Today is Wednesday, March the 15th, 2023.

Welcome to the Daily Article Podcast.

Today's article is written by Dr. Ryan Dennison and narrated by Chris Elkins of the Denison Forum.

It's become conventional wisdom that the key to happiness is less screen time, or at least that's how it often seems. Turns out,

that's not entirely accurate. As Rihanna and Williams describes, and I quote, screen time has a

bad reputation, and there are plenty of negative headlines blaming the amount of time we spend on devices

for everything from reduced attention span to depression and anxiety.

And there's a growing body of evidence suggesting that reducing your screen time won't in itself make you happier,

and that general device usage isn't a reliable predictor of any of those things.

End quote. To be sure, there are elements of social media, phone addictions, and the inability to step

away from work that can make our lives worse, but some variation of,

do I need less of these things in my life?

Is the wrong question.

Unless you first understand what it is about the time you spend on a screen that's

making your life worse, you are likely to end up solving the wrong problem. And screen time

is hardly the only area of our lives where we face that same issue. In an article for Christianity

today, Kirsten Sanders argues that Christians in America are making

a similar mistake when it comes to our understanding of the role the church should play in our

culture. As she writes, one question I encounter regularly these days is why the local church

matters. This, I think, is the wrong question. Sanders goes on to describe

how the pandemic taught us that God can be encountered in living rooms, in nature, and even on a TV.

The entire Christian tradition insists that God is not hindered by anything. God indeed

...