Should You Give Up the Internet for Lent?

I’m thinking of taking up blogging for Lent. I know! It’s been ages.

Nothing overly dramatic going on, other than since August I can’t seem to make it three weeks without catching some new, usually minor virus, but which lays me out hard due the dread disease. But Lord willing, I will be picking back up with blogging here and over at the evangelization newsletter.

Today I want to hit a few essential Lenten notes, and also talk about the question of giving up social media or other habit-forming distractions for Lent.

First some essential Lenten links, and then my commentary after.

Yes, non-Catholics may receive ashes!

Reminder that anyone at all is free to receive Ashes on Ash Wednesday. It’s a sign of repentance and remembrance of your mortality. If you would like to resolve to live your life a little better from here on out, this is for you!

Some tips if you are going to a Catholic service as a non-Catholic:

• Follow along as best you can (there may be some kind of program of the service, but there might not be), but don’t panic if you’re not always sure which end is up.
• The service you attend might or might not be a Mass.
• If it is a Mass, there will be a distribution of Holy Communion at a different time in the service from the distribution of ashes.
• For ashes, go on up, just follow the person ahead of you in line.
• For Communion, you aren’t receiving Communion! (Among other things, it is a public proclamation that you believe all that the Catholic Church believes. Do you? If so, speak with the priest afterwards and ask about getting yourself prepared to enter the Church!)
• Therefore you can stay in your pew (hop up to let anyone in/out, people are used to this) and pray quietly.
• In many parishes (but not all), people not receiving Communion can go up with arms crossed over the chest (like ASL for “love” but with your hands unclenched) to receive a blessing. There will usually be an announcement about it if your parish has this practice, since they’ll know lots of non-Catholics come for ashes, but you can also ask an usher before Mass.

You’re welcome to keep coming to Mass any time you like. Also, grab a bulletin on your way out, your local parish probably has some Lenten services like Stations of the Cross outside of Mass, service opportunities such as feeding the homeless, and fun stuff like fish fries or soup suppers. It is AOK to get involved in your local parish while you are still just exploring the Catholic faith and learning more.

Catholic and struggling with fasting?

Here are my notes on How Strict is the Fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday?

Yes, it’s a fast. No, it shouldn’t destroy you.

Catholic and not struggling with fasting?

If you want to get deeper into the spirituality of Lent, here are Amy Welborn’s collection of writings on Lent. I find her work consistently interested in “What does the Catholic faith actually teach” in an intellectually rigorous way.

Is God calling you to turn off your phone?

And now onto today’s topic. Here are three essays I found helpful:

• Entering the Digital Desert by Deacon Tom McDonald
• Factory Reset: 49 Days to Restore Your Human Default from School of the Unconformed
• Meditations for Phone Addicts from Dostoevsky’s Blog.

Now getting personal . . .

One of the things about being sick all the time is that it can wreck your social life. That’s not true for every chronically-ill person, and not necessarily true all the time if your disease relapses and remits (as mine tends to do), but it’s definitely a thing.

Something about just the right level of fatigue is that you can both be completely unable to do any of the things you want to do, but also bored out of your mind.

Enter the world of social media and video streaming. If you want human contact but are struggling to hold a conversation? There’s an algorithm for that.

Digital’s been good to me in so many ways, but these are my three biggest challenges:

#1 My situation is constantly shifting.

I never know what my energy level is going to be, or how much exertion is the right amount — not too much, not too little. This makes it impossible to set out a balanced “rule” of life, and even a flow chart of if/then rules is doubtful.

This physical chaos feeds into the kinds of mental traps that promote digital addiction.

#2 Is it “engaging” or just toxic?

Something I’m asking myself about my use of the internet is: What am I getting out of this?

I love the news and commentary from people I respect and enjoy.  But I find that the negativity, even within my carefully curated follow list, wears me down.

By way of example:

I’m a person who hasn’t made it three full weeks without getting sick in the last six months. Per my internist’s instructions, I wear an N95 in crowded places (and still get sick, but presumably it’s a milder infection than it would be with a higher viral load). By being on social media, I’m unavoidably aware there are two opinions concerning mask-wearing:

• Only self-righteous virtue-signaling fascist hypochondriacs do such a thing;
• If you don’t wear a mask, it’s because you’re a hating hater who wants everyone to die, miserably.

Knowing about these two incredibly stupid reigning opinions is not helping me. Sure, forewarned is forearmed. But wow some ignorant bliss would be a lot more comfortable.

This negativity is emotionally toxic. So I think for Lent I’m transitioning to getting my news and commentary from e-mail based blog subscriptions from select non-toxic sources, and letting go of the interesting but sometimes-poisonous feed of snippet-commentary.

(But I will probably keep following hockey Twitter? Because that is good for me, for now? I think?)

–> By the way, if you haven’t already done so, you can subscribe to this blog via e-mail on the sidebar, so that you can unplug from social media but still know when a post goes up.

#3 But sometimes I’m just bored.

And so we complete the circle. Disease-life is inherently depressing, and it takes a lot of mental discipline to not let it trigger actual depression. I’m the queen of pivoting.

I would rather play hockey than watch hockey, but if I can’t play, I’ll watch. I’d rather than watch a good game than just scroll commentary and highlight snippets, but watching a game takes far more mental focus and energy, and games run late at night on bright screens, not great for sleep.

–> Ideally you pivot towards the highest level of engagement in the thing that you can, but sometimes that’s not very high.

The same applies to prayer, to gardening, to chores, to social life, to reading, and so on.

The digital solution is very bottom of the barrel, but sometimes you’re laid out and you’re exhausted and it’s depressing doing absolutely nothing, and at least a nice movie or cute dogs on Twitter is better than that?

Except social media and streaming services are designed to be addictive. Opioids for your intellectual pain.

Sometimes fasting is the worst thing.

So that’s where I am this Lent. Discerning.

Media consumption won’t be my thing I “give up” for Lent, because that can lead, for me, to binging when the fast is over. My Lenten penance will be focused slightly differently.

But discernment and discipline with the internet thing will be interconnected, for sure.