A recent New York Times article entitled “Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone?” discussed the phenomenon of “going gray”: purposefully changing one’s phone screen from color to grayscale in order to make it a less alluring and addicting object. After a few days of going gray, the author notes, “It’s remarkable how well it has eased my…
Kids and screen time cause considerable parental angst these days—and for good reason. Research shows children spend on average seven hours a day glued to computer, tablet, smart phone, or television screens. This reality has created such a stir that last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) updated its decade-old recommendation on childhood screen time. Far from a radical…
The Franciscan contemplative Richard Rohr wrote that “contemplation is a long, loving look at what really is.” This orientation is powerfully countercultural. Forces – human, cultural, technological – make it difficult to adopt this contemplative stance; one must often stand outside of cultural norms to do so. The first challenge is with the word “long.” Rohr means sustained, deep, and…