Is Your Phone More Important to You Than People?

With great earnestness in her voice, the young woman began to share her story of infatuation, betrayal, and heartbreak. However, none of the girls around her seemed to be listening. They were too busy looking at their phones.

Although I love my phone and use it often, it still hurts my heart when I see phones being prioritized over people.

We’re quick to pull out our phones to check notifications, send messages, and scroll through social media. But are we quick to listen to other people when they speak up? Are we quick to reach out to people who are typically ignored by everyone else? Are we quick to build others up with our words and actions? Sadly, we’re not.

More Harm Than Good?

Smartphones have done a lot of great things for our culture, but they’ve also caused great harm. Real relationships—built on intentionality, loyalty, and self-sacrifice—are becoming quite rare. After all, we have posts to create, comments to respond to, and followers to impress.

But can the posts, comments, and followers wait? The answer is yes. I wrote this post to remind you that your phone can indeed wait.

It’s time to focus less on our phones and more on the people around us. Because it can make a huge difference when you make eye contact with people, pay attention to what they’re saying, and responding to what they’re saying. Sitting on the sidelines to stare at a screen—rather than forming and developing relationships—isn’t what we’re called to do as believers.

Called to Care About Others

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. (Philippians 2:3-4 NASB1995)

Friends, there’s so much more to life than taking selfies, playing Candy Crush, and getting social media followers. Our calling as Christians is to serve Christ by serving others, which we can’t do if our eyes are glued to our phones. But we can be lights in our dark world when we put other people’s needs above our own desires—starting with putting our phones away.