In his famous March 2017 book release, Irresistible, The Rise of Addictive Technology and The Business of Keeping you Hooked, author Adam Altar mentions a line from an addictive recovery therapist. “Once your brain is pickled, it can never go back to being a cucumber.” In other words you cannot unpickle a pickle! 

WOW! This is a powerful illustration that Altar’s uses to discuss the power of technology and its effect upon our daily lives. Neuro-scientist are stating they simply do not know the long term impacts upon humans. There are a number of studies that have begun on adolescents and are following them through their twenties. What is obvious to researchers is our social behaviors and interactions have definitely changed and in many cases are pickled! The famous news program, 60 Minutes, did a feature on “Brain Hacking” that is a great segway into this discussion.

Adam Altar’s reports that New York Times journalist Nick Bilton reports Steve Jobs as saying in 2010 that his children had never used an iPad. Jobs reported that we limit our children’s use of technology in our home. Bilton further discusses other Tech Giants such as Chris Anderson former editor of Wired stated that he limits his children’s use of technology in the home admitting to Bilton, “…because we have seen the dangers of technology first-hand.” Evan Williams, a founder of Blogger, Twitter, and Medium has bought hundreds of books for his two sons, but has refused to give them an iPad. Bilton would go on to write in his article, it seemed as if the people producing tech products were following the cardinal rule of drug dealing: never get high on your own supply!

We all have addictions on some level. The science is compelling, our brain fundamentally changes by means of repeated stimuli – before your realize it, you brain becomes pickled in that area. You cannot unpickle a pickle!

You may ask the question, “So what is the answer?” I would suggest a simple starting point of imposing a DIGITAL SUNRISE and SUNSET! Do not touch you digital technology until a specific time to start your day. Turn off your use of it at a designated time in the evening! Before you send hate mail, I am not discussing emergency calls. That said, ask yourself one question, “How do likes, streaks, and tweets make my life better?” You decide! What does this mean for the faith community in attempting to communicate an ancient eternal message in a tech world? That is a blog post for another day.