Who’s putting a two-hour limit on you?

Meta just agreed to pay up to $17 billion for hooking our kids. But the research on adults says the more dangerous phone habit may be the one in your pocket—and mine.

Two weeks ago I felt something I don't often feel reading the news. Vindicated.

Meta agreed to pay up to $17 billion to settle claims from nearly every state in the country that it knowingly engineered Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to children—and buried its own research proving it. Part of the deal was setting a default two-hour daily limit for minors as well as night restrictions. Also an independent auditor would be hired to monitor compliance and effectiveness of these measures.

Every parent and grandparent who ever fought over a phone at the dinner table just got told, in a federal courtroom, that they weren't crazy. And I'll admit it. I enjoyed that.

Then I had another thought... That’s fine for the kids, but who's putting a two-hour limit on me?

Nobody sued anybody on our behalf.

Pew surveyed nearly ten thousand American adults this summer. Just over half said they spend too much time on their smartphone. One in four said they use it "almost constantly." Forty-five percent had tried to cut back in the past year—and of those, only one in four said it really worked.

As I read this, Paul’s words in Romans 7 echoed in my mind: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Romans 7:15, NIV).

So I went looking for what phones actually do to adults. Three of the most problematic habits are:

• Compulsive checking—reaching for the phone without a conscious decision to do so.

• Phone in bed—spending more than an hour in front of the screen before sleep.

• Endless scrolling— not just using the phone to check the weather, but endlessly scrolling through posts on social media.

Nobody buys a phone with the intent of starting these habits. You just notice at some point that you been doing these things…maybe for years.

The habit you never chose

I wanted to know what this means for our faith and specifically I looked at people’s prayer life? It turns out that what predicts a thinner prayer life isn't how much you use your phone. It's what you use it for. Entertainment-driven, compulsive use is tied to less motivation to pray, less time in Scripture, more skipped gatherings.

And here's a sobering detail. Among people who use prayer-reminder apps, nearly half report better discipline in their prayer times, but fewer than one in ten report deeper spiritual focus. Researchers have a name for it. Checklist spirituality. The phone can make you more religious and less present at the very same time.

In my own life, most mornings, the first thing I see isn't the sunrise and it isn't the page of my Bible. It's a four-inch screen. Nobody taught me that. I never set it as a goal. It just became true. That's how habits work.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." (Hebrews 12:1, NIV)

The opportunity

Now, a number from that same Pew study for those of us over 50. Nine percent of adults 65 and older say they use their phone almost constantly. Twenty-one percent of those 50 to 64. But when you look at those under 30, the number saying they use their phone almost constantly rises to 42 percent!

That's a large gap, but it’s also a calling. It means the people best positioned to model an undistracted life are the very people the church keeps telling to step aside. Your grandkids just watched the adults win a court case against unlimited screen time. What they need to see now is those same adults putting down their own screens.

This week's assignment

1.       Open your phone's screen-time report and write down what you see.

2.      Tonight, consider charging the phone outside the bedroom.

3.      Tomorrow morning commit to reading you Bible before you do anything on your phone.

Try it for seven days and then tell me what you noticed.

All in, eyes up!

P.S. On Spiritually Fit Today this week my guest is Marci Julin who wrestled with chronic illness, unanswered prayers, and deep suffering for over 20-years. We’ll discuss how God’s presence can transform our darkest seasons.