Interview with Doug Smith
Are you in control of your screen time… or is it the other way around? Listen as Doug Smith helps kick off Know Why’s series Know about Healthy Tech Habits. In the episode Liberty and Doug discuss his recent book, [Un]Intentional: How Screens Secretly Shape Your Desires and How You Can Break Free, written from his perspective as a former software developer. Doug offers insights that are both sobering and hopeful—you don’t want to miss them!
Identity
Identity is a big question many people wrestle with. Who am I? What do I like? What do I want? What do I believe? We’d like to think that we are fairly autonomous in determining our identity. But Doug argues that isn’t the case.
“We end up thinking we’re constructing a unique identity when we’re just constructing an identity that’s been formed for us and tends to lead us to a bad end,” he told Know Why.
Doug Smith
“They’re exploiting weaknesses in our behavioral psychology and neurology to teach us to make decisions that are most profitable for them, but often harmful to us and certainly against our God-given purpose.”
What’s forming our identity for us? Our screens—or more precisely, the companies, algorithms, and technology behind them.
Reclaiming Our Habits
There is hope for reclaiming our identity and decision-making willpower, but it involves developing new habits that aren’t centered on screen time. In his book, Doug points to the Bible as helpful in this journey.
“We are learning a lot in terms of the details about how the brain works,” he said. “But what we continue to find is that these truths are just confirming what we’ve already learned in ancient wisdom, especially in the Bible.”
Additional Resources
- [Un]Intentional: How Screens Secretly Shape Your Desires and How You Can Break Free
- How Intentional Am I? A free assessment to learn how much screens are affecting you
- Screenstrong.org, A resource for families