Recently at a restaurant, I observed a grandmother-aged woman with two girls in their late teens sit down in a booth near ours. After a while, I heard the older woman complain, “Are you going to be on your phones the whole time you are with me?” Both assured her they weren’t but neither put her phone down.

Moms have issues with their phones as well:

I know better, but I do it anyways. My biggest problem is my phone. I don’t know how I manage to waste so much time there. I deactivated my Facebook account, so there’s just that much less to do on my phone when I absentmindedly pick it up.

This mom took a huge step to be free of bondage to her phone by deactivating her Facebook account, but she’s still spending time on her phone she doesn’t want to spend there. Whether it is making someone feel devalued or wasting time, smartphones have negative consequences.

Here’s a brave mom who made some tough decisions:

I’ve deactivated and deleted Facebook several times. I deleted it for the final time last August after God took the blinders off and showed me how utterly wasteful it is. There are zero benefits for me in this season of my life. Not to mention safety concerns with all the information that is sold and used. I actually deleted all social media.

However, the deal with smartphones is there’s SO much you can do from your phone that it’s hard to live without it being near you. I would encourage you to do a fast though. Go back to calling instead of texting. Use a real calendar. Designate a certain time of day that you check emails or utilize apps. If it’s not a part of your structured/scheduled day then it can become unruly and uncontrolled. You’ll be amazed at how addicted you were and begin to notice how 80% of the world around you is too! That’s not an addiction I want my kids to inherit, and I still have to be diligent to carefully watch the time I use it.

When I was raising children, we didn’t have smartphones. They are 21st-century distractions that moms today have to deal with, but they are also helpful, time savers. How you manage your phone will determine your ability to engage emotionally with your children, your productivity, your children’s memories of you, and how they will utilize their phones when they have one and manage their own time.

I suggest you have a scheduled computer time and don’t do anything on your phone that you can do on your computer, including texting. Then prioritize your computer time so you accomplish the most pressing and important tasks first. Keep your phone on airplane mode so you aren’t distracted by all its notification sounds. Then you can keep it with you for a timer, calculator, or camera without being distracted by texts. During scheduled computer time, you can look at the notifications that came in since your last computer time and deal with them. Windows users: This would be the time you would turn your phone back on to check texts and such because those won’t come to your computer. 

Are you brave enough to make tough decisions so you control your phone rather than it controlling you? “He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls” (Proverbs 25:28). I don’t think you will regret focusing on the Lord and your family rather than your phone.