and plastered on my refrigerator where my tired eyeballs would see it during my busiest years of parenting.
As a mom of many young children, I wanted to live faithfully for Christ and make Him known. I didn’t want to give my life to trivial things, so I posted reminders to myself that I couldn’t miss and wouldn’t forget in the warp and weft of daily living.
That was over 20 years ago, and though the children have grown and our family has expanded to include in-laws and 9 beautiful grandchildren, I‘ve learned that in every season of life, we are still faced with choices about how we will spend our days. As women who want to lean into faithfulness to the Lord and His purpose for our lives, I find that many of the women I speak to are evaluating how much time we spend on our phones.
The Subtle Danger of the Scroll
In many ways, our phone is an all-in-one marvel. It acts as our mailbox, map, camera, calendar, dictionary, encyclopedia, bookbag, Bible, personal assistant, weatherman, television, radio, and more.
Every morning, I check our family chat for pictures of our grandkids’ sweet faces or antics. I love the chatter of my family, the banter of jokes, opinions, and discussions about all aspects of life. I look forward to exchanging funny memes with my sisters, mom, and friends. I love connecting with like-minded women, with shared values and interests through social media, blogging, Voxer, and groups. These are all wonderful blessings of technology.
But they say every rose has its thorn, and the barb here is the deceptiveness of the addictive nature of the scroll.
How could we waste our lives in our older years?
By scrolling our time away, we are being too devoted to our phones.
There’s a cost to being captivated by endless entertainment, news feeds, and the amusement of random reels.
An anti-biblical worldview may influence us. We may become desensitized to things Scripture forbids. We may be swayed by the deceptive nature of false teaching, which says that there is another way to do life besides God’s way. The passive nature of scrolling means our guards are often down.
How Scrolling Shapes What We Believe
Yet, Scripture exhorts us to renew our minds and align them with Biblical truth. (Rom. 12:2). This is an active monitoring. An awareness that evaluates and questions and runs everything through the sieve of Scripture. Rather than passive acceptance, we must “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” (2 Cor. 10:5)
Scrolling comes easier than the spiritual discipline of careful Bible study, and being distracted by lesser things often means that we neglect that “one needful thing.”(Luke 10:42) (Have you ever had time to check your messages and Instagram, but not read your Bible?)
Maybe you’re looking for moderation and want to break up with the flow of constant too-much-information, or have simply grown tired of the hostile norms of online culture.
Maybe you feel the pull of its hold on you, like the spell of the Green Lady, the “Queen of the Underland” who lures Prince Rillian into her Underworld captivity in C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair. Her tools were deceptive, pleasant ones: the soft, hypnotic music of her thrumming mandoyn, the sweet, drowsy smoke of her fire, her pleasant, cooing tone of voice, and repetition. Always repetition. “There never was any world but mine…”
Prince Rillian was not chained physically, except during his hour of enchantment. His captivity was a brainwashing and a rewriting of reality. Social media works similarly, and over time, our sense of reality can shift. It rarely assaults us outright.
In fact, it uses pleasantries to draw us in: beautiful visuals, repeated narratives, heartwarming stories, and beautiful music. It promises quick access to important events, worldwide connectivity, knowledge, acceptance, and activism. And while we may appreciate the beautiful parts of it, and I do, we must be careful to recognize that we are being shaped by all of it. The online world is its own place, and much of it is not true.
Much of what we read is not human. One study by cybersecurity experts (entitled the Bad Bot Report) reveals that bots officially surpassed human traffic in 2024 and that AI-generated content is becoming dominant. Some estimate that up to 57% of web-based text is already generated by AI.
Mindlessly scrolling in this environment is like enrolling in the school of post-modern, humanistic teaching at least, and billionaire-funded propaganda at worst. Maybe just knowing this will help you close your apps and choose to spend time investing in the real people around you. Maybe just this one small change will be the next right step to help you not waste your life.
Be Shaped by Scripture, Not by the Scroll
As Christian women, who are redeemed and reconciled to Christ, we want to be formed and influenced by the Truth. We need to prioritize daily Scripture reading, prayer, and meditating throughout the day on the truth of God’s Word. We want to redeem our time and spend our energy loving others and showing them Christ.
The Bible tells us that we become what we behold. (2 Cor. 3:18)
May we choose wisely in every season and be women shaped by Scripture, not by the scroll.
