The Tech-Wise Family

The Core Challenge of Modern Technology

Modern "technology" differs significantly from traditional "tools". Tools were limited to specific places and required patience and practice. Technology, in contrast, often "works by itself" and is "everywhere," simplifying tasks to an extreme degree, aiming for "easy everywhere".

This rapid change means previous generations' wisdom for parenting and family life doesn't fully apply to today's technological landscape. Parents feel overwhelmed and overmatched by the "deluge of devices".

While technology offers genuine benefits and makes life easier, it often fails to make our lives better in terms of wisdom and courage. It can reduce the need for effort and engagement, which are crucial for developing human capacities.

The Book's Vision: Finding Technology's "Proper Place"

The goal is to discover the "proper place" for technology in family life, ensuring it supports connection, wisdom, and courage, rather than hindering these vital human experiences. This involves discernment, not a simple formula, as the "proper place" varies for each family and life stage.

Technology is in its proper place when it:

Helps us bond with real people we love.

Start great conversations.

Helps us take care of our fragile bodies.

Helps us acquire skill and mastery in human culture.

Helps us cultivate awe for the created world.

Ultimately, this means using technology with intention and care, as it does not stay in its proper place on its own and can easily create "an extraordinary mess" in our lives. This approach is "radical" and often counter-cultural.

Ten Commitments for a Tech-Wise Family

Part 1: Foundational Decisions

**Choosing Character: Develop Wisdom and Courage Together as a Family
**

A family's purpose is the formation of persons, specifically wisdom and courage. Wisdom is understanding that guides action in a complex world. Courage is the conviction and character to act faithfully despite difficulty, pain, or danger.

Family is where we discover our foolishness, are seen and forgiven, and loved, which helps us grow in empathy and self-sacrifice.

Developing wisdom and courage requires being known and loved by others—people who see our foolishness and cowardice but are committed to our flourishing. This often happens most fully within the family and the wider community of the church.

**Shaping Space: Fill the Center of Your Home with Things That Reward Skill and Active Engagement
**

The "emotional center" of the home should be filled with things that foster creativity, relationship, and active engagement, pushing "easy everywhere" technology to the edges.

This is akin to having a "hearth" (demanding, engaging, beautiful) rather than a "furnace" (effortless, disengaged) as the home's focal point.

Examples include works of art, books, musical instruments, craft tables, board games, and a dining table with candles. These items require skill and active participation, offering deep rewards.

The aim is to make the central gathering area a place where "easy everywhere" technology is harder to find, nudging family members toward creating culture rather than passively consuming it. Children, especially, thrive on raw materials and creative opportunities rather than simple, buzzing electronic toys.

**Structuring Time: Embrace Rhythms of Work and Rest (Sabbath)
**

Human beings are designed for a rhythm of work (fruitful transformation through effort and skill) and rest (restoration and worship).

Technology often disrupts this pattern, leading to "toil" (excessive, fruitless labor) and "leisure" (fruitless escape from labor that doesn't restore the soul or relationships).

The book proposes a "minimal pattern of Sabbath": turning off devices for one hour a day, one day a week, and one week a year.

Daily Sabbath: Often the dinner hour, free from devices, fostering conversation and connection.

Weekly Sabbath: One full day dedicated to rest, worship, feasting, and play, disconnecting from work and digital leisure. This offers a "silver lining" as simply turning off devices can bring everything to a "beautiful halt".

Annual Sabbath: At least one week entirely free of devices for deep rest and creating lasting memories, emphasizing that true rest should not involve work accumulating.

This practice confronts the "slavery of the imagination" that makes many feel perpetually captive to demands and devices, offering a path to real freedom and an "infusion of intentionality".

Part 2: Daily Life Commitments

**Waking and Sleeping: Wake Before Devices, Devices "Go to Bed" Before You
**

Humans need substantial sleep for physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual flourishing. Devices do not.

Technology, especially constant illumination and portable screens, has thoroughly disrupted sleep patterns. The bright blue light from screens can particularly interfere with sleep, and constant notifications feed anxieties and interrupt rest.

The discipline involves parking screens in a central place, far from bedrooms, before bedtime. Using a simple alarm clock instead of a smartphone is recommended.

In the morning, it's encouraged to engage with the physical world (stretch, shower, make coffee) before checking devices, allowing for moments of discovery and gratitude.

**Learning and Working: Aim for "No Screens Before Double Digits"
**

Humans are body and soul together, and the richest learning experiences are embodied ones. Physical activity and engagement with a complex, three-dimensional world are crucial for brain development, memory, and skill acquisition.

Early and pervasive screen exposure is considered a "damaging epidemic" because screens simplify the world, ask too little, and teach children to quickly become bored with anything less stimulating.

The commitment is to provide children with ten formative years rooted in "real, embodied, difficult, rewarding learning" before regular screen engagement. This includes eliminating passive and unaccompanied screen time, and challenging children to engage in tactile, creative play.

A child can learn to use an iPad in an instant, but this is not "computer literacy" in a meaningful sense; true literacy involves complex algorithmic thinking, which can be taught later.

**The Good News about Boredom: Use Screens for a Purpose, and Use Them Together
**

Boredom is a "perfectly modern condition", a crucial warning sign that our capacity for wonder and delight is depleted. Constant technological entertainment, designed to be vivid and fast-moving, ironically makes us more prone to boredom by desensitizing us and raising expectations for constant stimulation.

This constant distraction undermines our ability to appreciate the "abundance of the ordinary" in the real world.

The solution is to use screens on purpose and rarely, rather than aimlessly and frequently. When screens are used, it should be together, for specific creative purposes, leading to wonder and exploration rather than mere distraction.

It's important to avoid entertaining children with anything adults find unsatisfying, choosing content that is "tasty and nutritious" for all ages.

**Car Time is Conversation Time
**

Car rides can be a unique setting for deep conversations about important matters, fostering connection and allowing conversations to overcome the "seven-minute barrier" needed to move beyond superficiality.

Filling car time with screens as pacifiers prevents the development of patience and misses opportunities for rich interaction.

Instead, families can engage in activities like making up songs, playing alphabet games, listening to audiobooks together, or simply conversing. This perseverance in confined quarters can eventually bring out the best in family members.

**Naked and Unashamed: Spouses Have One Another's Passwords, and Parents Have Total Access to Children's Devices
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Modern technology has made sex "easy everywhere," disconnecting it from consequences and commitments, largely through contraception and accessible pornography. Pornography, fueled by boredom and emptiness, promises easy pleasure but often leads to addiction and hinders real intimacy.

The best defense against pornography and its "easy everywhere" lies in a full family life rooted in wisdom and courage.

Practically, this means accountability, transparency, and visibility within the family. Spouses should have each other's passwords and feel free to ask anything. Parents should have total access to children's devices to provide oversight.

This shared access reinforces a "moral framework" and dependence on one another, helping family members to be their best selves and cutting off the "energy supply for cherishing and cultivating patterns of sin".

Part 3: What Matters Most

**Why Singing Matters: Learn to Sing Together, Rather Than Letting Recorded and Amplified Music Take Over
**

Communal singing has declined, as we've shifted from making music to consuming it. Recorded and amplified music, while a gift, can subtly teach us to be passive consumers of worship rather than active participants.

Singing is a fundamental form of worship, combining heart, mind, soul, and strength. It is a path to true wisdom and courage by engaging our whole being in praise and truth.

Families are encouraged to sing at home (e.g., during holidays, chores, bedtime) and to involve children from an early age in church worship that models full-throated, congregational singing. This prepares us for a life of "joy and burden" in bearing God's image.

**In Sickness and in Health: Show Up in Person for the Big Events of Life
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While technology offers the "simulation of presence at a distance" (e.g., video calls), these are a "palest shadow" of being physically present. Physical presence offers a thousand times more information and connection through all senses.

Being present in person for life's unique and unrepeatable moments – especially births, deaths, weddings, and times of vulnerability – is essential for grasping their full weight, joy, and sorrow.

These moments confront us with the limits and fragility of our bodies, something technology often tries to delay or erase. Embracing these realities and caring for one another in person fosters wisdom, courage, and profound love.

The ultimate goal is to build a life dependent on one another, transcending technology's easy solutions, and culminating in being "fully present at our moments of greatest vulnerability" and "dying in one another's arms".