Staying Human in a World of Devices

Crouch shared this anecdote, along with practical advice on how to be smarter about tech use, on September 30, when students, faculty, and trustees welcomed her as the first guest in the school’s 2022-23 Speaker Series. In her hour-long presentation, Crouch talked about the role technology plays in our lives, how we feel about it, and how we can act on that. Technology is part of our everyday lives, but we have a love-hate relationship with our devices, she said, citing surveys she conducted for her book that shed light on how technology impacts productivity, mental health, and human relationships.

“We love the connections that we have through technology. We love the powers that it gives us. We love the capacity to stay connected across distance and to kind of receive this endless flow of entertainment, of information, and it really does start to feel like a super power,” Crouch said, but two negative themes emerged in her polls about how we feel about our devices: distraction and loneliness.

“I think we’ve all felt this sense of we’re being distracted, our attention spans are struggling,” Crouch said, noting that 54% of those she surveyed said because of technology, they waste a lot of time. Interestingly, a little more than a third (33% and 36%, respectively) reported feeling more and less productive because of technology. There is another side to this, however: 68 percent of those surveyed said technology was keeping them from having “real conversations.”

“So many of us — I  would assume probably all of us — have been having a conversation with someone when, totally understandably, they pull out their phones,” she said, adding that probably all of us have carried out this same behavior. “You feel totally innocent. You’re just responding to a notification,” Crouch said. “So technology is keeping us from a kind of depth of connection.”

Moreover, there is increasing evidence that use of technology is contributing to a serious decline in mental health among young people, Crouch said, pointing to data showing that individuals with higher tech use were twice as likely to agree with statements of self-hatred, of depressive symptoms, and of despair. All of this is coinciding with a serious mental health crisis among young people. In December 2021, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory noting: “from 2009 to 2019, the share of high school students who reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness increased by 40%, to more than 1 in 3 students.” 

Crouch stressed that correlation is not causation, and technology is not solely to blame here. “Mental health is incredibly complicated and there are so many factors that make life feel destabilizing, confusing and alienating,” she said, adding that these problems would not be solved if we simply took everyone’s phones away.

Instead, she asserted, it’s a matter of perspective. “I want us to consider the ways in which technology is shaping every second, every moment of our days, and try to find a way forward.”

Helping students re-think how they use technology
Crouch, who graduated from Cornell University in May, began working on My Tech-Wise Life while completing her studies in linguistics and English. The book was published in her sophomore year. It was written as a follow up to the best-selling book, The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place. Both were co-authored by her father, Andy Crouch, who is an author, musician, speaker and partner for theology and culture at Praxis, an organization that works as a creative engine for redemptive entrepreneurship.

While their first book was geared toward parents, the second is directed toward teenagers and based on her own experience growing up with technology, said Crouch, whose family made intentional choices around technology. “I still do those things that my family practiced. Every week, I take a day away from work and also from screens. The first and last half hour — an hour if I can make it part of my  day — are spent without screens. I really stepped back from social media.”

And while she is not perfect, she said: “When I look at my life and how I’ve been able to cope with the real challenges and stressors that come up from being a human in 2022, I find it really helpful to feel like technology is not making it harder for me to be a human.”

At the beginning of the program, Head of School Peter Becker noted that he has read a lot about technology and was thrilled to find Crouch’s book, which he said does a terrific job of speaking specifically to a high school audience. Choosing the book for the all-school read this summer was also part of the school’s commitment to helping students think about the choices they are making with regard to technology. Since 2021, the school has partnered with The Social Institute (TSI), the leader in engaging, student-led lessons related to social-emotional health, social media use, and technology. Those lessons have been incorporated in Community Weekend programming and advisor-led discussions with students. Discussions about developing healthy habits around tech use, driven by Crouch’s book, will continue to be a focus of the school’s residential life programs this year, and for years to come.

“We think it is our responsibility as a school to equip you all to lead lives of flourishing, both during your time here and wherever you go from here,” Becker said. “We’re all living through the early years of a vast human experiment with the introduction of particularly smart phones, and so, we are learning a lot in the process along the way. We as a school think we have a responsibility to pause and ask you … to reflect on how you use these devices that have become so ubiquitous in our lives.”

Where the book includes many habits we can change with regard to our technology use (for example, taking a “tech sabbath” or deleting social media apps), Crouch chose three as a good place for students to start. First, for the past four years, she has spent the first 30 minutes of her day screen free. “It has made a very real difference in my life to wake up, and roll out of bed, and not go immediately into this fountain of horrible news, and people who need me to do things for them, and deadlines that I’m behind on and, ‘Oh my goodness, I have too many things to do in my  life.’”

Second, Crouch ends her day the same way, without screens for at least 30 minutes, which improves the quality and quantity of her sleep, and that, she promised, “will change your life.” Third, she recommended sharing meals with other people without screens. “I think this helps us address the issue of loneliness and of despair. It’s at meals, just eating something together with a friend, that makes a difference in our lives. The kinds of conversations that you can have when people are not distracted by screens are really beautiful,” Crouch said.

Loneliness leads to hopelessness, and sharing a meal can be an everyday touchpoint that reminds us there are people in our lives who care about us, Crouch said, sharing a story from her own experience to illustrate the point that, ultimately, the reason we should care about technology and our relationship to it is because it speaks to the kind of humans we become.

“I do hope that you improve the health of your tech practices but what I hope much more is that all of us in this room become people who do what’s right even when it’s hard. The only reason that I want to talk to you all about technology is because I believe in something more important, which is I want us all to become people of character,” Crouch said. “I want to be the kind of person who isn’t too distracted to see what my friends are going through. I want to be the kind of person who can have those real conversations that we think that tech is keeping us from, because I want to be able to look at the people I care about and see them and choose to love them.”
 

About the Speaker Series
The tradition of The Frederick Gunn School Speaker Series goes back to Frederick Gunn, who presided over town debates on political issues on Friday nights. Recent guest speakers have included: Olympic athlete Nemo Neubauerova ’18; Sarah Carlow and Lauren Rossman, clinical legal fellows and staff attorneys with the Boston College Innocence Project (BCIP); National Urban League President Marc Morial; Holocaust survivor Judith Altmann; Reginald Dwayne Betts, author, lawyer, poet and founder of Freedom Reads; author and businessman Edward Conard; CBS News Senior Political Analyst and author John Dickerson; Major League Baseball pitcher Justin Dunn ’13; Jeremy Cohen ’87, Vice President at Major League Baseball; Laura Tierney, founder and CEO of The Social Institute; and civic rights strategist Eric Ward.

The next event in the 2022-23 Speaker Series will be October 13, featuring outdoor adventurer, author, and journalist Ken Ilgunas. All events are open to students, faculty and their families only unless otherwise noted.