A Poor Digital Diet

At a BYU devotional several years ago, Elder Patrick Kearon spoke about having a “poor digital diet.”  He said, “We may be suffering in many aspects of our lives, without fully recognizing it, because of a poor digital diet.  As with so much in life, what we consume is a choice, so don’t be surprised that if you spend much of your time consuming one kind of message that you become affected and influenced by it. Spending too much of our time with social media, celebrity or entertainment news, games, and the pursuit of online, time-hungry activities constitutes a poor digital diet.”  This thought reminds me of a story that Elder Holland related from President Packer.  In a severe winter excessive snow had driven a lot of deer down into the valley.  He described what happened that winter: “Some of them were trapped by fences and circumstances as they were taken out of their natural habitat, and well-meaning, perfectly responsive, capable agencies tried to respond by feeding those deer to get them through the crisis of the winter. They brought in hay and dumped it everywhere; it was about as good as they could do under the circumstances. Later an immense number of those deer were found dead. The people who handled those animals afterward said that their stomachs were full of hay, but they had starved to death. They had been fed, but they had not been nourished.”  To me the digital diet we most frequently consume is like hay for the deer—it will feed us something, but if a large enough proportion of our diet comes from it then it may very well be the cause of our spiritual death. 

               Presumably those deer were given hay because it was inexpensive and easy to obtain and distribute, but it provided little value to the deer.  Similarly, too often we fill our lives with digital messages which are easy to obtain but often of little lasting worth.  Elder Kearon spoke of how we should be seeking the “messages of love” from our Father in Heaven—these take more focused effort and diligent searching, but their value is immeasurably greater.  Elder Kearon encouraged, “Be bold in choosing to remove any obstruction to the sweet, comforting, guiding messages of love from your Father in Heaven.”  One of the scriptures that comes to mind as I think about this is the simple counsel that the Lord gave to William McLellin: “Seek not to be cumbered” (D&C 66:10).  To be cumbered is to be hindered or hampered or burdened, and surely those things that make up our digital diet can greatly hinder us spiritually if we let them take so much of our time that we fail to do that which is really important.  The same word is used to describe Martha when the Savior visited at her home.  When the Savior was visiting with Mary, “Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?” (Luke 10:40).  What Martha was doing, what she was cumbered by, was not bad—she was taking care of the house.  But that was preventing her from sitting at the feet of Jesus and learning divine truth.  That’s exactly what the digital distractions can do to us if we are not careful; they may not be bad in and of themselves, but if they get us to miss out on more important spiritual experiences then surely we have chosen poorly.