I am asked: When do you have time to write books and seforim? I answer: When you are saving time on your smartphone

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minent rabbis have spoken out strongly against unfiltered smartphones. I have listened carefully and I have agreed, but I have never heeded their warnings. This is because the first time I saw this device, perhaps 20 years ago, I said to myself: I never, ever want to own such a thing. And I never have.

I saw people mesmerized by their phones, taking a minute scrolling up and down and inputting this and that, just to come up with a piece of information that, often as not, turned out not to be needed. I said to myself as I watched all this finger-pushing on a screen: Minute by minute, if I owned such a device, there would go my life. My time for Torah study, already limited by professional, family and community obligations, would drastically drop.

I soon saw that it wasn’t minute by minute — it was ten minutes and 20 minutes and an hour at a time. Even when no bullying and no inappropriate material popped up on the phone, the device was addictive, to a greater or smaller degree. It has become common to see people not seeing each other anymore because they are looking at their phones. I see people, a split-second after Shacharis is finished, bent over their phones. I wonder: What am I missing so early in the morning? I wonder: If I find out some major development around the world an hour later, what have I lost?

I learned that some people cannot consider Shabbos observance because they can’t possibly conceive of 25 straight screenless hours. If that is not an addiction, what is?

I recoiled the first time I saw a smartphone for another reason: distraction. Of course an addiction is also a distraction, but I mean something else. Even if a phone is used only judiciously, the screen distracts. It is not necessarily a smooth transition from a full day of professional responsibilities to a focused conversation with the people I love or with friends, or to Torah study. Focus requires, well, focus. When images flicker before my eyes, focus takes longer.

Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv, the Alter of Kelm (c. 1824–1898), was one of the preeminent disciples of Rav Yisrael Salanter, founder of the mussar movement. The Alter would require of his students a five-minute Torah-study session. The idea was to train a student to be able focus immediately. It’s a critical discipline, and not an easy one, only acquired with much practice. The Alter wanted to nurture that discipline so that his students would not waste their time. A screen often before my eyes tells me: Focus on the screen. The screen is seductive. I should be focusing on people and on Torah. It’s harder to do so if I am swimming in images.

I confess to a degree of hypocrisy. A smartphone is sometimes essential, such as when one is lost on the road or otherwise needs good directions. For these and other essentials, such as health information, I rely on others and their phones, asking them to help me out. Of course, I couldn’t do so if these devices did not exist. When I add up the time lost by not owning a smartphone against the time gained, there is no contest. The gain is immense. I am asked: When do you have time to write books and seforim? I answer: When you are saving time on your smartphone.

I also confess: I know that worthy educational and other opportunities are available on the smartphone. For this, I do not rely on others’ devices. I forgo the opportunities. Here, too, as I measure the gains in time and in an uncluttered mind, there is no contest.

For many years I have read of terrible incidents — tragic consequences for teenagers — arising from bullying over the smartphone. I said to myself: Where is it written that a teenager must own a smartphone? For those who deem that approach unrealistic, where is it written that the phone must always be on? These devices are so addictive and so assumed to be essential to life itself, that it is only after many years that public schools are beginning to impose common sense limitations on the use of smartphones in school.

We read of other terrible incidents, including murder — anti-Semitic and otherwise — arising from alternative realities stoked by access to vile data via the smartphone and other devices. I have no global solution to this major perplexity, this reorientation of society. But it is clear to me that ultimately, there can be only one solution: free choice to value life itself, the reacquisition of internally driven values. This, as I understand the Torah, is what the Torah wants from us to freely  choose to be servants of Hashem, and to find joy in this for its own sake.

Not with the same intensity, yeshivos struggle with this issue, too. The difficulty in imposing restrictions on smartphone use is that the restrictions are received as either punitive or as necessary to avoid danger. There is no debate on the danger question. Even so, there is a prior and superior reason for restrictions on smartphone use: self-worth and inner freedom. Both of which are essential for openness to Torah and love of Torah, and neither of which is a punishment. They are rewards!

The essence of the matter comes down to this: Who is in charge of my life? Me, or forces outside of me? Am I controlled by forces external to me, be they frivolities or dangers or something else, or am I controlled by my own true self? It takes time, soul-work and focus to develop one’s true self.

When I first saw a smartphone and how it slowly but steadily degraded the ability to focus on eternal values and inner growth, I said to myself: Choose life!

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg is the editor and publisher of the Intermountain Jewish News, for which he has written a weekly column, “View from Denver,” since 1972, and the author of numerous seforim about the mussar movement and other subjects. His new book is G-d Spoke Once, I Heard Twice: The Torah’s Lens on Fifty Fields of Human Knowledge (Rowman & Littlefield).

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1082)