Screening Screens

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Screening Screens

June 19, 2024

How should we think about screen as Christians? We hope this episode answers that exact questions. One thing that was omitted is that screens also contribute to blue light toxicity and degeneration of the eye. Screen time is also PHYSICALLY bad for your health.

Key texts:

* 1 John 2:16

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Transcript

Hello, For The King listeners. I am not your host, Rocky Ramsey. My name is Will Drzymski, a brother-in-Christ and friend of Rocky's, whom he has generously invited onto the show in order to verbally showcase my artwork to you in 50 seconds.

As an artist, I strive to accurately reflect the glory of God and everything that I paint, and through that process, I hope to flood as much of the earth as possible with paintings, which accurately proclaim the undeniable fact that Jesus is Lord and the creation which he made commands us to worship him. So if you would like to join with me in distributing clean, refreshing artwork showcasing the creativity of the God who made us, I would be overjoyed to have your help. I run my own website called Reflected Works, where I showcase the artwork I've done in the past, sell original paintings and prints, and take requests for unique commissions.

Once again, that's ReflectedWorks.com, all one word, and I'm looking forward to helping you further the kingdom of God right now here on this earth by putting some of your free wall space to productive use. Thank you very much for your kind attention, and now, enjoy the show. And I'll not apologize for this God of the Bible.

Hello, welcome to The King podcast. This is your host, Rocky Ramsey, and on this podcast, we proclaim the edicts of the King, namely and chiefly, that Yahweh reigns. It's been a while, folks, and we're back at it.

I got bad boy Bryce with me. How you doing, Bryce? You doing all right? I am doing fantastic. Good, good.

How are you? Doing well. I'm glad we're finally back doing an episode. It's been far too long, so sorry if you guys have been waiting.

I don't know how interested you guys. I mean, we got people that listen, but I don't know if you're, if you love the podcast so much that you're like thinking throughout the weeks like, man, he didn't upload this week. What's going on with him? So if you are thinking like that, I'm sorry.

And we're back at it, baby. We got a, we got some things in the world, like something. Yeah, yeah.

It's been, I guess, a little update, I guess, on what's going on in our lives, and I guess my life. We're doing a church plant. So that's been taking a lot of time, and I've kind of put the podcast on the back burner.

But it's things are pretty, you know, solid now. So we're going to, I'm going to try to start putting out more episodes and Bryce and I are going to try to come out with. Yeah, more episodes coming up here soon.

So, so stay tuned for that. All right. So for this episode, we're going to be discussing screen time.

And, you know, what do I mean by screens there? Any, any physical interface, technological interface with pixelated colors. So that could be a TV, a iPhone, an iPad, laptops, screens when you're at the gas station, you know, video games, all that, right? So there's, we're, we're pretty much inundated with screens 24 seven hour. We're almost like living in the matrix.

We're always having that, that, that screen in front of us. So the anchoring text, this, this episode, before we get into that topic about screens is going to be at first on to verse 16, which says, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. So holding it on that text specifically, the lust of the eyes, it's not from the Father, it's from the world.

And what Bryce and I would like to argue this evening is, is that fact that the screen time is tantalizing and encouraging and, you know, getting us wrapped up in the lust of the, the eyes. So that's kind of how I want to set it up and frame it here, Bryce. Do you have any other thoughts? Yeah.

And we're talking about like a wisdom issue, not like an issue of a, like not that we're not even going to make the claim that screen time's inherently sinful. We're just going to make a claim of wisdom that it can tend to have lust of the eyes. Just like the fruit that God made of the knowledge of good and evil is in and of itself evil.

God made it. He said everything was good. But there was wisdom to be displayed for a time and withholding it from Eve.

So that's kind of, I guess more or less, that's what we're referring to. No, that's perfect. Thanks for the ad, Matt.

That's a good, to help frame it. Again, I guess one other point before we get into it, my wife, where this kind of was birthed out of us, there's this podcast my wife was listening to called The Minimal Mom Podcast. And it was, if you look it up, it's called The Simple Steps to Rescue Your Child from Digital Overload.

So she brought out some good stuff. I'm not really familiar with that podcast. My wife was sent it to from somebody else and she just thought the episode was good.

So I'm not wholesome endorsing kind of what that lady's talking about, but that was the episode that kind of set up for me to start contemplating in my own life how screens have impacted me. So as we get into this, this is going to be first an anecdotal, like emotional connection to this issue with screens for, and Bryce corroborated this too. So you can kind of give your end of things, Bryce, as I kind of described this.

But the first thing this lady was talking about that resonated with me is screens for a young child's mind is devastating. And some reasons that she brought up was the screens and what they're designed to do is to capture as much of your attention as possible. And how do screens do that? Well, there's going to be like, let's say it's a cartoon.

Cartoons on the screen are designed to have these real quick scene changes where you have one scene that's like, there's a lot of action. It's super colorful. There's a story going on and you're really interested in it.

And then all of a sudden, boom, the whole screen changes and it rearranges itself in a millisecond. Now you have a new scene. You're in a brand new place.

But in real life, to get to a brand new place, you have to drive your car for 15 minutes to see a brand new landscape. Or you got to walk over here and it takes four or five minutes to walk over there, right, to get a new landscape. So hopefully that kind of like, if you, I hope you can see what I'm saying with that.

These real quick scene changes take you places faster than any human has ever been able to be taken before. Besides using your own imagination in your mind to be taken places, to have your own story in your mind as you read a book, per se. You can take yourself places through the mind, but it engages your mind rather than the screen is forcing you into its story.

You're being called up into it, not to engage with it in a creative way, but rather be enslaved to it. And you're only going to be taken where that story goes rather than you directing the story in your mind. Now, I think that sound and I think that's true.

I think even when I was younger and with all the video games and different cartoons and stuff I would watch, I would say that's very, very true. I've seen kids have that kind of intense desire to watch what's on the screen because of these things. Anything on there, Bryce? I'm going to keep going if you're good.

One thing that I don't know, I don't know how much this relates, but we constantly have in our society people who, like in our generation growing up playing video games, and they have this conception that for some reason they're smarter because of the video games that they've played. Like the motor skills in your thumb and like, oh, I'm having to figure out how to accomplish all these things. And this is anecdotal.

This isn't necessarily like a tautology or a deductive argument, but every single person that I know who plays video games is an idiot. Like I haven't met one person who is some sort of outstanding critical thinker just because on the basis of them playing video games, every single time they've been idiots. So that's anecdotal, but yeah, like that's just like a fundamental lie.

Like you're not actually benefited necessarily. Yeah. Yeah, that's good.

No, man. Okay. That's good, Bryce.

I appreciate that. Now, building on this issue even more is the actual anatomy of the screen, the kind of colors that are presented to you in the screen. It will be different for an adult brain, its interaction with the colors, but for a child's brain, they are just now being able to decipher what colors are.

It's like when you're a kid and you're first able to eat something, like you grow your teeth and you're able to have solid food instead of breast milk anymore. And it's like, whoa, look at all these new tastes, right? But eventually it grows like a little more dull to you, I guess. Same thing when we think about colors with screens as kids initially are very enamored by bright colors and different things in the world, right? So when you have a screen that has the kind of color saturation that is completely unnatural, you won't find it in nature anywhere.

The closest you would get throughout history would be a piece of artwork. That is why art used to be amazing. You could get up to a piece of art that had these really rich oils or watercolor paints and the colors were vibrant.

And the closest you might get is a flower or a sunset in the natural world, but you get up on a painting and it's like, whoa, that is immaculate and how beautiful the colors are in that. But now we have these screens that are unparalleled. So when a little kid is being introduced to this, they cannot get their eyes off of that screen because it is the most vibrant colors they've ever seen.

It beats out nature. We've made something unnatural. So I think that's another point to be said here.

And we're going to connect this even more to kind of like its effect on the brain, but that's kind of the setup of physically what a screen is and why it does what it does to especially a kid's mind. Anything else you wanted to add on, Bryce? Yeah. And just as like an analogy there, it's like the same thing with food.

Like whenever you like synthetically do like do something with food, it's just quick fixes. And it's the same you're talking about here with this, you know, hyperpixilation. You know, you said outdoing nature, not that it's actually like doing something more aesthetic or more beautiful than nature.

But what it's doing is it's offering a quick hit of being better. Just like same thing with psychedelics, right? Psychedelics are this quick hit of into a super natural. Yeah, it's above nature.

It's something that's heightening nature. You know, people like to talk about the heightened senses when you're on psychedelics. Yeah, it's just a quick.

It's a quick fix. It's, you know, everything's dopamine. It's releasing dopamine and getting back to your normal state.

So, you know, we ditched coffee in the mornings and now we're drinking bang energy drinks to get that quick fix. You know what I'm saying? So, yes, no, that's a better way to put it. It's nature is when it's actually taking its rightful place, like nothing can rival it because God's imprint is on it.

But like you said, it takes a second to get out and see a sunset. You have to get to the right spot where you can really look at it. But a screen is so easy and you can just you can get off in there and you can have beautiful colors like you would at a sunset at a in a moment's notice, you know.

So, yeah, it is a it is a false. It's the lust of the eyes, which is of the world. It's not of God.

God has made beautiful things for us to look at. But we've made screens and we've made them in such a way that the goal is to get eyes on the screen as much as possible, because what are eyes? Eyes are consumers, possible money signs. So if you get people, if you get people so enraptured in the screens and then what happens, what comes across the screen after the cartoon, there's an advertisement.

And all of a sudden you see an advertisement for a Capri Sun. Oh, mommy and daddy, can I get a Capri Sun, right? And then now you have money signs. You have money involved.

So that's what the attention is. Attention is money. They want your attention.

And that's why they've designed screens to gather as much attention as possible for the economic incentive. Right. Well, the status of our being as God's created is we're temporal beings.

So like mankind's trying to shrink up our time. Yeah. Like this kind of goes back to our podcasts who did Unleisure and Laziness.

Yeah. Laziness. Like we need to be slowing down and it's like a satanic almost plan to try to speed us up.

Yeah. It's the same thing happening with the yeah. The quick.

So you have to you have to spend the time to realize and recognize. Like, for example, with your wife, it takes time to grow in an intimate relationship with her. Right.

But lust in terms of sexual lust, it's a quick satisfaction. Yeah. Right.

But there's no lasting. You know, as soon as you leave her, you're you're done with her. Yeah.

There's no lasting like affection there. And it's the same thing with these pixelated screens. That's why we're trying to attribute it to being less of the eyes.

It's this quick fix that you're getting with your eyes, but it's not a lasting benefit. And we need to be spending the time slowing down and actually, you know, witnessing kind of like you're talking about, like take a second and walk outside. Right.

Yeah. Have that time lapse from walking to the side and look at the sunset. Exactly.

That's good. OK, now let's now let's take this up a notch. If it's already been a little bit like, OK, wow, these guys are kind of on to something.

They're getting they're hitting a good point here. OK, let's let's even let's up the ante even more because what this lady brought out the podcast and my wife was talking to me about this is what really triggered my mind and why I thought it's it's worth doing a podcast over because of how devastating it is in terms of relationships. Now, why is it devastating with relationships? We just had Mother's Day not too long ago and we were trying to think of some stories about our mom and I was having trouble remembering things in my mom.

Like she talks about, oh, I did this and this and this. I did so many things for you guys. I'm like, yeah, that's awesome.

Like those things sound great, but like I just don't remember. You know, I don't have memories from my childhood. And I always felt like something was wrong with me.

Like I didn't care enough. So I didn't develop these memories because I just I wanted to go do what I want to do. But when my wife was telling me about this podcast about the screen time, this lady was was harping on how screens because of all the things that we just said, how they outcompete in terms of pleasure, all these other things in the world because of what Bryce was just getting out with the quick hit.

You make memories based on enjoyment. So the memories you're going to have of your mom or dad are going to be the moments where you feel closest to them and you're having a great time. Right.

That's how memories are developed in times of intense pleasure or closeness, relational purity, that kind of thing. Now, why can't Bryce and I remember our childhood because our entire childhood was revolved around and dominated by screens and video games. So all my memories are actually playing video games with my friends or watching some movie or something.

And there are some I have some memories of like vacations and things like that. But wow, you have to go on a cruise on a vacation in order to outcompete video games. So you have to do you have to spend thousands of dollars and do something drastic to just outcompete a video game to make a memory with your family.

That's really sad. That's terrible. We don't want our kids to have that kind of existence.

It's bad that I can't remember my childhood very well. That's not good. And it kind of it's sad for me to think about.

And I know it's definitely pains my mom. Like why don't I why don't my kids remember any of these like awesome memories I try to create for them? Well, it's not because you did anything wrong. It's because you allow us to play video games, which I guess in that sense, it was wrong.

But she was ignorant. She didn't understand what what it was the first. You know, Bryce, honestly, me and you are like the first generation to ever like go through screens like that.

Like the iPod touch came out when me and you were just really kind of like our our teams, you know. Yeah. So we're really the first generation to experience with this and mobbed it.

You know, she didn't understand. But the point is you cannot compete with these quick fixes when you let your kids do that. So they're not going to have memories of you.

They're not you. They're not going to feel very close to you. It's going to be very difficult for you to have your kids have an actual memory connection to you in terms of closeness and good memories when you're constantly being out competed and shirking your responsibility to give your kids a good existence to the screen and video games.

So I think it's very important that you highly regulate the amount of screen time your kid gets to make it virtually non-existent, maybe once a week at the tops. And then as they get older, like Bryce and I, at our age, our minds are developed now where those screens and the colors, they're not as tantalizing. I'm not as like enamored by video games.

You know, when I see somebody playing a video game, I'm not like, oh, man, I wish I could play that. It's not really interesting to me anymore because I have an adult brain and I'm not as interested in that kind of thing anymore in terms of the screen. So, yeah, what do you think, Bryce? I kind of went for a while there, but.

Yeah, I want to. So, yeah, that applies to children. But I still I would still want to go beyond what you're saying a little bit, even though, yes, you do have an adult mind.

It doesn't affect you as much like they're like we all suffer of this of the YouTube syndrome where we'll get on YouTube. Yeah. And just won't get off of it.

Yeah. You know, especially dads, you know, we go on the toilet and just, you know, we get our watch an MMA watching MMA and we just get in. Yeah.

You know, the NBA finals are going on. You're watching the highlights and it's like, okay, well, let me finish watching this. Oh, other video.

This other thing popped up. Let me click that. So we still suffer from the same thing.

But like, yeah, it's so yeah, we need to be cautious of that because the loss of the eyes definitely applies to us. But I agree. I agree.

Like what you're talking about with kids. Something Juliana and I have noticed. So we have a toddler.

And people constantly say, oh, the terrible twos. Yeah. These are terrible.

No, no, they haven't been at all. And I think the reason that most people have this conception of the terrible twos is because they, they throw an iPad in front of the kid's face. They're constantly letting them watch cartoons.

These kids, like you're saying, are so tantalized with it. And they're, they're, they're so disinterested with the outside world. Like Jules and I were talking about this.

Anastasia can just go in the living room with all she has. Like for instance, this today, she was in the living room. All she had was this small red rocking chair, like a kid size.

And that's, you sat there and just play with that for 30 minutes, like moving it around, rocking in it. And like, you know, no, but that's extremely odd because no kid does that. But I would, I would submit the reason that no kids do that is because all these parents are constantly putting these stumbling blocks and temptations in their kids.

Yeah. So, okay. Now your kid can't sit down for more than five seconds without having to have a change of scenery, like you get in cartoons.

So now you go to church on Sunday morning, your kid, your kid's not able to sit down. Your kid's not like Anastasia can sit there for an hour and a half long service and be fine. She's okay.

And I'm like, obviously this is the grace of God and there's different temperaments in kids. I'm not rejecting that, but I do think a huge contributing factor to it is we just do not watch TV. We don't let her have screens.

We don't let her have all like we are minimalist with toys. She doesn't just have a thousand toys. She's had a couple things to play with.

Um, so yeah, I think we have, we've created this issue for us that now, okay, kids can't sit in the worship service. So now we have to have kids church and okay, like kids are so crazy. We can't have a lot because you know, how can one mom take care of six kids throughout the day when the dad's not at work? So now let's just send them to public school.

You have you got a homeschool six kids or okay. Um, six kids. Are you kidding me? We can't even take care of one.

We're not even going to have a second kid. So like this actually does have like in terms of like an existential reality of, uh, the way this affects the parents and their desires and future kids. Uh, what the things that these parents do with their kids, the way they treat them, uh, having a temptation of being frustrated with your kid, because they constantly need to see an every change and you don't like there's all these issues, kind of like what you talked about that breaks up relationships that breaks up the family dynamic.

Um, so yeah, I mean, there's just so many factors here and you know, today like we have a six or F uh, almost a four month old and uh, you know, it's Sunday. We had, uh, there's a TV, TV was on and uh, little verity just immediately like locks in on it. Yeah, exactly.

She's just now starting to like have a good site being able to see things in color. So she's just dialed in on it, you know, so it just had huge effects. And yeah, if that continues on, then it'll deeply affect our family.

Yep. No, I think that's, that's probably as we wrap up here. Um, I think that's the big takeaway that we would like you guys to walk away with is you really need to be wise about the screen time because it's going to have implications for your relationships.

That's the biggest issue. And I appreciate you saying that, Bryce, because if you're constantly being out competed by a screen or video games in terms of entertainment for your kids, then why would they, yeah, they're going to be terrible for you. There are, they are going to be terrible too is because they want to have fun.

And the only way they can have fun is the screen. You're not fun. Why do they want to come play with mommy and daddy? Why do they, why would they, why would I listen to mommy and daddy? They don't even, I don't even have fun with them.

I'm not, you know, they won't feel close to you. They won't feel like there's trust with you, you know? Um, yeah. So I think it's, it's going to break things up a lot.

Yeah. And one more point, uh, you kind of hit that this earlier, it just completely destroys creativity, completely creativity. And when creativity is on the decline, then stupidity is on the incline.

It's just, yeah, it's just a reality. Like we, our generation, like, I don't even know how we're going to have leaders. Like, I don't even know how we're going to have people who are like running companies because everybody is just so stupid.

Yeah. They have not been taught out of public education has destroyed them. But I mean, this plays a factor as well.

Like kids are just, there's no creativity, no imagination. And when there's no creativity, there's no thinking. Yeah.

Yeah. I guess, uh, more practical advice, Bryce and I would, um, definitely submit to you the alternative, the way that kids have been cultivated into creativity while having fun all throughout human history is reading books. And when you read a book, the author is going to, is going to kind of regulate the creativity to some extent, but you and your mind create the scene and what the characters look like and the way they're saying it.

Oh, so-and-so said this sternly. Okay. How would his face have looked at when it was looked like when he said it sternly, right? So like, as you're reading the story, you're conjuring it up in your mind.

So, so books are a much better way to cultivate creativity while having fun. And you can read books to your kids. You can't read a cartoon to your kid, but you can read a book to your kids.

So then there's more relationship building. Yeah. Another really good one is you can go just on Facebook Marketplace or just drive around for a bit.

And I guarantee you, you can find a tire, go to, go to Home Depot and go just buy some rope and just have a tire swing. Yeah. Yeah.

That's good. Super cheap. And your kids will have fun with that for hours.

Yeah. I just hung up, hung up one with my friend and his four kids were, yeah, on it forever. Just loving it.

Let them go outside, let them hurt themselves and, and let them take dominion of the world and have creativity. Amen. That's awesome.

That's a good note to end on. All right. Well, we're back, folks.

This is, hopefully this episode was a nice, started off with a bang, getting, getting back in the swing of things. And we thank you guys for sticking with us and listening. Thanks, Bryce, for making time, brother.

Let it in. To the King of the Ages and more invisible. Oh my God.

We honor the Lord forever and ever. Amen. Slowly.

Yeah. Amen.