Connect or Divide? How Technology Impacts Our Relationships with Andy Crouch

Series 1

Jan 26

Nancy Hicks Podcast Episodes -Andy Crouch.png

In many ways, technology can give us a sense of omnipotence. We can ship anything we need right to our door. We have countless pieces of information at our fingertips, and the simple ability to communicate with people thousands of miles away. But this God-like ability can have its pitfalls. Yes, technology has improved lives in countless ways, but has it taken away our ability for “real” connection and authenticity? Andy Crouch is a thought-leader in the tech space, and his books My Tech-Wise Life and The Tech-Wise Family (written with his daughter Amy!) focus on how our evolving relationships with technology have changed the way we relate to and communicate with each other—or don’t. Andy and Nancy share how to use tech and devices in healthy, intentional ways that enhance our lives, so we can bring our families and personal relationships closer together.

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Show Summary

Hi there, Nancy Hicks here. Welcome back to So What? Why It Matters.

Right now, we are in our first series talking about why it's so important to hone our communications skills. To have this topic right out of the chute forced me to go back to first things. It's like God was saying to me, “As you embark on this new means of communication, let's just review a couple of things.” The fantastic guests and my own time with God have really helped me crystallize that communication is ultimately about connection—about loving, about understanding and exchanging our stories and experiences.

And I was thinking about prayer. For example, one of my prayer team members actually said, “You know, isn't that what prayer is? I mean, it's communication.”

And we go, “Yeah, sure, we know that.”

But think about it: in prayer, listening and exchanging what we're hearing and what we're thinking about, and exchanging with God and with each other, prayer is really communication. It's all about connecting with God, ourselves, and others. So that's really been one of my private—now not-so-private—takeaways so far.

So this week we're going to step back and just look at one of the biggest tools that we use to communicate with each other in this modern world: our devices.

These days, if you communicate with just a couple of things like text and email, you're a little bit in the dark, in the dust. Because for many people today, it's not uncommon to be on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, FaceTime—and on it goes. Our phones are constantly pinging us, nagging us: “Drop everything you're doing right now! Pay attention to me!”

Oh, and that reminds me, here's my public service announcement: when we're on social media, you know that there are algorithms that show you only what they think you want to see. “Pay attention to this and this. I know Nancy Hicks will want to hear about this.” Say, for example, if anywhere on your social media, you've communicated that you like baking bread, they're going to feed you what you want. They're going to feed you everything you need to know about the art of baking bread. They're making sure that your whole world can be about bread.

So that means everything that you're thinking and what you are believing is getting fed right back to you, the very same messages. So you are literally staying in this echo chamber. “We all think alike. We all see the world the same way. Pay attention only to this.”

There are also dozens of filters that you can use to change the way you look, so you can make yourself look fabulous, make yourself the way you think people want to see you. Next thing you know, without knowing it, we can be living in our own alternate realities. And it's weird. Our own little worlds with the same people who think and feel and look the way we look and think and feel as well, who care only about the things we care about. We parrot the same stuff. We were not made for all this. In fact, I think we were made for more than just handing our attention over to our phones.

Can I just stop for a moment and tell you I am not anti-technology, I am not anti-phones, I am not anti, you know, development of the world. But we have got to look at this a little more clearly. Communicating well with others means using more than likes and filters and 140 characters. That's not what you use to create true connection with other people.

Technology is here to stay. We're not going to throw out our phones with the bathwater. In fact, I think if we view them just a little bit differently, maybe as tools instead of extensions of our brains, then we might stand a chance of gaining a little more joy, a little more peace and connection from our interactions online and off.

So to help guide us through all of this, I had the utter privilege of speaking with Andy Crouch. For years he was an editor and producer at Christianity Today. And right now he's a partner of theology and culture at Praxis, very cool company. They call themselves “a creative engine for redemptive entrepreneurship,” where they support founders, funders and innovators who are motivated by their faith to renew culture and love their neighbors. There's a new idea, right? Andy's written several books, and for our discussion today, there are two that you're going to want to check out his 2017 book called The Tech-Wise Family, and his brand new book co-written with his college-aged daughter Amy, called My Tech-Wise Life.

So Andy spent a lot of time thinking through what it means to create the lives and the families we want and how our use of technology contributes to that—or not. He offers a lot of wisdom for families and parents alike, and now with Amy, he's offering that advice to teens and young adults, showing them how to find meaning and wonder in the world.

I know that you're going to enjoy our conversation, and I hope it helps you evaluate how to create stronger connections with your friends and loved ones, even for now through a screen. So here's my conversation with Andy Crouch.

So What? Moments

Andy Crouch
There's a better life. No matter how challenging and difficult your situation is, the more you set aside the devices as a family and in your home, and the more you work hard with each other and play hard with each other, the more you'll discover--really--a better life. Right now, it's available.

Nancy
Don't expect things to come easily. Continue to work at the things that will really and truly move us through the mess and the hard stuff to connection again.

Thought-Provoking Quotes

“I sometimes talk about technology as promising us ‘easy everywhere,’ that what we want is for our lives to be really powerful on the one hand but really easy on the other hand. . . . That's really different from what human life was like until 100 years ago. Our great-grandparents, if they wanted to get something done in the world, they had to work hard, whether with their bodies or with their minds. They had to exert effort.” - Andy Crouch

“The introduction of technology was the introduction of a way to get what you want in the world with very little effort. That might sound really good, and I don't think it's all bad, but I think it has left us strangely alienated from even ourselves, from our own bodies.” - Andy Crouch

“You would think life would be getting better and better compared to our grandparents’ era. But it doesn't feel that way. I think it isn't, because technology is not giving us what we wanted.” - Andy Crouch

“Jesus, who Christians actually believe was God in some way, knew how to listen and He knew how to be present, even though He could have been anywhere. He knew how to hold back His power, even though He could've done anything. And that's what we lack, is the ability to channel our abilities in a way that really leads to other people's flourishing and our own flourishing.” - Andy Crouch

“When we did research for the original The Tech-Wise Family book, we asked kids, ‘If you could change one thing in your relationship with your parents, what would it be?’ The single most common response was, ‘I wish my parents would spend less time on their devices and more time talking to me.’” - Andy Crouch

“I curate my own consumption of media of all kinds, not to be uninformed—I'm well informed, I think—but to limit getting swept along in the current of outrage and violation and violence. There's so much of that. It's not just physical violence, it's words that degrade other people and deny the dignity of other people.” - Andy Crouch

“I can't imagine a better summary of what we ought to be putting out into the world than what Paul says in Galatians: "The fruit of the spirit, it's love, joy, peace, faithfulness, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control.” - Andy Crouch