Although I spent many years in the ministry of education, I never thought too much about the implications of the word itself, from the Latin, meaning “the process of leading out.” I am, though, thinking more about that literal meaning of education, now that time spent looking at screens is a major preoccupation for so many of us. 

Bishop Joel M. Konzen, SM

The baseline understanding of leading something out of ourselves is that we have used our time, in school and elsewhere, to amass a certain store of knowledge and experience that is useful in the tasks we are asked to perform, but also useful in the mental exercises we undertake, chief among those being prayer. 

The challenge in an age of screen dependence, reflected in an average of seven hours a day for Americans looking at a phone or a computer, is how to maintain a vigorous interior life, fueled especially by meditation and contemplative prayer, with so much media input and so little call or time for spiritual output. One measure reveals that American spend about five minutes a day in prayer, for an average of 27 minutes a week on another scale. Good news: if you’re attending Mass and truly praying, you’ve already got that average beat. 

What do I mean by a vigorous interior spiritual life? I mean time spent in silent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament or in a favorite prayer location where your mind can be allowed to concentrate on making a connection with God. I mean, too, time spent in organized prayer, such as the Liturgy of the Hours, in such a way as to invite prolonged meditation on the words and phrases and invocations that you are reciting. 

Growing up, I used to watch my aunt, who was mildly developmentally disabled, go through her evening prayers on numerous prayer cards that were stuffed into her hulking prayerbook. I can’t speak for the quality of her meditation on each, but I do know that she loved watching television, which she would not permit herself to do until she had finished her evening rosary and run through her well-used prayer cards. Having that kind of discipline is necessary for us today, when we have so many more electronic distractions vying for our attention. 

Although Lent is past, we can always benefit from a fast. Sister Nancy Usselmann, FSP, has written a slim volume entitled “Media Fasting: Six Weeks to Recharge in Christ.” In it, Sister Nancy doesn’t view our media options as objects of scorn but rather as something we need to use in a sensible proportion, just as we would with ice cream or dining in restaurants. With various social media streams in mind, the author proposes a range of possible fasts designed to return media use to a proportion that does not crowd out the life in Christ that we Catholics say we’re committed to. If you want to and can completely swear off the use of media that you have deemed a waste of time, you will no doubt rejoice at your newfound priorities. If you are only looking to inject some discipline into your media use, then design the means to keep in check your time on your phone and your other digital enticements. 

In his “Introduction to the Devout Life,” St. Francis de Sales writes, regarding ‘Pastimes and Recreations,’ “Above all … you must take particular care not to become absorbed in such amusements. No matter how innocent some kind of recreation may be, it is wrong to set heart and affections on it.”  

If we honestly assess our degree of dependence, we might have to conclude that a portion of our heart has been given over to our digital occupations that rightly belongs to God. Putting it back into the right order is urgent business.