The Dumbing Down Power of Distraction

While on vacation recently, my wife and I checked in on our daughter’s church via video.  

 

She and her husband planted an urban church just when the pandemic hit. She was speaking that morning, so of course we didn’t want to miss it. It was a good message, but the close had me thinking about information versus speed and experience.

Recently, a new survey revealed that the average person in America checks their phone 205 times a day—nearly every five minutes we’re awake—with an average daily screen time of five hours. Four out of five of us check our phones within ten minutes of waking up.

Information input is constantly accessible. Face it: we’re suffering distraction-overload.

Best-selling author and leadership trainer Amy E. Herman, cited a study at King’s College at London University that found when workers were distracted, they “suffered a 10- to 15-point IQ loss — a greater dumbing down than experienced when smoking marijuana. A 15-point deficiency is significant, as it brings an adult male down to the same IQ level as an eight-year-old child.”

But even more importantly, she points out that our prefrontal cortex simply slows down its process ability to analyze and prioritize tasks when it has too much information or is required to switch focus too quickly. She notes that according to the Journal of Experimental Psychology, “students who were distracted while working on complicated math problems took 40 percent longer to solve them.”

In other words, distraction and information overload appear to be dumbing us down. And in this case, speed is not helping.

My question is: if information equals power, what does too much information equal?

Pastors, and communicators in general, often mistakenly assume that people simply need information. That is, if we give them good theology, well-exegeted sermons, and doctrinal correctness, they’ll become better humans, and we will have done our job. More information means better disciples.

So back to my daughter Rachel’s message.

Like I said, it was solid. But she did something at the close that was interesting: she took time out of her message to do an extended “palms down, palms up” spiritual exercise with minutes of silence. It suddenly slowed the morning down, and created space for people to be still in a world that never is.

Oddly, it tangentially reminded me of a current problem university professors and high school teachers are experiencing: the danger of students’ over-reliance on artificial intelligence programs. It seems there is a move to creating space in the classroom for students to write their essays in person, rather than the dangers of homework and the ability to misappropriate these new technologies.

We may need to give permission to slow down in order to become smarter.

In a speed-obssessed culture with information addiction and distractions, creating space to slow down may be the smartest way to truly know the Father rather than the constant output of information.

We communicators may be the distraction.

Dave Workman | The Elemental Group

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